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SafeAssign: Intellectual Property v Common Phrases

 

Issue: SafeAssign detects potential plagiarism by matching text using an algorithm intended to identify both exact and inexact matches. However, this text- and meaning-matching algorithm may result in incorrect matches, such as identifying common phrases as potential plagiarism.

 

Potential Benefits: According to Blackboard, the SafeAssign tool is intended to promote originality in student writers, and identifying common phrases in the originality report is, by these lights, accomplishing that goal. Calling a student’s attention to the unoriginal phrases in his writing may help him see how he might be more original by moving beyond the obvious phrases, the expected arguments, or the superficial thinking.

 

Potential Problems: Though identifying common phrases might be used to help students move beyond stereotypical writing, it significantly hinders the tool’s effectiveness as a way of teaching students about intellectual property and the deeper meaning of originality. By zeroing in on the unoriginality of fairly insignificant phrases, it sends the message that ownership and originality is something found only on the sentence level, in one’s writing rather than in one’s thinking.

 

Discussion:

Though this seems like a straightforward issue, easily resolved by the evaluator of the papers, SafeAssign’s tendency to highlight common phrases as potential plagiarism is problematic for two reasons. First, it represents a limitation for SafeAssign as a tool for policing plagiarism. These instances not only skew the results of the originality report, they also require the evaluator to devote the time and attention necessary to ascertain whether a phrase is a potential act of plagiarism or merely a common turn-of-phrase – which certainly diminishes the timesaving capacities of the tool. Much more important, however, are the drawbacks this poses to SafeAssign’s potential as a learning tool. Identifying such localized similarities reinforces the idea that plagiarism is simply a matter of borrowing someone else’s words – when, in fact, most educators would be far more concerned about the borrowing of someone else’s thinking. Rather than helping students better understand the relationship between originality and intellectual property, it may actually teach them about an incorrect and oversimplified definition of intellectual property and what it means to have ownership of one’s writing and thinking.

 

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Also in this section:

• The View From the Writing Center
• General Guidelines for Using SafeAssign
• Issues Associated with SafeAssign
  • Intellectual Property Rights
  • Comprehensiveness
  • Intellectual Property V Common Phrases