After more than a year in the making, a policy for the use of the Safe Assignment software is finally on the books, agreed on last month by the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska.
The software allows students and professors to check papers for plagiarism by comparing them with a database of other papers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, other schools and the Web.
The hard part is finding a balance between a professor's right to look for plagiarism in academic work and students' rights to have their intellectual property used appropriately in the hands of those professors. The current policy does not go far enough in safeguarding students and their work.
After being checked for plagiarism, a paper is uploaded to Safe Assignment's database to be used to check other papers.
Greg Gifford, a graduate student in the College of Engineering and Human Sciences who has been working with ASUN on the project, said one of the major questions is whether a student's work should be contributing to the commercial advances of a company.
"Students intend these papers to be submitted to professors," he said, not to be used to check for plagiarism.
Students can have some impact on the use of their work; if you don't want your paper to be used to advance this company, now owned by Blackboard, you can request that it not be uploaded.
If you don't say anything, however, away it goes into the databases.
Plagiarism is obviously a bad thing that impedes the work of serious students and professors. But we want to make sure students are protected from unfair judgment of their work, and we're worried about the accessibility of this database of papers.
Gifford did say there would be no way to steal a paper from the Safe Assignment database.
When uploading a paper to Safe Assignment, the program will tell a user what percentage is plagiarized and highlight the sections that are. But Gifford said bibliographies and excerpts that are cited correctly can still come up as plagiarized.
Professors must be diligent on how they use this program and make sure they look beyond the percentage given by the software. Even if the software says something is plagiarized, a professor needs to make sure the item is actually taken directly from some other source and not just utilized within a pair of quotes.
The policy also said professors "are strongly encouraged to notify students that papers will be submitted to the Safe Assignment system." We feel professors should be required to make that notification.
Like other academic matters, a student can appeal a grade they receive as part of the Student Code of Conduct, which is a plus.
David Solheim, president of ASUN, said the policy has taken a long time to create because there were "strong opinions" on how to use such a program.
"We ended up with an OK policy," he said. "It was either an imperfect policy for imperfect software or no policy at all."
We recommend students run their papers through Safe Assignment before turning them into a professor who also uses the program. Contact University Libraries to try out the software.
This way, students can make sure they know the status of the paper before turning it in. Students should remember they can also ask that their papers not be placed in the database, especially if they're of a personal nature.
This software can be a valuable tool for students and professors alike; we just need to make sure no one goes crazy with it.
staffed@dailynebraskan.com
