Blackboard Inc. has announced the release of a new plagiarism-detection service that will come free with its software license. Professors can use it to automatically compare students' papers with millions of articles in a database that will be updated weekly.
Unlike other plagiarism-detection services, such as Turnitin, Blackboard is avoiding controversy by not automatically uploading students' term papers to the database as they are checked. Students must first give their permission for their work to be copied into the database.
The Blackboard service, called SafeAssign, was unveiled at the company's users conference Tuesday in Boston. –Dan Carnevale
