We examine the quantity and quality of uptake of surface-level and meaning-level feedback provided by peers and an instructor on writing assignments in an online graduate-level research course at a North American English-medium university. In this study, the instructor and peers (9 graduate students) endeavored to provide feedback that was timely, specific and embedded in writing (Wolsey, 2008). Students integrated this feedback on their writing assignments approximately 84.89% of the time, with the rate of uptake for instructor-provided feedback slightly higher than that of peer-provided feedback. This study also found that students addressed surface-level feedback focusing on writing mechanics, more frequently than meaninglevel feedback, which focuses on argumentation, flow, and content. Overall, instructor surfacelevel feedback was most likely to be taken up, peer meaning-level feedback items was least likely. These results reveal the need for student training in the provision and uptake of feedback in online graduate contexts and beyond.

This institutional self-study investigated the use of text-matching software (TMS) to prevent plagiarism by students in a Canadian university that did not have an institutional license for TMS at the time of the study. Assignments from a graduate-level engineering course were analyzed using iThenticate®. During the initial phase of the study, similarity scores from the first student assignments (N = 132) were collected to determine a baseline level of textual similarity. Students were then offered an educational intervention workshop on academic integrity. Another set of similarity scores from consenting participants' second assignments (n = 106) were then collected, and a statistically significant assignment effect (p < 0.05) was found between the similarity scores of the two assignments. The results of this study indicate that TMS, when used in conjunction with educational interventions about academic integrity, can be useful to students and educators to prevent and identify academic misconduct. This study adds to the growing body of empirical research about academic integrity in Canadian higher education and, in particular, in engineering fields.

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