Reducing unintentional plagiarism amongst international students in the biological sciences: An embedded academic writing development programme

Abstract

There is general agreement in the literature that international students are more likely to plagiarise compared to their native speaker peers and, in many instances, plagiarism is unintentional. In this article we describe the effectiveness of an academic writing development programme embedded into a Biological Sciences Taught Masters course designed to reduce unintentional plagiarism amongst international students in the cohort. We compared plagiarism rates in the years before and after the implementation of the writing intervention. In addition, we analysed data from a high response rate questionnaire (87.8%: class of 90 students) designed to evaluate students' perceptions of the usefulness of the writing development programme and to elicit information about their prior educational experiences which might relate to plagiarism. Our combined quantitative and qualitative data show that an early pedagogical response reduced plagiarism levels amongst international students. However, the UK and international students in the same cohort reported markedly different responses to the writing programme. We therefore suggest that, if international students are provided with an initial opportunity to practise academic writing and receive feedback, they are more likely to be successful when writing coursework assignments later on. However, any initial writing development programme should be adapted to accommodate the differing needs of the UK and international students within the cohort.

Detecting contract cheating in essay and report submissions: process, patterns, clues and conversations

“…This approach establishes an authentic learning environment (Meyers & Nulty, 2009) and is considered as best practice in developing student capabilities (McWilliams & Allan, 2014). When embedded learning elements are complemented by information about known cheating behaviours in lecture and tutorial based discussion it can lead to a reduction attempts to cheat (Dick et al, 2002), particularly when information about the severity of penalties is included (LaSalle, 2009).…”

“…Detection of unoriginal materials in essays and reports through manual observation is reliant on the identification of irregularities or patterns of concern (Rogerson, 2014) as at this time technology can only detect some but not all cases of plagiarism and contract cheating (Dahl, 2007;Rogerson & McCarthy, 2017). There is also the issue that some instances of contract cheating may appear on the surface to be very similar to instances of poor academic practice (Dick et al, 2002). Consequently, a process approach is required to identify, document, and investigate irregularities using technological, interpretive, and conversational means.…”

“It Just Messes Your Mind”: U.S. International Students’ Perspectives of and Experiences with Academic Text Sourcing

“…Some scholars argue that international students arriving in the United States from non-western countries such as Thailand, India, or Saudi Arabia may bring with them different understandings of ways of knowing and ways of using information in their academic writing (Amsberry, 2010;Bista, 2011;Divan, Bowman, & Seabourne, 2015;Pennycook, 1996;Velliaris & Breen, 2016;Zimerman, 2012). Evering and Moorman (2012) contend "the concept of plagiarism is based on a capitalist view of property and ownership" (p. 35); Western culture reasons that people retain ownership of what they create, including their ideas, their knowledge, and their artwork.…”

Plagiarism Norms and Practices in Coursework Assignments

“…Park (2003) is also of the view that plagiarism is more pronounced when students have language difficulties. Third, insufficient training in academic writing leads to unintended plagiarism (Phan, 2006;Divan, Bowman, & Seabourne, 2013). For example, students may think that citation is not necessary when they have paraphrased statements from articles and they may also not realise that it is important to use direct quotation marks to indicate exact words of the authors they have cited (see also Ting, 2013).…”