March 11, 2010

SafeAssign and Turnitin are two tools that can serve as deterrents to plagiarism and can be used to educate students about the appropriate use of sources in writing and research.  SafeAssign is integrated into Blackboard, whereas Turnitin is a stand-alone tool with its own web site.  In this session, three Hunter faculty members discussed their experiences using these tools.

Kenneth Erickson, a long-time user of Turnitin, talked about how use of this tool has reduced the number of instances of plagiarism he sees in his classes.  Abigail Jewkes, who has used both Turnitin and SafeAssign, discussed how she uses SafeAssign to teach proper citation of sources to graduate students.  Veronica Gregg discussed the use of SafeAssign to help undergraduate students develop and improve their writing skills, choosing their sources carefully.  All presenters emphasized the need to interpret the reports generated by these tools judiciously and to use the report results as teaching moments.  Differences between the tools were also discussed, including differences in the databases to which student papers are compared.

Help Documents

• About SafeAssign
• Creating a SafeAssignment
• Grading a SafeAssignment
• Turnitin support documents

Additional Resources

• Hunter College Reading/Writing Center
• An Empirical Research Study of the Efficacy of Two Plagiarism-Detection Applications
  Note: This article can be obtained via InterLibrary Loan or by contacting Nancy Guerrero
• University of Texas at Austin plagiarism tutorial
• University of North Carolina Writing Center resources