Detecting Plagiarism at Bucknell
Bucknell University and the Integrated SafeAssign Service
One of the unfortunate aspects of working at an institution of higher learning is the occasional run-in with a paper or an assignment that sounds as if it might not be completely original. Perhaps the language sounds too sophisticated, or the bibliography contains unusual books that aren't held in the Bertrand Library, or the style sounds much too formal. In other words, something catches your attention or arouses your suspicion.
When you receive such a submission, or even as you create the assignment for students to submit to you, Library & IT can offer you a quick and easy way to run the text and bibliography of the paper through a quick, thorough check that can determine how much the language of the submitted work matches pre-existing sources.
The Blackboard Learning System now incorporates as part of the product an additional component called "SafeAssign." To use SafeAssign, you create a "Safe Assignment" in Blackboard that students submit electronically into your Blackboard course. SafeAssign compares all submitted assignments to a local and global database of previously submitted student work and of other Internet-based sources. Within an hour of students' submitting a "Safe Assignment" (or within an hour of your directly submitting an essay to SafeAssign), the SafeAssign server produces an "originality report," highlighting any similarities between the language the student used in the assignment and the language in previously submitted or published work that is contained in the local and global SafeAssign database.
You can find instructions on how to create a "Safe Assignment" in your Blackboard course at:
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/isr/TeachingAndTechnology/Blackboard/safeassign/index.shtml
The SafeAssign service is just one tool that faculty can use in order to determine the originality of a paper; for example, a Google (or Google Scholar) search for key, susipicious phrases in the submitted work might also turn up potential unacknowledge sources. For a longer description of the policies regarding academic responsibility at Bucknell University, please see the College of Arts & Sciences page on Academic Responsibility.
