SafeAssign is a plagiarism detection service available to University of Minnesota instructors who have a WebVista course or development site. To request a WebVista site, see the WebVista Site Request Form.
There are two ways to submit student work to the SafeAssign service. The SafeAssign Assignment tool allows students to submit work themselves. The SafeAssign Direct Submit tool allows instructors to submit papers for evaluation without student involvement.
Student work submitted to SafeAssign tools are checked against various databases:
- A comprehensive index of documents available for public access on the Internet
- A store of more than 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from the 1990s to the present, updated weekly
- Archives containing all papers submitted to SafeAssign by users in their respective institutions (e.g. the University of Minnesota)
- The Global Reference Database which contains papers volunteered by students from client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism.
After student work is checked, both tools produce a report that shows matching sequences of words in the submitted assignment, any matching sources, and the percentage of matching words in the report.
View the SafeAssign Online Orientation
The Office of Information Technology has created an online orientation on the use of SafeAssign tools. To view it, go to the SafeAssign Online Orientation page.
Browser Settings
Users with Apple's Safari browser browser may not be able to access SafeAssign if their browser settings are incorrect. Before using SafeAssign, make sure you and your students check this OIT Knowledge Base article: SafeAssign login error message when using Safari. This information is also noted on the WebVista Browser Set Up - Mac OS X: Safari 2.0 - 4.0 web page.
Access the SafeAssign Assignment Tool
The SafeAssign Assignment tool allows students to submit work themselves. The originality of their work is then analyzed and a report is made for instructors to consult while grading. Grades entered into SafeAssign Assignment appear in a corresponding column in the WebVista course site Grade Book.
Add the SafeAssign Assignment Tool
- Select the Build tab in your WebVista course site.
- Click Add Content Link in the main area of the page.
- A menu appears. Click the SafeAssign Assignment link.
- The area under SafeAssign Assignment expands. Click the Create SafeAssign Assignment button.
- On the resulting screen, enter a title for the tool.
- When done, click the Configure button.
The SafeAssign Assignment tool is now added to your WebVista course site. A single SafeAssign link in your site can contain multiple assignments.
Create a SafeAssign Assignment
- Select the Teach tab in your WebVista course site.
- Click the link created in the preceding steps.
- Click the Create SafeAssignment button.
-
A window appears (see Figure 1). Enter an assignment title, description, due date (note: the time is currently listed as Eastern Daylight Time or EDT), whether it is a draft assignment, whether the report should be viewable by the student, how urgently reports should be made available, and the assignment point value.
Figure 1: A portion of the SafeAssign Assignment options window in WebVista (see entire screenshot). - When done, click the Save button.
To try out the tool as a student, go back to your WebVista course site Home Page and select the Student View tab. Assignment submissions can be in Microsoft Word (doc), txt, RTF, HTML, or PDF format.
Access the SafeAssign Direct Submit Tool
The SafeAssign Direct Submit tool is for instructors only. Instructors can submit papers directly to this tool and run an originality report without student interaction.
Add the SafeAssign Direct Submit Tool
- Select the Build tab in your WebVista course site.
- Click Add Content Link in the main area of the page.
- A menu appears. Click the SafeAssign Direct Submit link.
- The area under SafeAssign Assignment expands. Click the Create SafeAssign Direct Submit button.
- On the resulting screen, enter a title for the tool.
- When done, click the Configure button.
The SafeAssign Direct Submit tool is now added to your WebVista course site.
Hide SafeAssign Direct Submit from Students
Since students cannot use this tool, it can be hidden from their view.
- Select the Build tab in your WebVista Course site.
- Click the ActionLinks button (
).
- A menu appears. Click the Hide Item link.
The link is now hidden from student view.
Use the SafeAssign Direct Submit tool
- Select the Teach tab in your WebVista course site.
- Click the link created/hidden in the preceding steps.
- Click the Submit papers button.
-
The page refreshes (see Figure 2). Choose whether the papers should be submitted as a draft or whether plagiarism checking should occur. You can choose one or neither of these two options. Click the Browse button to upload a file or zipped group of files. To upload text copied from another program, click the button next to Copy/Paste Document and paste into the associated field.
Figure 2: A portion of the SafeAssign Assignment options window in WebVista (see entire screenshot). - When done, click the Submit button.
View a Sample SafeAssign Report
Once an assignment is submitted to either tool, it can take a few minutes before the originality report is ready. To view an available report, click the SA Report icon
(
). The SafeAssign Report will appear in a new window (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: A portion of a SafeAssign report on a submitted paper (see entire screenshot).
The SafeAssign Report includes any suspected sources and full text of the paper. Click on a suspected source in the listing to hightlight the suspect text in the submitted paper.
Additional Resources
To learn more about issues related to these options, as well as additional plagiarism prevention strategies, support, services, examples, resources, and research, see the SafeAssign page on the Digital Media Center (DMC) Web site.
For questions about using SafeAssign, send e-mail to webvista@umn.edu.