Blackboard Inc., the company that provides and manages many of the online educational services used by the College, recently unveiled SafeAssign, a new plagiarism-detection device which will allow professors to automatically compare students' papers with a database containing millions of articles that will be updated weekly.
Unlike similar services such as Turnitin and MyDropBox, SafeAssign does not automatically upload students' papers to the database.
Students must first give permission for their work to be copied into the database, and professors will not be forced to utilize SafeAssign when reviewing student papers.
Dartmouth has no imminent plans to implement the new feature, which was unveiled on July 2, according to Malcolm Brown, director of computing services.
"We would first need to work with colleagues in administration and faculty to look at the tool, to see if it will be useful, what the results are and what the quality the service will be. We need to be very careful," Brown said.
The usefulness of the service will largely depend on the nature of particular classroom assignments rather than class sizes, according to Barbara Knauff, a senior instructional technologist and member of Blackboard's user support staff.
"It has to do with how the professor constructs an assignment. If it's a research topic and involves a fully integrated process, an automated plagiarism check is not necessary," Knauff said.
Knauff says that SafeAssign will be more useful for assignments that are completed in a short amount of time, not long-term projects.
SafeAssign has not yet been picked up by any universities, according to Knauff. While there is currently discussion regarding installation issues, it is much too early to gauge the success of SafeAssign among colleges, she said.
"It's way too soon, most schools are not in session. I imagine there will be a few schools that will be using it in the fall. Personally I don't know about any," Knauff said.
Brown says that if he were to consider using SafeAssign as a professor, he would need to be more informed before making a decision.
Taylor Holt '09, a government and Latin American, Latino and Carribean studies major, thought that implementing SafeAssign would reflect a lack of trust in Dartmouth students.
"I feel like the trust that professors have for the Dartmouth students is the foundation of the honor code," Holt said.
