How to Check SafeAssign before Submitting?

The question is, Can someone check SafeAssign before submitting the final homework? Let’s find out!

SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention tool integrated with the Blackboard LMS that compares submitted papers against various databases to identify potential plagiarism. It generates originality reports highlighting any matching or similar text found.

The primary purpose of using SafeAssign is to help educators prevent plagiarism and improve student writing, not to strictly police plagiarists. It aims to make students better researchers and writers by enabling them to check and revise their work. But after submitting the final papers, no one can really control the result.

So, is it really possible to check SafeAssign before submitting the assignment paper?

The answer is YES! and only if the instructor allows students with that option.

Knowing SafeAssign’s Limitations

SafeAssign has some fundamental limitations that students and instructors should understand:

• Since the system doesn’t understand the context, it can flag properly cited quotes and familiar phrases as potential plagiarism.
• Instructors must carefully review originality reports to determine if there is actual plagiarism or if matches are false positives.
• SafeAssign may have difficulty scanning certain file types, like PDFs, depending on how they were created.

While a helpful tool, SafeAssign could be better and can’t be solely relied upon to catch all plagiarism cases. Human judgment is still essential.

Utilizing Draft Submission

Some instructors enable a SafeAssign setting, allowing draft submissions that don’t get added to the plagiarism databases. This features allows to check SafeAssign before submitting the final draft.

Submitting drafts enables students to:

• View originality reports for their papers before final submission
• Identify any potential issues early so they can adequately revise and attribute sources

This allows students to be proactive and use SafeAssign as a revision tool rather than just a plagiarism checker.

Check SafeAssign before Submitting

Since SafeAssign isn’t accessible to students outside of class assignments, here are some options allowing self-checks beforehand:

• Other plagiarism detection tools like Turnitin, Grammarly, and PlagScan provide similarity reports
• These check papers against databases without submitting them to SafeAssign
• Allow students to proactively revise appropriately before submitting to SafeAssign

Some schools or colleges also offer SafeAssign student courses, allowing paper uploads to generate originality reports independently without needing instructor assignment creation.

Interpreting Originality Reports Carefully

When reviewing SafeAssign originality reports, keep a few things in mind:

• The overall score is the percentage of matching text, not necessarily plagiarized content
• Low scores (<15%) often indicate properly attributed quotes/phrases
• Higher scores (>40%) signal potential issues needing careful review
• The goal should be improving writing and source attribution, not just reducing the numerical score

False positives are expected since the tool doesn’t process context. Use critical thinking when evaluating report matches to determine if there are actual problems needing revision.

Checking papers with SafeAssign before final submission enables students to proactively identify potential plagiarism issues early and improve their writing and attribution. While an imperfect tool, leveraging options like draft submissions, self-checking with other detection tools, and carefully interpreting originality reports allows students to utilize SafeAssign as a revision aid rather than just a plagiarism checker. This promotes better scholarship while still upholding academic integrity.

What has been your experience using SafeAssign? Would like to know whether SafeAssign detect ChatGPT content or not?

Do you have any other tips for properly leveraging it?

Let me know in the comments!