Safe Assign can be used in two ways. 

• Instructors can set up Safe Assignments in their Blackboard courses and let students submit papers to these assignments, in a way very similar to the one provided currently by Blackboard Learning System.  As students submit papers, they are checked against Safe Assign's comprehensive databases of source material.  The papers will then be delivered to instructors through the Blackboard Learning System together with the originality reports, with the results of the matching process, attached to them. (NOTE: YOU have the option of  allowing students to submit a draft of a paper before they submit the final copy so the program can be used as a learning experience.)
• Instructors may upload papers directly with the Direct Submit feature, without student involvement. 

Matching Process

Safe Assign checks all submitted papers against the following databases:

• Internet - comprehensive index of documents available for public access on the Internet.
• ProQuest ABI/Inform database with over 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from '90s to present time, updated weekly (exclusive access).
• Institutional document archives containing all papers submitted to Safe Assign by users in their respective institutions.
• Global Reference Database containing papers that were volunteered by students from Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism.

Safe Assign Originality Report

Safe Assign generates an Originality Report with the results of the Matching process.

Create a Safe assignment

From the Control Panel

1. Go to the Content Area where you want to set up the assignment. Assignments can be created on any "Content Area" page (e.g. Assignments or Course Documents....)

2. Click on the Learning Unit drop-down menu, select Safe Assignment, and click the GO button.

3. Type the name of the assignment.

4. Type any instructions.

5. Decide if you want to award points for submitting the draft.

6. Check the option for draft.  (This means that the paper will not be added to the institutional database, and students can resubmit the paper for checking and get a valid score if desired.)

7. Select if you would like to create an Announcement for this assignment.

8. Select Submit.

9. Click Ok to confirm adding of Safe Assignment.

Note: If an error occurs when using this tool, such as students can not access assignments or assignments have been course copied, you may need to Synchronize this Course. To Synchronize this course, from the Control Panel

1. Click on SafeAssign in the Course Tools Pane.
2. Click on Synchronize this course.

To Check a student's score

1. To check a student's score, go to the Gradebook and select the red explanation point to open the record of the posting.
2. When the record is open, you will see a score. To view the report, select the green check mark.
3. Have students submit a final draft for a grade with an originality check.
4. If you want students to submit the final draft for a grade, you just start at the top of these instructions and create another link for submitting a final paper. This time do not check draft and the assignment will be entered in the instructional database. You can also assign points and use this link for grading the paper.

PLEASE NOTE - if students may be submitting papers to the Safe Assignment that include images, please inform them that the images must not exceed 2MB or the submission may fail.
Also that Safe Assignments are different from Assignments and there is no connection between the content types. It is not possible to make an existing Assignment a Safe Assignment without starting from the beginning. Like regular Assignments, however, Safe Assignments are integrated with the Gradebook.

Direct Submit - Directly Upload Papers

Submit Papers through Direct Submit

Follow these steps to submit papers through Direct Submit.

1. From the Control Panel, click Safe Assign under Course Tools. 
2. Click the Direct Submit tab.
3. A list of folders and papers will appear. This list includes papers already uploaded through Direct Submit. It is not recommended that files be deleted from Direct Submit, as this will remove them from the institutional database of existing materials.
4. Navigate to a folder where the paper or papers will be uploaded.
5. Click Submit Papers.
6. Select Upload File and browse for the file. Individual papers as well as papers that are grouped in a .ZIP package are accepted. Alternatively, select Copy/Paste Document and add the document text in the field.
7. Select the upload options:

• Submit as Draft: A Safe Assign report will be generated however the paper will not be added to the institutional database and will not be used to check other papers.

• Skip Plagiarism Checking: Adds the papers to the institutional database without checking for content copied from other sources. This is useful if an Instructor wants to upload papers from an earlier course to ensure that current students are not reusing work.

Supported file types

Direct Submit supports the following file types:

• Microsoft Word document: .doc
• Rich Text Format: .rtf
• HTML: .htm or .html
• Text: .txt
• PDF: .pdf
• Zip compressed: .ZIP used to upload multiple files.

PLEASE NOTE - if the papers you are directly submitting include images, please note that the images must not exceed 2MB or the submission may fail.

PLEASE NOTE: Papers uploaded through Direct Submit are only added to the Institutional Database - there is no option to add them to the Global Reference Database since students have to opt-in on a paper-by-paper basis.  Additionally, there is no Gradebook integration with papers submitted through Direct Submit.  So because Direct Submit does not offer access to the Global Reference Database or integration with Gradebook, instructors should set up and use Safe Assignments to collect submissions whenever possible.

Direct Submit allows Instructors to submit papers one at a time or several at once by including them in a .ZIP file.

PLEASE NOTE: .ZIP packages should contain no more than 100 papers and submitting more than 300 papers in a session is not recommended. Additionally, papers with over 5000 sentences or that are more than 10 MB in size cannot be submitted.

Interpreting Safe Assignment Grading

Sentence Matching Scores
Sentence matching scores are the percentage probability that two sentences have the same meaning. This number can also be interpreted as the reciprocal to the probability that these two sentences are similar by chance. For example, score of 90% means that there is 90% probability that these two sentences are the same, and about 10% probability that they are similar by chance (not because of plagiarism).

Overall Matching Score
Overall matching score is basically an average of all sentence scores, weighted by a) the length of the sentence; b) the "commonness" of the sentence (calculated based on the average typical frequency of usage of the words from the sentence). This score does not have a simple statistical definition. It is just very highly correlated with a) the probability that there is some text matching other documents in the paper; b) the amount of matching text in the document. Please note that matching (highlighted) text should not be considered plagiarism by default.
In general, this score should be treated as a warning indicator. We strongly recommend reviewing all reports with high Overall Matching Scores. For analysis of matching scores, the following interpretation scale should be used:

1. Scores below 15% — usually papers with such scores contain some quotes and few "typical" phrases that match other documents. In most cases, they do not require any further analysis, and there is no evidence of plagiarism in the report.
2. Scores between 15% and 40% — papers with such scores can contain plagiarism or can have just too much quoted material. We usually recommend reviewing the reports with such scores before making any judgments about the papers.
3. Scores over 40% — with such scores, there is almost 100% probability that the papers contains some text copied from elsewhere, and, even if this text is properly cited, such amount of cited material is considered excessive in most cases. Therefore, such scores give a clear warning to instructors. However, there are few cases when such scores can be given to authentic papers, for example, when the paper was legitimately published online before it was sent for processing (instructors have just to "Delete" the source pointing to the legitimate copy), or when the same student has already submitted this paper or a similar paper to another class (it is not plagiarism, but such practice is not allowed in some institutions).

PLEASE NOTE - that the matching score is not an indicator of plagiarized work. Sometimes, the match may simply be from a previous version of the same assignment submitted by the same student for the same class in that semester.To prevent this from happening, have the student submit work as a draft. Drafts are not included in the database that materials are compared against. Another reason why a matching score may be high is because the material may be documented correctly as a direct quote (in the references section of the document or as a citation). Instructors are highly encouraged to double check all references of plagiarism to ensure that they are valid.

Taken from :http://wiki.safeassign.com/display/SAFE/Interpret+Reports

Other Resources

Blackboard Safe Assign Instructor Manual is available  at http://www.blackboard.niu.edu/blackboard/resources/SafeAssignInstructorManual.pdf. 

Northern Illinois University site has excellent instructions at   http://www.blackboard.niu.edu/blackboard/resources/safeassign.shtml
Taken from: http://wiki.safeassign.com/display/SAFE/Home