SafeAssign is a tool built into Scholar's Assignments and Tests that allow submissions to be scanned for potential plagiarism. This tool compares the content of submissions to a database of other submitted works, as well as publically accessible texts on the internet, to locate text matches that may indicate that a student copied the text into their own work. The tool then generates a report summarizing the percentage of the submission that consists of copied text vs original work. This can serve as both a detection tool, and a deterrent against potential plagiarism on key assignments. 

Setting Up SafeAssign

While creating an Assignment or test, the item's settings are on the right.  Just click any of them, or the gear icon at the top right, to view or edit all settings.

Scroll down and locate the setting labeled "Originality Report". Click "Enable SafeAssign" to enable the tool as well as other related settings. 

If you want students to see their SafeAssign reports, check the "Allow students to view the SafeAssign...." box.  

If this is a partial or rough-draft submission and you are going to have the students submit later, you must click the "Exclude submissions..." checkbox to keep SafeAssign from marking the students' second submissions as plagiarized.

Click the Save button to accept the settings.

Viewing SafeAssign Information

If you set up the assignment to check for plagiarism with SafeAssign, the SafeAssign score for submitted work will be found on the right-hand-side, under a section labeled Originality Report This score will be presented in the form of a percentage, representing the percent of the document's text finding matches in other sources.  If the student recently submitted the assignment, the SafeAssign score may take some time to become available, as the tool has not finished scanning it to generate a full report.

Note: Keep in mind that the SafeAssign score by itself is not, by itself, conclusive evidence of plagiarism.  Instead, it can be used as a signal of whether a paper needs additional scrutiny.

If you wish to see the specific text that SafeAssign flagged, click one of the reports generated. 

You’ll be taken to the SafeAssign report on a separate tab on your web browser. 

You'll see the overview information on the right. Each separate course is color-coded for easy viewing.  The key to the sources is found on the right side.

To remove a source from consideration, click the Dismiss Match button for the relevant source. This can be useful for filtering out false matches, such as when a paper may be legitimately quoting a properly cited source. 

The document will be reprocessed leaving out the dismissed sources.

In the text of the assignment, click on highlighted text to see the original source:

After reviewing the report, close it to return to the grading page.