The cheerfulness among undergraduates at my institution has transformed suddenly into overt displays of despair and depression. This can only signal one thing: midterm grades are coming in.

Another sign midterms are being graded: the Education Futures access.log has been receiving many referral hits from websites claiming to thwart plagiarism.

Students, please note that submitting your papers on sites such as SafeAssign (by Blackboard) is not safe, and in no way protects your privacy. Why? Because I can read your papers by visiting referral URLs left by your instructors on this site’s log. SafeAssign does nothing to hinder me from reading your work. It’s all open for the world to view. The SafeAssign FAQ states, “Blackboard does not claim any ownership rights on the content submitted to SafeAssign.” So, why do they redistribute it to the world?

A student at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Nursing wrote an outstanding community health assessment of a Chicago neighborhood. I got to read her work in its entirety because SafeAssign has assigned a 7% chance that she lifted the following text from an EF post on China:

Healthy People 2010. (2007). Adults with Congestive Heart Failure as Principal Diagnosis, 1997. National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), Retrieved November 1, 2007, from http://www.healthyPeople.gov/Document/HTML/Volume1/12Heart.htm.

Hozawa, A., Folsom, A., Sharrett A., Chambless L. (2007). Absolute and attributable risks of cardiovascular disease incidence in relation to optimal and borderline risk factors: comparison of African American with White subjects- Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study [Electronic Version]. Archives Of Internal Medicine , 167(6), 537-539.

Sharma, S., O’Keefe, SJ. (2007). Environmental influences on the high mortality from colorectal cancer in African Americans[ Electronic Version]. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 83(983), 583-589.

Why SafeAssign thinks there’s a 7% chance she plagiarized that from EF baffles me.

The student gets an A from EF for her outstanding work. SafeAssign gets an F for failing to protect students’ best interests through a shoddy, insecure product.