Instructors may use SafeAssign to scan any written assignment submitted by a student (individual or group) for unoriginal content, which may indicate plagiarism.

1. Inside of your Blackboard course, locate the assignment that will use SafeAssign. Click the small, gray arrow immediately to the right of the assignment's title to open a drop-down menu and select 'Edit'. This will open the 'Edit Assignment' page, where you can change its settings.
2. On the 'Edit Assignment' page, scroll down to the 'Submission Details' section — click that title to expand it.
3. Inside of the expanded section, locate the 'Plagiarism Tools' sub-header; to its right, you can find three settings for SafeAssign.
4. Select 'Check submissions for plagiarism using SafeAssign'. This will enable the SafeAssign feature for this assessment. When it is enabled, all students' submissions will be checked against the database automatically as they turn them in.
5. Optionally, select one or both of the remaining options:
   1. 'Allow students to view SafeAssign originality report for their attempts' - This option provides feedback for students, so they can revise or make improvements.
   2. 'Exclude submissions from the institutional and Global Reference Databases' - By default, SafeAssign adds all submitted papers to a database to be used for future plagiarism checks. This prevents students from reusing a paper, or sharing its content with the class -but- it can cause problems for assignments with multiple versions submitted via separate links. If you do not check this box, and you use SafeAssign to review drafts, then the students' subsequent versions of the same paper may be flagged as plagiarized from their own first draft.
      For papers with drafts/multiple versions:
      - if you have separate submission links in Blackboard for each version/draft of the assignment, you should check this option.
      - if the students will submit their draft and final papers using the same assignment link, SafeAssign will ignore the earlier versions during the plagiarism check, so you do not need to enable this setting.
6. In the bottom-right corner of the page, select 'Submit' to save the changes.

When you create a SafeAssignment, a column will automatically be added to the Grade Center. Students may submit their assignments, and the SafeAssign plagiarism check will run automatically -but- instructors must enter a grade for each submission manually. The 'Needs Grading' icon will appear in the column's cells when the students' submissions (along with the SafeAssign originality reports) are ready for you to review. This may be done directly in the Grade Center or from the Needs Grading page. Please see our other SafeAssign articles for more information.

Contact Us

Chat with Tech Support Submit a Ticket Call 701-777-2222