If you’re in the education space you’ve probably heard of SafeAssign, Quillbot, or both. SafeAssign is simply a plagiarism checker that compares submitted assignments with various databases to identify similarities while Quillbot is a paraphrasing tool that helps to rewrite content.
Although these tools serve different functionalities, they’re useful in the academic process to ensure originality in submissions. These two tools represent the relationship between plagiarism checkers and paraphrasing tools.
Whiles some teachers are against the use of paraphrasing tools due to fear of student misuse, their benefits are undeniable as they can facilitate easier understanding of content. In the case where you’d like to simply rephrase a sentence to use in your article, these tools become an asset to any publisher or student.
However, there’s still the question of whether SafeAssign plagiarism checker can detect content paraphrased with the help of QuillBot. To answer this question, let’s take a look at QuillBot as a paraphrasing tool.
What Is QuillBot
To put it simply, QuillBot is an online tool that leverages artificial intelligence to rewrite content. QuillBot integrates directly into Google Docs, Chrome, and Microsoft Word making it easy to rewrite your content.
Users can use the tool for free when paraphrasing smaller articles or assignments at a time but the premium version is required to paraphrase larger articles at once. The free version allows for up to a 125-word limit paraphrasing at a time while the premium version provides unlimited word count.
However, users who choose the free version can simply copy-paste information numerous times to properly paraphrase articles that exceed the word limit.
What Is SafeAssign
SafeAssign compares a submission with existing papers in various databases to assess originality. Databases leveraged in the originality test include Blackboard’s global reference database of volunteered student submissions, the institution’s internal database of student submissions, internet, and ProQuest.
With over 75 percent of colleges and universities and more than half of K-12 districts in the US usingBlackboard, the SafeAssign has a huge database of volunteered student submissions in their global reference database.
This makes it one of the most reliable plagiarism checkers leveraged by educational institutions.
Can SafeAssign Detect QuillBot
No, QuillBot cannot be detected by SafeAssign. QuillBot employs artificial intelligence to replace words with synonyms and to alter the sequence of sentences and paragraphs, rendering plagiarism checkers ineffective.
While some spinners simply leverage synonyms to paraphrase a sentence, QuillBot is able to change the sequence of a sentence or paragraph to produce unique content. That said, it’s advisable to review any paraphrased sentences to ensure sentences still make sense.
Regardless of the adjustments, you must ensure that your sources are correctly referenced to avoid being penalized for mosaic plagiarism if a third party other than the plagiarism detectors identifies some similarity in the general idea of your paper.
Can QuillBot Be Detected
No, QuillBot cannot be detected by plagiarism checkers because they just compare comparable phrases and sentence patterns. QuillBot uses artificial intelligence to substitute words with synonyms and change phrase and paragraph sequences, rendering plagiarism checks ineffective.
However, paraphrase tools that merely use synonyms to replace a few words in a sentence or paragraph may occasionally be discovered by premium plagiarism checkers like as SafeAssign or Turnitin.
It’s necessary to verify the content of your paraphrased content before submission to ensure content quality before submission.
Is QuillBot Good For Paraphrasing
Yes, QuillBot uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to rewrite text into unique articles by replacing words with synonyms and changing phrasing and sentence structures. This makes detecting altered content difficult for plagiarism detectors such as Turnitin and SafeAssign.
While some instructors still retain the opinion that paraphrasing tools only encourage cheating, these tools have proven to aid students to become better writers. Students working on their assignments can use QuillBot to better structure their sentences as opposed to simply plagiarizing content from other sources.
As a result, these tools are a useful resource in education and writing. Although there are other competitors on the market, QuillBot’s artificial intelligence makes it one of the best paraphrase tools available. However, you should review rewritten content to assure quality delivery.
Can SafeAssign Detect Chegg
Yes. Chegg, Course Hero, and other educational resource platforms allow content crawlers, including plagiarism checkers to crawl their databases. This means SafeAssign can crawl Chegg’s database during similarity tests to identify plagiarized content.
It’s advisable to use the resources on Chegg or Course Hero as they were meant to be used, as study resources. Copy-pasted content would be easily flagged by most premium plagiarism checkers.
Does SafeAssign Check Previously Submitted Work
Yes, SafeAssign checks submissions against their Global Reference Database of volunteered student submissions, internet, ProQuest, and previous submissions from the institution’s internal database to identify similarities. However, SafeAssign does not check against previous submissions by the same student on assignments that allow multiple attempts.
Assignments that allow students to submit multiple times, would still be checked for plagiarism but previous submissions from the same student would not be checked against the new submission for plagiarism.
Does SafeAssign Check The Internet
Yes, SafeAssign leverages an internal search engine built using the latest search crawling and indexing technologies to identify content similarities.
How Long Does SafeAssign Keep Papers
According to Blackboard’s privacy policy, copies of papers submitted to SafeAssign are stored as part of SafeAssign’s service to be used in subsequent comparison tests inside that institution. However, only content submitted to the Global Reference Database would be included in comparisons outside your institution.
Student submissions would be kept by SafeAssign to be used in subsequent comparison tests inside their educational institutions. Any plagiarism tests done by a different educational institution would not include these submissions.
However, students can choose to make their submissions available in the Global Reference Database. This means SafeAssign can include the submission in plagiarism tests both inside and outside their institutions.
Can SafeAssign Detect Copy And Paste
Yes, SafeAssign’s originality check leverages a huge database base comprised of Blackboard’s Global Reference Database, the institution’s internal database of student submissions, internet, and ProQuest to identify similarities and flag copy-pasted content.
Even if the copy-pasted content is rightly cited, SafeAssign would still detect the similarities and present these in the originality report for instructors. It is worth noting that, while these tools may be referred to as plagiarism checkers, they only check for similarities with content available in their database and present a well-structured report to instructors.
Reports are color-coded for readability and links to similar content are provided to facilitate the decision making.
Can SafeAssign Be Wrong
SafeAssign like most premium plagiarism checkers simply checks submissions against the available database to identify similarities. You should note that plagiarism checkers do not identify plagiarism but only compares submissions to existing content to identify similarities.
Similarities are then presented in the color-coded report for readability and easier interpretation. While this is useful, SafeAssign has its limitations as:
- It’s unable to check against content outside its available database of (submissions from the institution, Global Reference Database, internet, and ProQuest). This means any content which is not available in SafeAssign’s database cannot be used in the similarity tests. So, any submission from another university using a different plagiarism checker may not be available to use in SafeAssign’s comparison test.
- It may flag appropriately cited materials as instances of plagiarism during similarity tests. Instructors, therefore, need to confirm each instance of similarity to clarify or identify plagiarism.
- Because the internet is constantly changing, there may be times when the SafeAssign internal search service does not yet include specific webpages or websites, and as a result, SafeAssign Originality Reports may fail to identify potentially matching text within student works.
