Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing: Findings From Studies in China 9819998433, 9789819998432

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Yin Zhang

Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing Findings From Studies in China

Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing

Yin Zhang

Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing Findings From Studies in China

Yin Zhang Ocean University of China Qingdao, China

ISBN 978-981-99-9843-2 ISBN 978-981-99-9844-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

In response to increasing plagiarism in higher education, many educators and researchers have been exploring its educational solutions. Concerning instructional approaches of preventing plagiarism in academic writing, previous research has provided insights into the teaching of plagiarism and source use, but plagiarism has not been effectively controlled. This book introduces an understandingoriented pedagogy and discusses its effects on plagiarism-free academic writing among Chinese undergraduate students. The pedagogy is tailored for plagiarism-free academic writing practices in several aspects: students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use become the major learning objectives, the adoption of plagiarism instruction in academic writing practices in subject courses is highly suggested, and the potential of ICT for plagiarism instruction instead of plagiarism detection is discussed together with a customized ICT tool for the new pedagogy. The book will be of interest to educational researchers seeking an innovative instructional solution to the plagiarism problems in campus with robust empirical evidence. This book also offers a summary review of the theoretical and technological principles of constructing plagiarism instruction. Further, the book brings new insights about how to design a plagiarism assessment scale for plagiarism instruction. For education practitioners, the book gives a detailed description of the procedures of plagiarism-free academic writing instruction that can be replicated across curricula and campuses. This book also provides a useful ICT tool (i.e., an online writing system) and a plagiarism assessment scale to ensure the efficiency of the plagiarism instruction, which can be extensively adopted in different instructional settings. Further, this book advances discussions about the influences of language culture on plagiarism by providing original insights about how Chinese undergraduates and their instructors view plagiarism and cope with plagiarism. Finally, the book offers education policymakers a new perspective on plagiarism prevention and urges the changes in related plagiarism prevention policy from solely “detect to punish” to “educate to learn”. Qingdao, China

Yin Zhang

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Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 What Is Plagiarism and How Serious is It in Campus? . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 Connotation of Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.2 Growing Prevalence of Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Aim of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Research Gaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Research Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Structure of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 1 1 3 3 5 6 8

2 Plagiarism Issues in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 How Plagiarism Develops? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Why Do Students Plagiarize? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 How to Prevent Plagiarism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11 11 13 15 17

3 Teaching to Avoid Plagiarism in Academic Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Addressing Plagiarism in Academic Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Conducting Instruction on Source Use to Prevent Plagiarism . . . . . . 3.3 Influential Factors in Teaching Source Use and Eliminating Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Students’ Understanding of Source Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Teachers’ Burden and Technology’s Role in Taking Instructional Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Language Medium and Disciplinary Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21 21 22

4 Design of an Understanding-Oriented (UO) Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Theoretical Basis of the UO Pedagogy: Teaching for Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Operational Framework for the UO Pedagogy: Constructive Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

25 25 26 28 31

35 36

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Contents

4.3 Construction of the UO Pedagogy Across Path, Pace, Time, and Place Using a Hybrid Learning Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Learning Needs Analysis of the UO Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Learning Objectives of the UO Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Scaffolding Strategies and Instructional Procedure of the UO Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.4 UO Pedagogy Enables Hybrid Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38 39 40 40 44 46

5 Design of an ICT Tool: The Online Writing System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 The Need for the ICT Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Task Design of the ICT Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Functions and Layout of the ICT Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49 49 50 51 54

6 Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 A Design-Based Research of Plagiarism Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Design-Based Research (DBR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.3 Validity and Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.4 Outline of Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Study 1 What Are Students’ Learning Experiences with the UO Pedagogy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Participants and Research Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Measuring Instruments and Their Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.3 Findings of Study 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 The Refinement of the UO Pedagogy: Round One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 The Provision of Multimedia Courseware for Peer Review Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 A New Plagiarism Assessment Scale for Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing Instruction . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57 57 57 60 66 68

7 The Effects of the UO Pedagogical Intervention on Students’ Plagiarism Prevention and Academic Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Study 2 What Are Students’ Perceptional and Behavioral Changes Toward Plagiarism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Modifications of Instruments and Their Reliability . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Findings of Study 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 The Refinement of the UO Pedagogy: Round Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Study 3 Providing Pedagogical Intervention to Younger Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.1 Participants and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69 70 71 74 82 85 85 86 89 93 93 93 94 106 107 108 108

Contents

7.3.2 Comparison of Instructional Activities Between the Two Cohorts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.3 Measuring Instruments and Their Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.4 Findings of Study 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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111 112 114 125 127

8 Key Points Derived from the Research Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Six Design Principles for Plagiarism Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Discrepancy and Similarity Between Students’ Perceptions and Behaviors Toward the UO Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Uneven Acquisition of Knowledge and Skills of Anti-plagiarism and Source Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Prohibitive and Facilitative Factors for Applying the UO Pedagogy in Subject Courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

129 129

9 Conclusion: Future Directions for the UO Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 What Adds to the Plagiarism Research Field? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.1 Taking Learning Needs Analysis as an On-Going Process During the Anti-plagiarism Pedagogical Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.2 Theoretical Insights into Anti-plagiarism Pedagogy . . . . . . . 9.2 What Can Teachers and Universities Do? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.1 For Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.2 For University Policymakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Where Does the Debate About Culture’s Influence on Plagiarism Go? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

137 137

132 133 133 134

137 139 141 142 143 144 145 146

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Chapter 1

Introduction

Plagiarism is a serious problem in higher education, and this book explores ways in which ideas and practices related to plagiarism prevention are evolving and discusses how pedagogical approaches can be applied in disciplines within universities that fully leverage students’ motivation and self-agency for plagiarism-free learning. This chapter discusses the rationale for the book, including research context and research purpose. Structure of the book is also described.

1.1 What Is Plagiarism and How Serious is It in Campus? 1.1.1 Connotation of Plagiarism What is plagiarism? The definition of plagiarism can be easily found in the Oxford English Dictionary (Plagiarism, 2019). Plagiarism is defined as “literary theft” or the action of wrongly taking ideas or works of another as one’s own. However, Howard (2000) stated that plagiarism was ill-defined or “inherently indefinable” (p. 473). Why is there a conflict? It is because the connotation of plagiarism is not fixed and it would be constructed on the basis of changing contexts and individuals (Gullifer & Tyson, 2014; Howard, 2000). In Chinese, the equivalent term is 抄袭 (“chaoxi”) or 剽窃 (“piaoqie”) (Chaoxi, 2019; Piaoqie, 2019).

1.1.2 Growing Prevalence of Plagiarism In the last thirty years, there has been a dramatic increase in research on plagiarism. The number of publications on plagiarism in the ProQuest Platinum database from 1993 to 2022 was more than fourfold than that from 1800 to 1992 (data were obtained © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_1

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1 Introduction

on July 31, 2023). January 1, 1993, the intermediate date (Ercegovac, 2010), seemed to be the cut-off between the pre-Internet era and the Internet era. Some scholars attributed the boom of this research field in the Internet era to the increase in plagiarism cases detected throughout the world. In higher education, plagiarism has become a significant problem (Eaton, 2021; Elander et al., 2010). About fifty thousand students at British universities were caught for serious plagiarism from 2013 to 2016 (Alexi & Billy, 2016). In the academic year 2014–2015, the Department of Immigration in Australia canceled the visas of 9250 international students because of plagiarism and other academic misconducts (Tessa, 2016). According to The Wall Street Journal, about 8,000 Chinese students were expelled from American universities due to plagiarism or poor academic achievement in a single year (Li, 2015). Plagiarism has become a universal issue in universities (Hopp & Speil, 2021), and China has been singled out because of the high reported plagiarism severity (Heckler & Forde, 2015). To cope with the growing prevalence of plagiarism on campus, a series of regulations were promulgated by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China for the prevention and treatment of academic dishonesty in Chinese universities (). Accordingly, many institutions issued policies or regulations on plagiarism, which not only set rules for students to follow but also listed penalties (e.g., Tsinghua University; Zhejiang University). Meanwhile, with the advent of Plagiarism Detection Software (PDS), it became easier to detect plagiarized sections in students’ final dissertations. From the autumn of 2018, China’s prestigious Tsinghua University began to apply PDS to regular writing assignments instead of just dissertations and intensify punishments for detected academic plagiarism (Zuo, 2019). Until now, many other Chinese universities have followed the similar strategy to adopt PDS in class to cope with plagiarism. However, according to some researchers, plagiarism problems could not be effectively solved if attention was only paid to institutions’ plagiarism policies and PDS (Bensal et al., 2014; Hu & Sun, 2017). After all, plagiarism is more than dishonest behaviors. The problems also concern why students plagiarize as well as how they perceive and cope with it. Therefore, it has been urged that researchers and educators should change their viewpoint from “detect-to-punish” to “educate-to-avoid” (Starr & Graham-Matheson, 2011, p. 5). Moreover, with the shifting of research focus from diminishing plagiarism to improving students’ capability in avoiding plagiarism, plagiarism was believed to be just a symptom and more efforts were required to study the educational problem behind it (Blum, 2011). Then, what is this educational problem and how to solve it?

1.2 Aim of the Book

3

1.2 Aim of the Book 1.2.1 Research Gaps Some researchers indicated that the educational problem behind plagiarism might have come from the field of academic writing (Howard et al., 2010; Pecorari, 2010). When students enter university, they study in disciplines and have plenty of chances to access academic writing. For example, a student may be required to finish an academic writing assignment as a formative (or summative) assessment in a course, write a dissertation for a degree, or prepare an academic paper for publication. To undergraduate students, academic writing is challenging because it involves their understanding about their discipline, critical thinking about academic topics, text creation based on analysis, and arguments on targeted theme (Hyland, 2013). Many students may unintentionally commit plagiarism because of their lack of academic writing knowledge and skills (Gullifer & Tyson, 2010; Tomaš, 2010; Zhang & Tang, 2021). When discussing about the linguistic medium of academic writing, some researchers proposed that much of Eastern students’ plagiarism occurred in their writings in foreign or second languages instead of native languages (Abasi et al., 2006). However, there are different voices. For example, Hu and Lei (2015) argued that the underlying cause of the increasing plagiarism among Chinese students lies in their lacking of training in Chinese academic writing during undergraduate education. This suggests that if students struggle with academic writing in their native languages, it is unlikely that they will perform well in foreign (or second) language academic writing. Thus far, Chinese academic writing at the undergraduate level has seldom been discussed in literature, among which research conducted in Mainland China was even rare (Kirkpatrick & Xu, 2012). On the basis of the analysis, a research gap was identified. Facing the ever-growing demand for addressing plagiarism issues in Chinese higher education, more studies are needed to find effective educational solutions and this book is a step in this direction where a new pedagogy for Chinese academic writing was developed and conducted among Chinese undergraduates to support their plagiarism-free academic writing. As for how to develop the pedagogy, research on English academic writing instruction provides insights into the feasibility and effectiveness of current academic writing instructional approaches, as well as the academic writing issues that previous academic writing instruction research did not adequately address, based on which another main research gap of this book was found. According to applied linguists, students’ lack of source use knowledge and skills could account for many plagiarism issues in the field of academic writing, and thus source use deserved more attention from both students and teachers (Halasek, 2011; Howard et al., 2010; Pecorari, 2010). Source use refers to writers’ making use of others’ words or ideas with the aim of generating their own texts in an academically evidence-based way (e.g., paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citing) (Davis, 2014; Pecorari, 2002, 2013). According to Abasi et al. (2006), without solid

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1 Introduction

scientific evidence from other writers, the authority of an author’s text could not be well built. Therefore, source use is a staple of academic writing and has become an essential requirement of publications in almost all disciplines (Hyland, 2009; Pecorari & Shaw, 2012). In higher education, because source use received little attention from writing lecturers, students were not provided with explicit instruction or adequate practices and thus could not writing from sources properly, which might lead to unintentional plagiarism (Thompson & Tribble, 2001). In order to solve this educational problem, researchers suggested that explicit instruction about source use should be conducted (Du, 2019; Howard et al., 2010; Pecorari, 2013). However, after reviewing lots of empirical research on source use instruction with the aim of preventing plagiarism, researchers discovered that the results were not as expected. Much instruction focused on teaching source use knowledge and skills to students but neglected ensuring their understanding of source use (Chien, 2016; Du, 2019; Howard et al., 2010; Tomaš, 2010). Students’ poor understanding led to inappropriate source use results such as patchwriting (Howard et al., 2010), “over-citation” (Murphy, 2016, p. 20), or excessively direct quoting (Hirvela & Du, 2013). Therefore, Tomaš (2010) argued that only by laying the instructional emphasis on forming well-understandings of source use could students be taught to use sources properly and cope with plagiarism effectively. Accordingly, researchers have provided some suggestions. For example, Pecorari (2013) proposed that introducing the constructive alignment theory into systematic instructional design of source use could improve students’ comprehension about source use and plagiarism. Unfortunately, rare empirical evidence has been found to support the proposition. The analysis above indicates that, with the instructional problems previous research failed to address (Howard et al., 2010; Tomaš, 2010), further studies are necessary to explore how to orchestrate source use instructional activities to facilitate students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use. In particular, empirical research is extremely needed to investigate how students learn with proposed source use instruction as well as to examine the effectiveness of such instruction to promote students’ plagiarism-free academic writing. Because plagiarism is complex, pluralized, and contextualized, the technical and cultural factors affecting plagiarism instruction also require due attention. The popularity of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has motivated many researchers to design and develop ICT tools for plagiarism prevention. Meanwhile, there is also a need for adopting ICT tools in plagiarism instruction with the aims of providing students with multiple instructional support and sharing instructors’ instructional responsibilities (Liu et al., 2013). After analyzing current ICT tools’ advantages and disadvantages in preventing plagiarism (e.g., ArticleChecker, CrossCheck), facilitating academic writing (e.g., Criterion, MyAccess), and both (e.g., DWright, Glatt), it was discovered that few ICT tools could provide instructional support for students’ source use practices (Liu et al., 2013; Shang, 2019), and even fewer could provide a constructive learning environment to foster students’ meaningful understandings of source use and plagiarism. Apart from technology, the effects of culture on students’ perceptions and responses to plagiarism are significant (Blum, 2011; Flowerdew, 2015). It has

1.2 Aim of the Book

5

been thought by some researchers that Eastern students might be more prone to copy celebrities’ ideas to show their respect under the influence of the Confucian doctrine (Sowden, 2005), while others argued that there were no differences between Eastern and Western students’ views toward plagiarism (Wheeler, 2014). Due to China’s reform and opening-up in the nineteen seventies, Chinese students’ views to plagiarism may have undergone great changes (Flowerdew, 2015). In order to fill these research gaps, this book aims to explore how to orchestrate the teaching of plagiarism and source use in order to facilitate Mainland Chinese undergraduates’ plagiarism-free academic writing in the Chinese language, by implementing a newly designed pedagogy with an online writing system in the disciplinebased courses in two Chinese universities and examining their effects on students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use.

1.2.2 Research Purpose The purpose of the book is to explore whether a new pedagogy could be designed and applied to promote students’ plagiarism-free academic writing. When it is considered in the concrete cultural context, the aim of the book is to design and apply an understanding-oriented (UO) pedagogy to facilitate Mainland Chinese undergraduates’ plagiarism-free Chinese academic writing. There are two sub-objectives: • to design and refine a UO pedagogy, with a new online writing system as a key component to support both teaching and learning during the implementation of this pedagogy; • to explore the effectiveness of the pedagogy on students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use in academic writing. As the research purpose comprises design and development of an intervention pedagogy for addressing plagiarism problems in academic writing as well as evolving principles of the usability of the new pedagogy, this book adopted the design-based research (DBR) methodology. Besides, the integrated learning design framework (ILDF) (Bannan, 2009) was used as the reference framework to carry out DBR. The design of the UO pedagogy (see Fig. 4.2) was based on the Teaching for Understanding theory developed by Entwistle (2009) and the framework of constructive alignment coined by Biggs (2014), accompanied with an online writing system based on Bird’s (2007) 3C model. Adopting the scaffolding strategy of Saye and Brush (2002), specific instructional strategies of the UO pedagogy comprise hard scaffolding (i.e., deconstruction, peer construction, and independent construction) and soft scaffolding (i.e., guiding questions in writing practices). The book was conducted through three research phases, among which the first two phases were to achieve the first sub-objective. A class of junior-year undergraduates and their course instructor from a public university in Mainland China were invited to participate in the two research phases. In the first phase, a prototype of the UO pedagogy and an online writing system were designed and introduced in an academic

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1 Introduction

course to guide students’ learning of source use and plagiarism. Students’ acceptance of the pedagogy was investigated, based on which a refinement was made to improve the systematic design of the pedagogy. During the second phase, the refined pedagogy was introduced again into the same academic course, and students’ feedback was collected again to help further modify the pedagogy. During the first two phases, besides students’ acceptance of the pedagogy, their perceptions toward plagiarism, academic writing performance as well as the instructor’s views to the new pedagogy were also investigated through questionnaires, interviews, and analyses on writing assignments. After the two rounds of optimization, the refined UO pedagogy was ready for the quasi-experimental research (Mills & Gay, 2016) in the third phase. The third phase was to fulfill the second sub-objective, i.e., exploring the effectiveness of the UO pedagogy on students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use in academic writing. The pedagogy was introduced in a new academic course, and two classes of freshmen and their course instructor from another Chinese public university were recruited in the experiment. One class was the experimental group and the other was the control group. Throughout the whole quasi-experiment, a considerable amount of data were collected through the same instruments used in the first two phases. In order to help the control-group students caught up academically in writing, they were instructed to finish another writing assignment with the new pedagogy in the subsequent stages of the course after the experiment was completed.

1.3 Structure of the Book The purpose of the book is twofold: the first is to design and refine the UO pedagogy accompanied with a specific online writing system, and the second is to explore the effectiveness of the UO pedagogy on students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use in academic writing. To fulfill the research purpose, the main question that the book aims to address is: How to design and develop a UO pedagogy to facilitate undergraduates’ understanding of plagiarism and source use in Chinese academic writing? Sub-questions were defined in the three research phrases, i.e., Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3 (see Table 1.1). The book consists of night chapters. This chapter briefly discusses the rationale for the book, including research context and research problems. Structure of the book is also described. Chapter 2 first positions the book by reviewing the histories of plagiarism and research on plagiarism. On this basis, I discuss the connotation of plagiarism, reasons behind its development, and current approaches to handle plagiarism in turn. Chapter 3 turns to the literature related to plagiarism instruction in academic writing and identifies the research gaps by analyzing several typical research cases in-depth.

1.3 Structure of the Book

7

Table 1.1 Research sub-questions in three studies Phase

Research sub-questions

Study 1 and Study 2

• RQ 1.1 How do the students’ perceptions toward plagiarism change during the first and second phases? • RQ 1.2 How do the students perform in writing with the UO pedagogy? • RQ 1.3 What are the students’ and the instructor’s perceptions toward the UO pedagogy?

Study 3

• RQ 2.1 What are the effects of the UO pedagogy on the students’ perceptions of plagiarism? • RQ 2.2 What are the effects of the UO pedagogy on the students’ writing performance? • RQ 2.3 What are the students’ and the instructor’s perceptions toward the UO pedagogy?

Chapter 4 describes the original design of the UO pedagogy. The UO pedagogy was designed based on the Teaching for Understanding theory and the constructive alignment theory. Its construction consists of learning needs analysis, learning objectives, scaffolding strategies, and instructional procedure design. Chapter 5 details the system design of the ICT tool, i.e., the online writing system, including the need analysis, task design, functions, and layout of the ICT tool. Chapter 6 details the research methodology adopted in the book and Study 1. Using a design-based research (DBR) methodology, the whole research was conducted in three research phases, and each research phase was described in detail in Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3. Apart from mentioning the research methodology, findings from Study 1 is encapsulated in this chapter. Chapter 7 respectively reports the findings from Study 2 and Study 3. As the aim of Study 1 and Study 2 is to refine the UO pedagogy, and the aim of Study 3 is to explore its effects on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing, findings from the previous study provide evidence for the modification of the UO pedagogy and lay foundation for the next study. Chapter 8 synthesizes key research findings across the three research phases to explicate some conflicting or unexpecting findings and discusses how new insights can be captured from those findings and used to improve the UO pedagogy. The UO pedagogy is interpreted through the lens of pedagogical principles, based on which the design principles of the UO pedagogy are discussed. Chapter 9 discusses both theoretical and practical implications of this book based on preceding analyses, as well as the limitations and suggestions for future research and practice.

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References Abasi, Akbari, N., & Graves, B. (2006). Discourse appropriation, construction of identities, and the complex issue of plagiarism: ESL students writing in graduate school. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15(2), 102–117. Alexi, M., & Billy, K. (2016). Universities face student cheating crisis. The Times. http://www.the times.co.uk/tto/education/article4654719.ece Bannan, B. (2009). The integrative learning design framework: An illustrated example from the domain of instructional technology. An Introduction to Educational Design Research, 53–73. Bensal, E. R., Miraflores, E. S., & Tan, N. (2014). Plagiarism: Shall we turn to Turnitin. ComputerAssisted Language Learning-Electronic Journal, 14(2), 2–22. Biggs, J. (2014). Constructive alignment in university teaching. HERDSA Review of Higher Education, 1(5), 5–22. Bird, L. (2007). The 3 ‘C’ design model for networked collaborative e-learning: A tool for novice designers. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(2), 153–167. Blum, S. D. (2011). My word!: Plagiarism and college culture. Cornell University Press. Chaoxi. (2019). Hwxnet. http://cd.hwxnet.com/view/cpfbagcagndkdmbm.html Chien, S.-C. (2016). Taiwanese college students’ perceptions of plagiarism: Cultural and educational considerations. Ethics & Behavior, 1–22. Davis, M. (2014). The development of competence in source use by international postgraduate students [Doctoral dissertation, UCL Institute of Education]. Du, Y. (2019). Evaluation of intervention on Chinese graduate students’ understanding of textual plagiarism and skills at source referencing. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–16. Eaton, S. E. (2021). Plagiarism in higher education: Tackling tough topics in academic integrity. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Elander, J., Pittam, G., Lusher, J., Fox, P., & Payne, N. (2010). Evaluation of an intervention to help students avoid unintentional plagiarism by improving their authorial identity. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(2), 157–171. Entwistle, N. (2009). Teaching for understanding at university: Deep approaches and distinctive ways of thinking. Palgrave Macmillan. Ercegovac, Z. (2010). Plagiarism of print and electronic resources. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.1081/E-ELIS3-120 044510 Flowerdew, J. (2015). Language re-use and the notion of culture: A response to Diane Pecorari’s “Plagiarism in second language writing: Is it time to close the case?” Journal of Second Language Writing, 30, 109–110. Gullifer, & Tyson, G. (2014). Who has read the policy on plagiarism? Unpacking students’ understanding of plagiarism. Studies in Higher Education, 39(7), 1202–1218. Gullifer, & Tyson, G. A. (2010). Exploring university students’ perceptions of plagiarism: A focus group study. Studies in Higher Education, 35(4), 463–481. Halasek, K. (2011). Theorizing plagiarism in the University. College English, 73(5), 548–568. Heckler, N. C., & Forde, D. R. (2015). The role of cultural values in plagiarism in higher education. Journal of Academic Ethics, 13(1), 61–75. Hirvela, A., & Du, Q. (2013). “Why am I paraphrasing?”: Undergraduate ESL writers’ engagement with source-based academic writing and reading. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(2), 87–98. Hopp, C., & Speil, A. (2021). How prevalent is plagiarism among college students? Anonymity preserving evidence from Austrian undergraduates. Accountability in Research, 28(3), 133–148. Howard, R. M. (2000). Sexuality, textuality: The cultural work of plagiarism. College English, 62(4), 473–491. Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing and Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192.

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Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2015). Chinese university students’ perceptions of plagiarism. Ethics & Behavior, 25(3), 233–255. Hu, G., & Sun, X. (2017). Institutional policies on plagiarism: The case of eight Chinese universities of foreign languages/international studies. System, 66, 56–68. Hyland, K. (2013). Writing in the university: Education, knowledge and reputation. Language Teaching, 46(01), 53–70. Hyland, K. (2009). Academic discourse: English in a global context. Bloomsbury. Kirkpatrick, A., & Xu, Z. (2012). Chinese rhetoric and writing. Parlor Press. Li, Q. (2015). U.S. schools expelled 8000 Chinese students. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 16, from http://on.wsj.com/1HQmJ9O Liu, Lo, & Wang. (2013). Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study. Computers & Education, 69, 1–14. Mills, G. E., & Gay, L. R. (2016). Educational research: Competencies for analysis and applications. Pearson. Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2004). Gaodeng xuexiao zhexue shehui kexue yanjiu xueshu guifan. Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2012). Xuewei lunwen zuojia xingwei chuli banfa. Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. (2016). Gaodeng xuexiao yufang yu chuli xueshu buduan xingwei banfa. (40). Retrieved from http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A02/s5911/ moe_621/201607/t20160718_272156.html Murphy, G. A. (2016). Worlds apart? International students, source-based writing, and faculty development across the curriculum [Ed.D., University of California, Los Angeles]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. Los Angeles, CA. http://search.proquest.com/docview/179849 4014?accountid=14548 Pecorari, D., & Shaw, P. (2012). Types of student intertextuality and faculty attitudes. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(2), 149–164. Pecorari, D. (2002). Original reproductions: An investigation of the source use of postgraduate second language writers University of Birmingham]. Pecorari, D. (2010). Academic writing and plagiarism: A linguistic analysis. A&C Black. Pecorari, D. (2013). Teaching to avoid plagiarism: How to promote good source use. McGraw-Hill Education (UK). Piaoqie. (2019). Hwxnet. http://cd.hwxnet.com/view/cnpddhacjggpkkhk.html Plagiarism. (2019). OED online. OED Online. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/144939?redirecte dFrom=plagiarism Saye, J. W., & Brush, T. (2002). Scaffolding critical reasoning about history and social issues in multimedia-supported learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 77–96. Shang, H.-F. (2019). An investigation of plagiarism software use and awareness training on English as a foreign language (EFL) students. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 31(1), 105– 120. Sowden, C. (2005). Plagiarism and the culture of multilingual students in higher education abroad. ELT Journal, 59(3), 226–233. Starr, S., & Graham-Matheson, L. (2011). Efficacy of Turnitin in support of an institutional plagiarism policy. plagiarismadvice.org. Retrieved April 2, from http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/ 10061/1/Starr_-_Graham-Matheson_-_Canterbury_Christ_Church_University_-_Report_for_ plagiarismadvice.org_May_2011_-_FINAL.docx Tessa, A. (2016, March 30). Overseas student loses appeal over plagiarism ruling. Retrieved November 7 from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/overseas-student-losesappeal-over-plagiarism-ruling/news-story/e254773faee87a45972af91082c767f9 Thompson, P., & Tribble, C. (2001). Looking at citations: Using corpora in English for academic purposes. Language Learning and Technology, 5(3), 91–105.

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Tomaš, Z. (2010). Addressing pedagogy on textual borrowing: Focus on instructional resources. Writing & Pedagogy, 2(2), 223–250. Wheeler, G. (2014). Culture of minimal influence: A study of Japanese university students’ attitudes toward plagiarism. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 10(2), 44–59. Zhang, N., & Tang, K. Y. A. (2021). The reasons and countermeasures of Chinese college students’ unintentional plagiarism. In 2021 7th International Conference on Education and Training Technologies. Zuo, M. (2019). How Chinese universities are tackling plagiarism—And is it working? South China Morning Post. Retrieved July 18, from https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/301 2741/how-chinese-universities-are-trapping-academic-copycats

Chapter 2

Plagiarism Issues in Higher Education

This chapter begins with a discussion about the history of plagiarism in higher education. It critically reviews the history of plagiarism, the possible reasons for students’ plagiarism behaviors, and students’ limited understandings of plagiarism. After that, literature on the responses of both researchers and practitioners to plagiarism prevention is analyzed.

2.1 How Plagiarism Develops? Before traveling back, we should be aware that there are two histories about plagiarism: the history of plagiarism and the history of research on plagiarism. For the first, it is noticed that plagiarism has been documented since the late 1400s, after printing was introduced to the West (Granitz & Loewy, 2007). Plagiarism was a common practice among writers, even very famous ones, to copy others’ words or ideas without attribution. There were some well-known plagiarism cases. For example, Virgil borrowed much from Homer’s poems (Lindey, 1952). Milton was accused by Voltaire for stealing his texts (Constable, 1983). Galileo’s images of the lunar surface were printed without acknowledgment by many publishers (Lyons, 2010). However, these events did not attract much public attention because book ownership was confined to the Church before the eighteenth century (Sutherland-Smith, 2008). It was not until books became easily accessed by lower class that plagiarism became generally realized (Lyons, 2010).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_2

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In early history (around 17091 ), plagiarism was not deemed as a serious misconduct (Lindey, 1952). Even though plagiarists received criticism from people, they were not punished by laws, which differs from the copyright infringement (Sengupta, 2015). With the development of ICT, information became more highly valued as individuals who possess more information would have more chances to obtain more resources than others. Some researchers believed that plagiarism after the twentieth century might root in people’s desires for information or ideas (e.g., Neumann, 2016). Besides, the affordance of ICT (e.g., the copy-and-paste function) provides another cause for plagiarizing habits (Sutherland-Smith, 2005; Zimerman, 2012). Moreover, the advent of Plagiarism Detection Software (PDS), which makes plagiarism easier to detect, may also account for the increase of plagiarism issues (Mphahlele & McKenna, 2019). Today, plagiarism events are reported frequently. According to Callahan (2007), plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty have been the focus of front-page stories in many media, which challenges academic integrity in almost all disciplines. For example, it is reported that two cabinet ministers in Germany were forced to step down after they were found to have plagiarized in their theses in 2011 and 2013, and that a successor was also criticized for the same reason (The Local Europe GmbH, 2016). Plagiarism’s increasing popularity across all disciplines urges solid scientific research on solutions. The history of research on plagiarism began with the aim of addressing plagiarism, especially in education (Ercegovac & Richardson, 2004). Why people conducted plagiarism research in the field of education? It is discovered that most plagiarism is conducted during study periods (Stout, 2013). Also, as plagiarism becomes pervasive in education, especially at tertiary institutions and secondary schools (Chu et al., 2012; Lau et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2016), it is urgent for researchers to find ways to cope with the problem. So far, there have been piles of studies on plagiarism. By reviewing plagiarism research, it is discovered that even though there are much more plagiarism studies conducted in universities than in schools, research in higher education can still benefit from fruitful discoveries at the school level. For instance, Chu and his colleagues have been working jointly to explore instructional approaches and practices to improve Hong Kong secondary school students’ abilities to avoid plagiarism and develop information literacy since 2011 (Chu et al., 2016). Students’ learning needs in avoiding plagiarism were revealed by examining their engagement in inquiry-based learning projects (Yeung et al., 2018). In order to meet the learning needs, they developed a new pedagogy named “UPCC”, which stands for the four steps of instructing students to be free from plagiarism: (1) to have a better Understanding of plagiarism, (2) to learn about Paraphrasing related skills, (3) to make proper Citations, and (4) to be able to do originality Check (Chu & Hu, 2016; Lee et al., 2016). By adopting a quasi-experimental design, a trend of decreased 1

The Statute of Queen Anne transferred the right of duplicating works from the publishers to authors Anderson. (1998). Plagiarism, copyright violation, and other thefts of intellectual property: An annotated bibliography with a lengthy introduction. McFarland. Since then the practice of ‘borrowing’, e.g., using the works of authors from other countries without acknowledgement, became popular.

2.2 Why Do Students Plagiarize?

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plagiarism behavior was observed in the cohort under the UPCC intervention (Chu & Hu, 2017; Chu et al., 2017). Chu and his colleagues’ research provides insights into the potential of instructional design in addressing plagiarism among students, which inspires me to pay attention to the critical factors for successful implementation of plagiarism instruction, such as activating subject teachers’ engagement in plagiarism instruction and developing proper scales for plagiarism assessment. According to Leedy and Ormrod (2010), a systematic literature review is valuable to researchers, because it not only provides almost all available research information on a specific topic, but also brings different research perspectives, which could pave the road for future research. Anderson’s (1998) book on plagiarism provided a comprehensive view of research from 1900 to 1995. Later, an important literature review was conducted by Ercegovac and Richardson (2004), which documented almost all kinds of literature on plagiarism from 1996 to early 2003. The authors hoped to explore confusion about plagiarism, effects of plagiarism on education, and how to prevent plagiarism. After that, Ercegovac (2010) made a comparison between literature published in the pre-Internet era and Internet era and found that, in the latter period, the quantity of literature increased more than sevenfold and the research directions changed. Researchers began to realize that both institutions and instructors should take responsibilities for helping students cope with plagiarism. Besides, Ercegovac (2010) suggested specific pedagogical approaches for teachers. For example, compared with providing legalistic rules for students in the pre-Internet era, engaging students in scenario-based instructional activities was considered more useful to foster proper understandings in the Internet era. While publications mentioned above provide a general view about research on plagiarism, there is also much literature focusing on micro-level aspects of plagiarism, such as why students plagiarize and how to prevent individuals from plagiarizing. The following sections review studies targeting on these two questions.

2.2 Why Do Students Plagiarize? To answer questions like why and how students plagiarize, researchers have popularly relied on student surveys. In history, the biggest survey was conducted by McCabe and Trevino (1996), which involved 6000 students from 31 American institutions of higher education. The survey revealed that more than half of the students had used sources without citations. However, only one-third of them admitted that they intentionally committed plagiarism. Interestingly, similar findings were reported by Bowers (1966) in a survey of 5422 students from 99 American colleges and universities 30 years before. As Bowers’(1966) study was conducted in the pre-Internet era, while McCabe and Trevino’s (1996) research finished in the Internet era, it was inferred that the situation of plagiarism in colleges and universities remained unchanged and ICT might have little effects on students’ plagiarizing conducts (Stout, 2013).

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Plagiarism is complex, and it is dynamically constructed by contexts and individuals (Howard, 2000). When discussing the influence of ICT on plagiarism, Blum (2011) clearly stated that “Internet is part of the story, but not in the way people usually think” (p. 3). Therefore, even though the advent of ICT could have provided conditions for the occurrence of plagiarism, further studies are required to explore what key factors should account for increasing plagiarism. There has been a noticeable academic debate in the research of plagiarism about whether plagiarism is intentional or unintentional. Dant (1986) conducted a study on high school students in composition classes and found that plagiarism was mainly unintentional. He thus concluded that students’ plagiarism behaviors could not be attributed to their dishonesty or laziness, but to the teacher’s neglection of plagiarismrelated instruction. However, research by Trushell et al. (2012) on undergraduate students showed that there might be a relationship between students’ cheating behaviors and “lecturer impressing strategies” (p. 139), which means that students might intentionally commit plagiarism to get good grades in their assignments for the aim of catering for teachers’ expectation. The anthropologist Blum (2011) discussed the relationship between intentional and unintentional plagiarism in a detailed way. According to her, because the term plagiarism is derived from plagiarius, the Latin word for a kidnapper, plagiarism could be either unintentional or intentional. She further made analyses on plagiarism in two aspects, i.e., the textual aspect and the contextual aspect (Blum, 2011). The textual aspect concerns writing. It focuses on students’ knowledge about and skills in writing as well as authorship and intellectual right in writing. According to Blum (2011), if students commit plagiarism because of the textual aspect, for example, they know little about writing from sources, their plagiarism behaviors can be regarded as unintentional. The contextual aspect refers to subjective factors related to writing, which involve students’ individual attitudes, emotions, and desires for writing. If students commit plagiarism because of the contextual aspect, for example, they copy others’ writing without acknowledging the source in order to get good grades, their plagiarism behaviors should be regarded as intentional. As for the reasons behind intentional plagiarism, Blum (2011) discovered that many university students choose to commit plagiarism out of academic pressure. For students, competing for another A grade or a higher degree can not only fulfill their parents’ expectations but also satisfy their needs to find good jobs, which makes committing plagiarism a worthwhile risk to take (Blum, 2011). After analyzing plagiarism from the social perspective, Blum (2011) concluded that plagiarism is only the symptom of an educational problem. This suggests that, in order to understand why students plagiarize, more efforts should be made to study the educational problem behind plagiarism and find ways to solve it effectively.

2.3 How to Prevent Plagiarism?

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2.3 How to Prevent Plagiarism? After making a literature review on plagiarism, Wette (2010) commented that most research was “problem-oriented” rather than “solution-oriented” (p. 159). It means that there has been fewer research on exploring ways of coping with plagiarism than on describing and analyzing plagiarism issues from diverse perspectives. However, according to Pecorari and Petri´c (2014), there has been a growing number of descriptive and empirical literature that examines potential ways of preventing plagiarism in recent years. It is also discovered that researchers from different disciplines, e.g., applied linguistics, Educational Technology, and information science, have engaged in plagiarism research and provided various approaches of preventing plagiarism (Pecorari & Petri´c, 2014; Rodriguez et al., 2014). Some typical approaches to preventing plagiarism in higher education are summarized in Table 2.1. In order to classify existing approaches and provide guidelines for future research in higher education, several frameworks or models have been proposed (e.g., Hu, 2015; Lee et al., 2016; Pecorari & Petri´c, 2014; Zwagerman, 2009). The English professor Anson (2003) proposed three levels of responses to plagiarism. The first level focuses on judging students’ academic behaviors as honest or dishonest and taking punitive measures to plagiarism behaviors. The second level pays attention to taking educational measures to help students avoid plagiarism, e.g., providing anti-plagiarism resources or tutorials. It can be seen that, compared Table 2.1 Typical approaches to preventing plagiarism Major themes/strategies

Researchers

Universities adopted honor code schemes to build a positive atmosphere of academic integrity on campuses

Abasi and Akbari (2008), Echanique (2020)

Universities conducted reform in plagiarism management

Owunwanne et al. (2010), Sun and Hu (2022)

Instructors from various disciplines adopted Bensal et al. (2014), Youmans (2011), Plagiarism Detection Software (PDS) in courses Al-Thwaib et al. (2020) Instructors from information science provided (online) information ethics courses for students

Liu and Yang (2012), Dadzie (2011), Mattern and Gunn (2019)

Librarians provided copyright courses or academic integrity courses for students

Greer et al. (2012), Rodriguez et al. (2014), Vamanu (2023)

Writing instructors provided (online) academic writing courses for students

Jamieson and Howard (2017), Liu et al. (2013), Do (2022)

Subject instructors delivered academic writing courses for students within their faculties

Huang (2017), Farahian et al. (2020)

Subject instructors adopted source use instruction in subject courses

McGowan and Lightbody (2008), Wette (2023)

Both instructors from writing centers and other faculties collaborated to conduct source use instruction across curricula

Murphy (2016), Bridgewater et al. (2019)

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with the first level, the second level shifts attention from punitive methods to instructional approaches. However, the second level is still plagiarism-centered, not studentcentered (Zwagerman, 2009). Researchers criticized that providing anti-plagiarism resources and tutorials only could not guarantee students to be free from plagiarism (Abasi & Akbari, 2008). Therefore, it is suggested that plagiarism should not be placed at the center of instruction and more attention should be paid to students’ learning needs about preventing plagiarism (Halasek, 2011). According to Anson (2003), the third level of response to plagiarism is student-centered, and it focuses on providing students with instruction and practices that aim to help them achieve plagiarism-free learning goals. Similar to Anson (2003), the applied linguist Hu (2015) discussed the necessity and urgency of instructional approach by classifying anti-plagiarism approaches into three types, i.e., the punitive approach, the ethics education approach, and the academic writing instruction approach. Like the two above, the educational researchers Adam et al. (2016) had similar responses to plagiarism. They provided a useful framework to identify different stakeholders’ different responses to plagiarism from language usage and social interaction perspectives. By adopting the term “discourse”, Adam et al. (2016) regarded plagiarism as a “discursive construction” (p. 2) and classified plagiarism discourses into three types, i.e., the moral discourse, the regulatory discourse, and the academic writing discourse (see Table 2.2). Discourse refers to people’s spoken (or written) language in conversations (or texts) to convey their ideas (Gee, 2014). According to Adam et al. (2016), discourses that different stakeholders used in their conversations (or texts) reflected their varied views and responses to plagiarism. By analyzing the participating institution’s policies on plagiarism, Adam et al. (2016) discovered that institutional policy documents were filled with moral and regulatory discourses, in which plagiarism was descripted as pandemic evil acts. Compared with the moral discourse, the regulatory discourse cared more about instructing students’ responses to plagiarism, but it still centered on regulating students’ behaviors to meet plagiarism-related regulations. Students were required to be familiar with the plagiarism policies, and when there occurred plagiarism accidents, students would bear all responsibility. Obviously, students could get little from Table 2.2 Types of plagiarism discourse (Adam et al., 2016) Type

Description

Moral discourse

It is characteristic in the use of law-related commanding language (e.g., theft, malpractice) or ethics-related language (e.g., integrity, dishonesty, misconduct). It reflects the superstructure’s macroviews to plagiarism

Regulatory discourse

It focuses on adhering to institution-level and discipline-level policies for preventing plagiarism. It reflects institutions’ meso-level views to students’ plagiaristic behaviors

Academic writing discourse

It focuses on students’ concrete questions and confusions about plagiarism and calls for pedagogical strategies to help students cope with plagiarism. It has a conciliatory and micro-level view to plagiarism in education

References

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the moral and regulatory discourses but punishments and warnings (Tremayne & Curtis, 2021). By interviewing 21 undergraduate students from a university in New Zealand, Adam et al. (2016) discovered that students’ discourses to plagiarism were mainly about unfairness and confusion, which revealed their critique of moral and regulatory discourses in policy documents. Besides, students’ learning discourses were evident, which reflected their desire to be instructed to cope with plagiarism. According to Adam et al. (2016), in order to cater for students’ learning needs, the academic writing discourse needed to be introduced in universities, and academic writing instruction might be an effective way to bring students from the confused discourse to the learning discourse. From the perspective of the academic writing discourse, novice writers’ unintentional plagiarism was tolerable, because they could learn from it. From the analysis above, it can be seen that researchers have reached agreement on the important role of academic writing instruction in preventing plagiarism in higher education. According to Hu (2015), compared with the punitive and ethics education approaches, which relied on students’ self-regulative learning and put the anti-plagiarism responsibility on students, the academic writing instruction approach engaged teaching and learning of plagiarism into academic writing practices and helped students develop plagiarism-related writing knowledge and skills. This suggests that academic writing instruction can satisfy both students’ goal of learning plagiarism and academic writing simultaneously. Further, Adam et al. (2016) added that academic writing instruction could not only help students deal with plagiarism issues but also equip them with abilities for plagiarism-free academic writing in the long run. As for how to conduct academic writing instruction to prevent plagiarism, detailed discussion can be found in the following chapter.

References Abasi, & Akbari, N. (2008). Are we encouraging patchwriting? Reconsidering the role of the pedagogical context in ESL student writers’ transgressive intertextuality. English for Specific Purposes, 27(3), 267–284. Adam, L., Anderson, V., & Spronken-Smith, R. (2016). ‘It’s not fair’: Policy discourses and students’ understandings of plagiarism in a New Zealand University. Higher Education, 74(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0025-9 Al-Thwaib, E., Hammo, B. H., & Yagi, S. (2020). An academic Arabic corpus for plagiarism detection: Design, construction and experimentation. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 17(1), 1–26. Anderson. (1998). Plagiarism, copyright violation, and other thefts of intellectual property: An annotated bibliography with a lengthy introduction. McFarland. Anson, C. M. (2003). Student plagiarism: Are teachers part of the solution or part of the problem. Essays on Teaching Excellence: Towards the Best in the Academy, 15(1). https://wp0.vander bilt.edu/cft/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/vol15no1_student_plagiarism.htm Bensal, E. R., Miraflores, E. S., & Tan, N. (2014). Plagiarism: Shall we turn to Turnitin. ComputerAssisted Language Learning-Electronic Journal, 14(2), 2–22. Blum, S. D. (2011). My word!: Plagiarism and college culture. Cornell University Press.

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Bowers, W. J. (1966). Student dishonesty and its control in college [Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. Ann Arbor. http://search.proquest.com/doc view/302212913?accountid=14548 Bridgewater, B., Pounds, E., & Morley, A. (2019). Designing a writing tutor-led plagiarism intervention program. Learning Assistance Review, 24(2), 11–27. Callahan, D. (2007). The cheating culture: Why more Americans are doing wrong to get ahead. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Chu, S. K. W., Hu, X., Chin, Y., Lee, C. W. Y., Lyu, V. J., Ng, J. T. D., & Wong, C. S. Y. (2016). Plagiarism-free inquiry project-based learning. The University of Hong Kong. Chu, S. K. W., & Hu, X. (2016). Surveys on plagiarism in assignments of students in secondary schools and introduction of UPCC model in avoiding plagiarism. In Social Media 2016, The International Education and Technology Conference, Hong Kong. Chu, S. K. W., & Hu, X. (2017). Plagiarism-free inquiry project-based learning with UPCC. In CITE Research Symposium 2017, The University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong. Chu, S., Tavares, N. J., Chu, D., Ho, S. Y., Chow, K., Siu, F. L. C., & Wong, M. (2012). Developing upper primary students’ 21st century skills: Inquiry learning through collaborative teaching and Web 2.0 technology. Center for Information Technology in Education, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. Chu, S. K. W., Reynolds, R. B., Tavares, N. J., Notari, M., & Lee., C. W. Y. (2017). 21st century skills development through inquiry-based learning: From theory to practice. Springer Science. Constable, G. (1983). Forgery and plagiarism in the middle ages. In Archiv für Diplomatik (Vol. 29, p. 1). Dadzie, P. S. (2011). Rethinking information ethics education in Ghana: Is it adequate? The International Information & Library Review, 43(2), 63–69. Dant, D. R. (1986). Plagiarism in high school: A survey. The English Journal, 75(2), 81–84. Do, H. M. (2022). Plagiarism tutorials in teaching academic writing for L2 Vietnamese undergraduates. International TESOL & Technology Journal, 17(1), 44–62. Echanique, B. B. (2020). Students’ knowledge of plagiarism: Basis for SPUP honor code framework. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 8(9), 4056–4070. Ercegovac, Z., & Richardson, J. V. (2004). Academic dishonesty, plagiarism included, in the digital age: A literature review. College & Research Libraries, 65(4), 301–318. Ercegovac, Z. (2010). Plagiarism of print and electronic resources. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.1081/E-ELIS3-120 044510 Farahian, M., Parhamnia, F., & Avarzamani, F. (2020). Plagiarism in theses: A nationwide concern from the perspective of university instructors. Cogent Social Sciences, 6(1), 1751532. Gee, J. P. (2014). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. Routledge. Granitz, N., & Loewy, D. (2007). Applying ethical theories: Interpreting and responding to student plagiarism. Journal of Business Ethics, 72(3), 293–306. Greer, K., Swanberg, S., Hristova, M., Switzer, A. T., Daniel, D., & Perdue, S. W. (2012). Beyond the web tutorial: Development and implementation of an online, self-directed academic integrity course at Oakland University. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 38(5), 251–258. Halasek, K. (2011). Theorizing plagiarism in the university. College English, 73(5), 548–568. Howard, R. M. (2000). Sexuality, textuality: The cultural work of plagiarism. College English, 62(4), 473–491. Hu, G. (2015). Research on plagiarism in second language writing: Where to from here? Journal of Second Language Writing, 30, 100–102. Huang, J. C. (2017). What do subject experts teach about writing research articles? An exploratory study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 25, 18–29. Jamieson, & Howard, R. (2017). The citation project. Retrieved Jan 17, from http://www.citationp roject.net/about/ Lau, G. K. K., Yuen, A. H. K., & Park, J. (2013). Toward an analytical model of ethical decision making in plagiarism. Ethics & Behavior, 23(5), 360–377.

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Lee, C. W. Y., Chu, S. K. W., Cheng, J. O. Y., & Reynolds, R. (2016, October 14–18). Plagiarismfree inquiry project-based learning with UPCC pedagogy. In ASIS&T 2016 Annual Meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark. Leedy, P. D., & Ormrod, J. E. (2010). Practical research: Planning and design. Merrill Prentice Hall. ftp://doc.nit.ac.ir/cee/jazayeri/Research%20Method/Book/Practical%20Research.pdf Lindey, A. (1952). Plagiarism and originality. Harper & Brothers Publishers. Liu, & Yang, S. (2012). Applying the practical inquiry model to investigate the quality of students’ online discourse in an information ethics course based on Bloom’s teaching goal and Bird’s 3C model. Computers & Education, 59(2), 466–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012. 01.018 Liu, Lo, & Wang. (2013). Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study. Computers & Education, 69, 1–14. Lyons, M. (2010). A history of reading and writing: In the western world. Palgrave Macmillan. Mattern, E., & Gunn, C. (2019). Teaching information ethics: A look at the ethical dimensions of iSchool Curricula. Journal of Information Ethics, 28(2). McCabe, & Trevino, L. K. (1996). What we know about cheating in college longitudinal trends and recent developments. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 28(1), 28–33. McGowan, S., & Lightbody, M. (2008). Another chance to practice’: Repeating plagiarism education for EAL students within a discipline context. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 4(1), 16–30. Mphahlele, A., & McKenna, S. (2019). The use of Turnitin in the higher education sector: Decoding the myth. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(7), 1079–1089. Murphy, G. A. (2016). Worlds apart? International students, source-based writing, and faculty development across the curriculum [Ed.D., University of California, Los Angeles]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. Los Angeles, CA. http://search.proquest.com/docview/179849 4014?accountid=14548 Neumann, C. (2016). Teaching digital natives: Promoting information literacy and addressing instructional challenges. Reading Improvement, 53(3), 101–106. Owunwanne, D., Rustagi, N., & Dada, R. (2010). Students’ perceptions of cheating and plagiarism in higher institutions. Journal of College Teaching and Learning, 7(11), 59–68. Pecorari, D., & Petri´c, B. (2014). Plagiarism in second-language writing. Language Teaching, 47(03), 269–302. Rodriguez, J. E., Greer, K., & Shipman, B. (2014). Copyright and you: Copyright instruction for college students in the digital age. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 40(5), 486–491. Sengupta, S. (2015). Copyright infringement & plagiarism: Are they really two sides of a coin? In Challenges in 21 Century Librarianship, Chandmal Tarachand Bora College. Stout, D. (2013). Teaching students about plagiarism: What it looks like and how it is measured [Ph.D., Western Michigan University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. Ann Arbor. http:// search.proquest.com/docview/1428180650?accountid=14548 Sun, X., & Hu, G. (2022). Institutional policies on plagiarism management: A comparison of universities in mainland China and Hong Kong. Accountability in Research, 1–24. Sutherland-Smith, W. (2005). The tangled web: Internet plagiarism and international students’ academic writing. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 15(1), 15–29. Sutherland-Smith, W. (2008). Plagiarism, the Internet, and student learning: Improving academic integrity. Routledge. The Local Europe GmbH. (2016). Med school: Top minister plagiarized her thesis. The Local de (Germany’s news in English). Retrieved April 4, 2019 from https://www.thelocal.de/20160310/ med-school-top-minister-plagiarized-her-thesis Tremayne, K., & Curtis, G. J. (2021). Attitudes and understanding are only part of the story: Self-control, age and self-imposed pressure predict plagiarism over and above perceptions of seriousness and understanding. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 46(2), 208–219.

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Trushell, J., Byrne, K., & Simpson, R. (2012). Cheating behaviours, the Internet and education undergraduate students. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(2), 136–145. Vamanu, I. (2023). Cultivating imagination: A case for teaching information ethics with works of fiction. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 64(1), 1–17. Wette, R. (2010). Evaluating student learning in a university-level EAP unit on writing using sources. Journal of Second Language Writing, 19(3), 158–177. Wette, R. (2023). Teachers’ perspectives on source-based writing challenges and skill development strategies. In Teaching and learning source-based writing (pp. 48–62). Routledge. Yeung, A. H. W., Chu, C. B. L., Chu, S. K. W., & Fung, C. K. W. (2018). Exploring junior secondary students’ plagiarism behavior. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 50(4), 361–373. Youmans, R. J. (2011). Does the adoption of plagiarism-detection software in higher education reduce plagiarism? Studies in Higher Education, 36(7), 749–761. Zimerman, M. (2012). Plagiarism and international students in academic libraries. New Library World, 113(5/6), 290–299. Zwagerman, S. (2009). Pluralizing plagiarism: Identities, contexts, pedagogies. JSTOR, 29, 882– 890. www.jstor.org/stable/20866933

Chapter 3

Teaching to Avoid Plagiarism in Academic Writing

When students enter universities, they usually study in disciplines and have many chances to involve in academic writing. For example, a student may be required to finish an academic writing assignment as a formative (or summative) assessment in a course, write a dissertation for a degree, or prepare an academic article for publication. Academic writing is at the heart of learning in higher education, because it involves students’ understandings about their disciplines, critical thinking about academic topics, text creation based on analyses, and arguments on targeted themes (Hyland, 2013). Academic writing has distinct differences from “natural” writing in which people routinely narrate what they see and do (Hyland, 2013, p. 55), because academic writing focuses on more than just writing. It requires students to critically analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information in specific disciplinary fields. Moreover, academic writing is related to disciplinary knowledge and specific academic terms are often used in texts (Irvin, 2010). In this chapter, I make a review of empirical and theoretical research on the teaching of academic writing, especially of source use that aims at preventing plagiarism. Hidden pedagogical problems in source use are revealed, and so the research gaps are addressed.

3.1 Addressing Plagiarism in Academic Writing When students conduct academic writing practices, they may encounter various writing issues, among which plagiarism is on the rise (Sutherland-Smith, 2005). Preventing plagiarism in academic writing has attracted increasing attentions in almost all academic areas (Divan et al., 2015; Pecorari, 2010). Researchers state that plagiarism is a typical result of students’ lack of academic writing knowledge and skills (Gullifer & Tyson, 2010; Tomaš, 2010). As students’ lack of academic writing knowledge and skills is believed to be the essential educational problem

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_3

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behind plagiarism, academic writing instruction should be able to provide the solution (Howard et al., 2010; Pecorari, 2013). Then what kind of instruction is best suitable for preventing plagiarism in academic writing? According to Pecorari and Petri´c (2014), plagiarism instruction in academic writing comprised two parts: teaching explicitly about plagiarism and teaching about source use. Strategies for teaching explicitly about plagiarism involve engaging students in discussing plagiarism cases from specific disciplines (Bloch, 2012), in analyzing academic papers on plagiarism (Price, 2002), as well as in designing plagiarism rules for subject courses (Bloch, 2012). Compared with teaching explicitly about plagiarism, teaching about source use focuses on the hidden factor in eliminating plagiarism. Previous research shows that students may unintentionally commit plagiarism due to lack of source use skills, such as paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation (Gullifer & Tyson, 2010). In recent years, teaching about source use has received much attention from researchers (Hu, 2015; Hu & Lei, 2016; Pecorari, 2010; Pecorari & Petri´c, 2014). Even though teaching about plagiarism and source use are separately discussed in the literature, they are actually required to be combined to help solve the plagiarism problems effectively (Bloch, 2012; Pecorari & Petri´c, 2014).

3.2 Conducting Instruction on Source Use to Prevent Plagiarism Source use refers to writers’ making use of others’ words or ideas to generate their own texts in an academically evidence-based way (Davis, 2014; Pecorari, 2002, 2010, 2013). According to Abasi et al. (2006), without solid scientific evidence from other writers, the authority of an author’s text could not be well built. Therefore, researchers state that source use is a staple of academic writing and writing from sources has become an essential requirement of publications in almost all disciplines (Hyland, 2009; Pecorari & Shaw, 2012). What is more, source use practices play a key role in students’ academic writing in higher education (Keck, 2006; Pecorari, 2010), which can train students in critical writing by connecting one’s own thoughts with source texts (Howard et al., 2010; Pecorari, 2013). Studies show that students may unintentionally commit plagiarism because of lacking knowledge and skills of source use (Halasek, 2011; Pecorari, 2013). Scholars from linguistics and writing studies proposed that source use needed to be explicitly addressed in writing courses and other subject courses, among which Diane Pecorari and Rebecca Moore Howard have conducted important research in the field, and have provided important insights for following research (Halasek, 2011; Howard & Robillard, 2008; Howard et al., 2010; Pecorari, 2010, 2013; Pecorari & Shaw, 2012). The critical suggestions from Pecorari (2010) and Howard et al. (2010) were that students’ poor source use should not be labeled as plagiarism and that instruction on source use was urgently needed in higher education.

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Scholars have created various terms to describe poor source use, such as textual borrowing (Chandrasoma et al., 2004), patchwriting (Howard & Robillard, 2008), and repeated text (Pecorari, 2010). According to these scholars, these terms indicate students’ poor comprehension of source use but are essentially different from plagiarism (Halasek, 2011). For example, according to Howard et al. (2010), patchwriting refers to reusing source language with little modifications, e.g., deletion or addition of words, or synonym substitution. After reviewing students’ written texts, Pecorari (2010) found that novice writers were prone to patchwriting than paraphrasing, because patchwriting allowed them to reduce their risks of being questioned for misunderstanding the source. Both Pecorari and Howard believed that patchwriting was a necessary learning phase for novice writers. Likewise, repeated text and textual borrowing indicate novice writers’ uncertain comprehension of source use and should not be treated as plagiarism (Tomaš, 2010). However, if instructional supports are not provided to correct these poor source use practices, plagiarism will finally occur. After reviewing important literature on the relationship between plagiarism and source use, Halasek (2011) concluded that instruction on source use should play a key role in helping student writers be free from plagiarism. Then how to conduct source use instruction to prevent plagiarism? Looking back in history, it is found that teaching source use has always been a part of academic writing instruction (Pecorari, 2010). However, source use received limited attention from writing instructors (Liu et al., 2016; Thompson & Tribble, 2001). According to Shi (2018), even though many writing instructors would remind students to adopt proper citation styles or to avoid directly using strings of consecutive words from sources in writing, students were seldom provided with specific knowledge and skills related to sources use. Besides, instructors from other disciplines falsely believe that students could write from sources properly and paid little attention to the possible source use issues in their students’ written work. That is why when Pecorari (2010) interviewed subject instructors about their students’ source use, they did not regard it as problematic until a careful examination on students’ writing texts was conducted. Many subject instructors attributed students’ infraction to the lack of knowledge and skills related to source use and believed that if more attentions were paid to teaching source use, the plagiarism problems could be solved. So far, there has been a good number of empirical studies on source use instruction that aims to prevent plagiarism. Some of them were conducted following the traditional instructional approach. For example, teachers from composition or writing centers took the responsibilities for teaching students about source use (Howard et al., 2010). Others tried to integrate instructional resources from the writing faculty and other disciplinary faculties into helping students write properly from sources (Murphy, 2016). Meanwhile, different instructional programs were conducted to cater for students’ various learning needs associated with language and cultural backgrounds. For example, much research has been conducted to explore instructional strategies for second-language (L2) student writers (Mott-Smith, 2013). However, L2 students were not the only ones who plagiarized (Howard et al., 2010). Comparing L1 (i.e., first/native language) students’ paraphrased texts in English with those of L2 students, Keck (2014) discovered that plagiarism occurred in both L1 and L2

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students’ texts and the rate of plagiarism in L1 students’ texts was only slightly lower. This suggests that both L1 and L2 students need instructional support on source use. Different source use instructions have been provided to students with various learning backgrounds and needs. As this book targets at addressing undergraduates’ poor source use problem, four cases of teaching source use for undergraduates are discussed in detail below. First case: The Citation Project The Citation Project focuses on exploring how college student writers use their sources (Jamieson, 2017). It is a multi-institution project. For example, according to the statistics, there were 16 institutions from the US participating in the project in 2011 (Jamieson & Howard, 2017). The project researchers focused on analyzing students’ use of quoting, summarizing, paraphrasing, or patchwriting in their writing to understand students’ behavior characteristics in source use (Howard et al., 2010). They found that students would choose to copy, patchwrite, or paraphrase others’ sentences but seldom made a summary to an entire source (Howard et al., 2010), which provided enlightenment for source use instruction. It was suggested that teachers from writing faculties should analyze students’ source use as what the project researchers did, based on which they could help students reflect on their writings and make improvements in source use. Because the project required teachers to review and highlight each source use part in students’ writing texts and discuss with students about their writings one by one, the deficiency of instruction was time-consuming. Second case: The English as a Second-Language (ESL) writing program The ESL program was conducted by Tomaš (2010) to survey writing instructors’ use of instructional resources on source use. More than 100 writing instructors from Western USA were enrolled in the ESL program. Research results showed that more than half of them mainly drew on their own source use experiences and only a third claimed often references to course textbooks. It inferred that, in traditional writing classes, instructional quality of source use largely depended on instructors’ own knowledge and experiences. The survey results also indicated that improving students’ source use needed not only various instructional resources but also trainings on writing instructors to have rich experiences in the teaching of source use. Third case: A subject project with source use instruction In 2003, a Hong Kong accounting program was conducted by Australian academics on Hong Kong students (McGowan & Lightbody, 2008). In order to address the rising concerns about students’ academic writing skills, several writing assignments were introduced in subject courses. In the first academic year, basic writing practices on preventing plagiarism were offered to students. In the second academic year, students were provided with more writing assignments on source use. For example, they were required to identify quotation and citation problems in a given essay and correct them. The results showed that the writing assignments could help improve students’ source use as well as reduce incidences of plagiarism in academic writing. Moreover, this case proves that introducing source use practices in disciplines is helpful to students’ correct understanding of source use. Fourth case: The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program

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In order to address concerns over international students’ unintentional plagiarism, an action research was conducted in a liberal arts college in the US (Murphy, 2016). A series of workshops was held to cultivate the collaboration between the writing faculty and other faculties in developing WAC courses in disciplines. The results showed that, even though faculty participants in workshops could not reach agreements on how to conduct specific instructions to prevent plagiarism in disciplines, they developed a better understanding of plagiarism by attending these workshops. Moreover, by cocreating instructional materials and toolkits, faculty participants felt that they became better prepared to conduct source use instruction. The four cases demonstrated diverse ways of teaching source use and provided enlightenment for this book, which is discussed in the following section.

3.3 Influential Factors in Teaching Source Use and Eliminating Plagiarism Previous literature reported that source use instruction could act as a proactive approach to cope with the growing plagiarism issues in academic writing (Halasek, 2011; Howard et al., 2010; Pecorari, 2010), and it was further verified by the four research cases. Through careful examination on the effectiveness of instruction in those cases, influential factors in teaching source use and eliminating plagiarism are revealed, which not only shows how current teaching can be improved but also provides research space for this book.

3.3.1 Students’ Understanding of Source Use From the four cases, we can see that explicit source use instructions have been conducted by writing faculties, by faculties from other disciplines, or by both of them. However, compared with knowledge and skills about source use, students’ understanding of source use received little attention from researchers and lecturers (Bretag, 2016; Halasek, 2011; Murphy, 2016). According to Hirvela and Du (2013), understanding source use requires students to know not only the rules of source use but also the reasons to incorporate source materials in their written work. Moreover, in the process of using sources, students with a good understanding do not confine themselves to the meaning of few sentences but can have holistic views about what writers mean in their texts (Borg, 2000). Tomaš (2010) stated that only by laying emphasis on a well-understanding of source use can instruction help students learn to use sources properly and cope with plagiarism effectively. Howard et al. (2010) discovered that students’ poor understandings of source materials might lead to patchwriting and excessive source use results. For example, in Abasi and Graves’s (2008) study, a student was so overwhelmed by

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avoiding plagiarism in academic writing that he cited references for each sentence in his manuscript, resulting in the so-called over-citation (Murphy, 2016, p. 20). Similarly, in another study held by Hirvela and Du (2013), a student was found to introduce excessive direct quotations in his paper. Therefore, researchers have concluded that the teaching of source use is not simply a matter of providing students with knowledge and skills and that more attention should be paid to considering how students can understand other writers’ writings and acknowledge sources properly under specific conditions (Hirvela & Du, 2013; Murphy, 2016). Then, how to attach importance to students’ understanding of source use? One way may be conducting instruction targeting at achieving students’ understanding of source use. Previous research has shown that lacking such instructional goal can lead to arbitrary instructional practices (Anson, 2003; Tomaš, 2010). For example, in the second case above, after surveying the writing instructors’ teaching of source use, Tomaš (2010) found that, because much research and instruction neglected exploring the nature of source use instruction, the instructors could not meet students’ learning needs and interests. In this book, to enhance students’ understanding of source use, a new pedagogy was designed and the effectiveness of it was tested.

3.3.2 Teachers’ Burden and Technology’s Role in Taking Instructional Responsibilities Previous research has shown that instruction plays a key role in helping students learn to write from sources and prevent plagiarism (Tomaš, 2010). It is assumed by many researchers that teachers should take the most responsibilities in instruction (Halasek, 2011). However, when teachers were suggested to teach source use, many of them responded that they encountered some difficulties which deserved attention (Hyland, 2013; Zwagerman, 2009). Some teachers were found to violate source use rules in their PowerPoint presentation slides, e.g., copying texts from textbooks without attributing the sources (Angélil-Carter, 2000). Some others seldom considered the role that instructional materials could play in students’ learning about plagiarism avoidance, and thus much instruction was conducted based on their own knowledge and experiences about source use (Tomaš, 2010). Besides, many teachers complained that teaching source use was time-consuming and labor-intensive, because they had to review each student’s writing texts and provide feedback, which brought heavy burden to them (Howard et al., 2010). In sum, limited time, energy, and expertise may have hindered teachers from conducting source use instruction (Séror, 2009). Researchers insisted that teachers needed help from faculties and institutions to overcome these difficulties (Howard et al., 2010). Meanwhile, some researchers argued that instruction could not be delayed until teachers were ready and that teachers could not bear the whole responsibility for teaching source use and preventing plagiarism (Murphy, 2016; Tomaš, 2010).

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Information and Communications Technology (ICT), as an enabling factor for optimizing instruction, is capable of sharing part of the responsibility for source use instruction and plagiarism prevention (Liu et al., 2013). The role of ICT in plagiarism pedagogy has been discussed in the literature as shown below. The advent of ICT facilitates communication between people by breaking the limitations of time and space, and it also provides a virtual environment for people to easily access millions of digital resources. Bandura’s (2002, 2007) research indicated that people’s behaviors could be influenced by the affordance1 of environments, which reminded researchers that the affordance of ICT might explain the increasing plagiarism in academic writing (Ellery, 2008; Selwyn, 2008). However, Trushell et al. (2013) investigation showed that there was no significant correlation between the affordance of ICT and students’ plagiarism behaviors. Besides, Kauffman and Yong’s (2015) experimental research on exploring the relationship between the copy-andpaste affordance of ICT and undergraduates’ engaging in plagiarism told a similar story. Researchers further argued that the affordance of ICT should be regarded as neutral (Kauffman & Young, 2015), which means that ICT can bring either negative or positive effects on students’ engagement in plagiarism, depending on how it is used. So far, many ICT tools have been developed for plagiarism pedagogy. Some of them are designed for detecting plagiarism only, such as ArticleChecker, CrossCheck, and WCopyFind. They are usually called Plagiarism Detection Software (PDS). Others are designed for teaching academic writing only, such as Criterion, MyAccess, and WriteToLearn. There are also some ICT tools designed for integrating both detecting plagiarism and teaching academic writing, such as Turnitin and Glatt. After analyzing functions of the current ICT tools, Liu et al. (2013) concluded that few software applications could provide source use instruction with the aim of preventing plagiarism. Then, they developed a writing tutorial tool named “DWright” to instruct Chinese students to learn about source use in English academic writing. In order to explore students’ attitudes and tendencies to use DWright, 35 Chinese students from a university in Taiwan were interviewed and surveyed. Research results showed that most participants were satisfied with the tool. By analyzing DWright’s instructional functions, I discover that DWright focuses more on developing students’ active behavioral responses to source use but less on cultivating their meaningful understandings of source use and plagiarism. For example, throughout the learning process, students are only required to give answers to various sentence-based instructional questions. However, they are not provided with any complete literature to read. What’s more, students cannot communicate with one another while using DWright. It can be concluded that the role of DWright in source use instruction is more like a resource repository. Similarly, Mages and Garson (2010) developed an online instructional system (named APA Exposed) to help students learn to cite various sources to avoid plagiarism. Even though the system 1

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “affordance” refers to the potential utility of an object or an environment for people Affordance. (2019). OED Online OED Online. http:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/263548?redirectedFrom=affordance&, ibid..

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can offer students various ways of reading or listening to learning materials, it still cares more about students’ behavioral feedbacks to citations but neglects students’ understanding of source use. According to constructivism, learning relies mainly on students’ active knowledge construction through the interaction between their previous experiences and specific practices in the learning contexts as well as through social interactions among individuals (Almala, 2006; Liu & Matthews, 2005). In this book, an online writing system was designed as an instructional tool and a promoter in students’ learning of plagiarism and source use under the newly designed pedagogy. Based on constructivism, the online writing system focuses on providing students with authentic learning experiences and interactive learning chances. Detailed information about the design of the system can be found in the fifth chapter.

3.3.3 Language Medium and Disciplinary Diversity According to Howard and Robillard (2008), because plagiarism issues are complex and contextualized, background factors should not be neglected. When plagiarism is discussed in academic writing, language medium and disciplinary diversity need to be addressed. 1. Language medium As a manifestation of culture, language plays an important role in affecting students’ plagiarism behaviors (Kubota & Lehner, 2004; Pecorari, 2010). Compared with Western students, Eastern students’ growing plagiarism issues are partly rooted in the fact that they were required to finish assignments in English, rather than their native language (Abasi et al., 2006; Shi, 2004). Endeavoring to write in a foreign (or second) language may hinder students’ writing performance and induce plagiarism. However, some researchers rebutted the statement and attributed the increasing plagiarism among Chinese students to the lacking of training in their native language academic writing during undergraduate education (Hu & Lei, 2015). This suggests that if students struggle with academic writing in their native languages, it is unlikely that they will perform well in foreign (or second) language academic writing. According to Kubota and Lehner (2004), each culture has particular modes of convention in rhetoric. This suggests that when academic writing was investigated in the Chinese context, the rhetorical features of Chinese academic writing deserve to be analyzed by making comparison with those of English academic writing. Matalene’s (1985) study showed that the differences between Chinese and English writing laid in structure of composition, idiomatic expression, and reference citation. González et al. (2001) also pointed out some characteristic structures of Chinese academic writing, such as using metaphors to illustrate abstract concepts and using sequencing clauses in similar forms to show progressive thinking progress. After chronologically examining the literature on Chinese rhetoric and writing, Kirkpatrick and Xu (2012) found that the differences between Chinese and English rhetoric mainly lay in

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the sequencing patterns of paragraphs, including the deductive pattern, the inductive pattern, and the combination of the two. In the deductive pattern, a main point is claimed first and then a justification is made. In the inductive pattern, the order is just the opposite, i.e., an elaboration is made first and then a summary is made. By adopting the rhetorical analysis method in the literature review, the two researchers discovered that more deductive patterns were used in Chinese academic writing, while more inductive patterns occurred in English academic writing. According to Flowerdew and Li (2009), there has been a trend of internationalization in the forms and contents of Chinese academic writing, which is driven by the international development of Chinese higher education as well as the increasing communication between Eastern and Western academics. Therefore, from the dynamic perspective, the differences between Chinese and English writing are becoming smaller. I once conducted a literature search in Chinese academic writing. The China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (CNKI), which is the biggest Chinese academic resources database, was included. Statistic data showed that there were 60 million literature in CNKI by then (i.e., July 31, 2023). Among them, 95% were journal articles, the others were masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations. The inclusion criteria were (a) predominantly about academic writing among undergraduates and postgraduates, (b) the search titles are “学术写作(academic writing)”, “学术 论文(academic paper)”, and “毕业论文写作(thesis or dissertation writing)”. It was discovered that: • Almost 90% of the literature concerned English academic writing, in which English was the second or foreign language. • There were more studies on Chinese academic writing in masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations than in academic articles, but many focused on setting policies or developing web-based systems to improve the quality of supervision from the perspective of faculty. • Literature on Chinese academic writing instruction was rare. Previous research also showed that, compared with growing research in English academic writing throughout the world, Chinese academic writing was less mentioned in both empirical and theoretical literature (Kirkpatrick & Xu, 2012), among which studies conducted in Mainland China was even fewer. Moreover, when academic writing literature was investigated from the anti-plagiarism perspective, research in Mainland China was rare. Therefore, facing the growing plagiarism issues in Chinese academic writing, Chinese academic writing instruction deserves due attention. Research on English academic writing might bring some insight into Chinese research, and its findings (e.g., instructional technology and approaches) might be applicable in the Chinese context. 2. Disciplinary diversity According to Hyland (2007), disciplinary diversity denotes that each discipline has its unique ways of exploring issues. Different disciplines may have different views about plagiarism. For example, idea plagiarism was thought to be much severe

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3 Teaching to Avoid Plagiarism in Academic Writing

than text plagiarism in sciences, while both were regarded as serious in social sciences (Flowerdew & Li, 2007). Apart from having various ways of addressing plagiarism issues, different disciplines have their own rhetorical strategies (Hyland, 2013). Murphy (2016) inferred that academic writing instruction needed to be conducted under disciplinary contexts to engage novice writers in disciplinary culture and prevent plagiarism. Meanwhile, previous empirical research provided similar enlightenment. From the aforementioned analysis, it can be seen that, among the four cases, two programs were held by writing faculties, and the other two were conducted by faculties from other disciplines. Compared with writing faculties’ programs, the other two programs were able to better facilitate students’ engagement and development in academic community by asking them to finish academic writing assignments with peers in the same discipline. Based on the above-mentioned literature review, two research gaps are discussed as follows. (1) How to orchestrate the teaching of source use and plagiarism with ICT to facilitate undergraduates’ understanding of plagiarism and source use? Facing the growing plagiarism issues in universities, different stakeholders provided different responses, among which academic writing instruction was proven to be an effective solution (Adam et al., 2016; Hu, 2015; Pecorari, 2010). As source use was found to be the key cause of students’ unintentional plagiarism in academic writing, explicit instruction on source use has been conducted by faculties from many universities (Howard et al., 2010; McGowan & Lightbody, 2008; Tomaš, 2010). However, some studies revealed that teaching knowledge and skills about source use alone could not ensure the elimination of plagiarism, because it neglected students’ understanding of source use (Abasi & Graves, 2008; Hirvela & Du, 2013; Murphy, 2016). Even though researchers have provided various suggestions on facilitating students’ understanding of source use (e.g., Pecorari, 2010), there has been a lack of empirical research to explore how to orchestrate the teaching of source use with ICT to facilitate undergraduates’ understanding of source use and plagiarism. Besides, the role of ICT in sharing teachers’ responsibilities in conducting instruction and facilitating students’ understanding of source use and plagiarism is rarely discussed in the literature. (2) How to teach source use and plagiarism in Mainland Chinese undergraduates’ Chinese subject courses? Compared with the growing research in English academic writing throughout the world, Chinese academic writing was less mentioned in both empirical and theoretical literature, among which research conducted in Mainland China was even fewer. Moreover, when academic writing literature was investigated from the antiplagiarism perspective, research in Mainland China was rare. Facing the growing plagiarism issues in Chinese academic writing, research on Mainland Chinese undergraduates’ plagiarism-free Chinese academic writing is challenging. Meanwhile, limited time, energy, and expertise may hinder faculties from conducting academic

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writing instruction in subject courses (Flowerdew, 2015; Séror, 2009). However, academic writing instruction can not be delayed until everything is ready (Murphy, 2016; Tomaš, 2010). Therefore, it is necessary to explore how to teach source use and plagiarism in Mainland Chinese undergraduates’ Chinese subject courses.

References Abasi, & Graves, B. (2008). Academic literacy and plagiarism: Conversations with international graduate students and disciplinary professors. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(4), 221–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2008.10.010 Abasi, Akbari, N., & Graves, B. (2006). Discourse appropriation, construction of identities, and the complex issue of plagiarism: ESL students writing in graduate school. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15(2), 102–117. Adam, L., Anderson, V., & Spronken-Smith, R. (2016). ‘It’s not fair’: Policy discourses and students’ understandings of plagiarism in a New Zealand University. Higher Education, 74(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0025-9 Affordance. (2019). OED Online OED Online. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/263548?redirecte dFrom=affordance Almala, A. H. (2006). Applying the principles of constructivism to a quality e-learning environment. Distance Learning, 3(1), 33–40. Angélil-Carter, S. (2000). Stolen language? Plagiarism in writing. Routledge Education. Anson, C. M. (2003). Student plagiarism: Are teachers part of the solution or part of the problem. Essays on Teaching Excellence: Towards the Best in the Academy, 15(1). https://wp0.vander bilt.edu/cft/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/vol15no1_student_plagiarism.htm Bandura, A. (2007). Impeding ecological sustainability through selective moral disengagement. International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 2(1), 8–35. Bandura, A. (2002). Social foundations of thought and action. In D. F. Marks (Ed.), The health psychology reader. SAGE Publication Ltd. Bloch, J. (2012). Plagiarism, intellectual property and the teaching of L2 writing: Explorations in the detectionbased approach (Vol. 24). Multilingual Matters. Borg, E. (2000). Citation practices in academic writing. In Patterns and perspectives. Insights into EAP writing practice (pp. 27–45). The University of Reading. Bretag, T. A. (2016). Handbook of academic integrity. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981287-098-8 Chandrasoma, R., Thompson, C., & Pennycook, A. (2004). Beyond plagiarism: Transgressive and nontransgressive intertextuality. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 3(3), 171–193. Davis, M. (2014). The development of competence in source use by international postgraduate students [Doctoral dissertation, UCL Institute of Education]. Divan, A., Bowman, M., & Seabourne, A. (2015). Reducing unintentional plagiarism amongst international students in the biological sciences: An embedded academic writing development programme. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 39(3), 358–378. Ellery, K. (2008). Undergraduate plagiarism: A pedagogical perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(5), 507–516. Flowerdew, J. (2015). Language re-use and the notion of culture: A response to Diane Pecorari’s “Plagiarism in second language writing: Is it time to close the case?” Journal of Second Language Writing, 30, 109–110. Flowerdew, J., & Li, Y. (2007). Language re-use among Chinese apprentice scientists writing for publication. Applied Linguistics, 28(3), 440–465.

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Flowerdew, J., & Li, Y. (2009). English or Chinese? The trade-off between local and international publication among Chinese academics in the humanities and social sciences. Journal of Second Language Writing, 18(1), 1–16. González, V., Chen, C.-Y., & Sanchez, C. (2001). Cultural thinking and discourse organizational patterns influencing writing skills in a Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learner. Bilingual Research Journal, 25(4), 627–652. Gullifer, & Tyson, G. A. (2010). Exploring university students’ perceptions of plagiarism: A focus group study. Studies in Higher Education, 35(4), 463–481. Halasek, K. (2011). Theorizing plagiarism in the university. College English, 73(5), 548–568. Hirvela, A., & Du, Q. (2013). “Why am I paraphrasing?”: Undergraduate ESL writers’ engagement with source-based academic writing and reading. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(2), 87–98. Howard, R. M., & Robillard, A. E. (2008). Pluralizing plagiarism: Identities, contexts, pedagogies. Cook Publishers Inc. Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing and Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192. Hu, G. (2015). Research on plagiarism in second language writing: Where to from here? Journal of Second Language Writing, 30, 100–102. Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2015). Chinese university students’ perceptions of plagiarism. Ethics & Behavior, 25(3), 233–255. Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2016). Plagiarism in English academic writing: A comparison of Chinese university teachers’ and students’ understandings and stances. System, 56, 107–118. Hyland, K. (2013). Writing in the university: Education, knowledge and reputation. Language Teaching, 46(01), 53–70. Hyland, K. (2009). Academic discourse: English in a global context. Bloomsbury. Hyland. (2007). Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(3), 148–164. Irvin, L. L. (2010). What is “academic” writing? In writing spaces: Readings on writing (Vol. 1, pp. 3–17). Creative Commons. Jamieson, & Howard, R. (2017). The citation project. Retrieved Jan 17, from http://www.citationp roject.net/about/ Jamieson, S. (2017). The evolution of the citation project: Lessons learned from a multi-year, multisite study. In S. Tricia & J. Sandra (Eds.), Points of departure: Rethinking student source use and writing studies research methods (pp. 33–61). Utah State University Press. https://doi.org/ 10.7330/9781607326250.c001 Kauffman, Y., & Young, M. F. (2015). Digital plagiarism: An experimental study of the effect of instructional goals and copy-and-paste affordance. Computers & Education, 83, 44–56. Keck, C. (2006). The use of paraphrase in summary writing: A comparison of L1 and L2 writers. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15(4), 261–278. Keck, C. (2014). Copying, paraphrasing, and academic writing development: A re-examination of L1 and L2 summarization practices. Journal of Second Language Writing, 25, 4–22. Kirkpatrick, A., & Xu, Z. (2012). Chinese rhetoric and writing. Parlor Press. Kubota, R., & Lehner, A. (2004). Toward critical contrastive rhetoric. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13(1), 7–27. Liu, C., & Matthews, R. (2005). Vygotsky’s philosophy: Constructivism and Its criticisms examined. International Education Journal, 6(3), 386–399. Liu, G.-Z., Lin, V., Kou, X., & Wang, H.-Y. (2016). Best practices in L2 English source use pedagogy: A thematic review and synthesis of empirical studies. Educational Research Review, 19, 36–57. Liu, Lo, & Wang. (2013). Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study. Computers & Education, 69, 1–14. Mages, W. K., & Garson, D. S. (2010). Get the cite right: Design and evaluation of a high-quality online citation tutorial. Library & Information Science Research, 32(2), 138–146.

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Matalene, C. (1985). Contrastive rhetoric: An American writing teacher in China. College English, 47(8), 789–808. McGowan, S., & Lightbody, M. (2008). Another chance to practice’: Repeating plagiarism education for EAL students within a discipline context. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 4(1), 16–30. Mott-Smith, J. A. (2013). Viewing student behavior through the lenses of culture and globalization: Two narratives from a US college writing class. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(3), 249–259. Murphy, G. A. (2016). Worlds apart? International students, source-based writing, and faculty development across the curriculum [Ed.D., University of California, Los Angeles]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1798494014?accountid= 14548 Pecorari, D., & Petri´c, B. (2014). Plagiarism in second-language writing. Language Teaching, 47(03), 269–302. Pecorari, D., & Shaw, P. (2012). Types of student intertextuality and faculty attitudes. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(2), 149–164. Pecorari, D. (2002). Original reproductions: An investigation of the source use of postgraduate second language writers. University of Birmingham. Pecorari, D. (2010). Academic writing and plagiarism: A linguistic analysis. A&C Black. Pecorari, D. (2013). Teaching to avoid plagiarism: How to promote good source use. McGraw-Hill Education (UK). Price, M. (2002). Beyond “gotcha!”: Situating plagiarism in policy and pedagogy. College Composition and Communication, 54(1), 88–115. Selwyn, N. (2008). A safe haven for misbehaving? An investigation of online misbehavior among university students. Social Science Computer Review, 26(4), 446–465. Séror, J. (2009). Institutional forces and L2 writing feedback in higher education. Canadian Modern Language Review, 66(2), 203–232. Shi, L. (2004). Textual borrowing in second-language writing. Written Communication, 21(2), 171–200. Shi, L. (2018). Reading and writing connections in source-based writing. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 1–6. Sutherland-Smith, W. (2005). Pandora’s box: Academic perceptions of student plagiarism in writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4(1), 83–95. Thompson, P., & Tribble, C. (2001). Looking at citations: Using corpora in English for academic purposes. Language Learning and Technology, 5(3), 91–105. Tomaš, Z. (2010). Addressing pedagogy on textual borrowing: Focus on instructional resources. Writing & Pedagogy, 2(2), 223–250. Trushell, J., Byrne, K., & Hassan, N. (2013). ICT facilitated access to information and undergraduates’ cheating behaviours. Computers & Education, 63, 151–159. Zwagerman, S. (2009). Pluralizing plagiarism: Identities, contexts, pedagogies. JSTOR, 29, 882– 890. www.jstor.org/stable/20866933

Chapter 4

Design of an Understanding-Oriented (UO) Pedagogy

According to Beetham and Sharpe (2013), even though pedagogy has changed dramatically over the years (e.g., the emergence of teaching in the virtual world), the original sense of it did not change at all. “Pedagogy” initially referred to the process of leading or guiding to learn, through which the dialogue between teaching and learning and that between theory and practices were essential (Daniels, 2016). Therefore, during the design of the UO pedagogy, its potential for the dialogue between teaching and learning and that between theory and practices deserved attention and effort. In this book, the UO pedagogy was introduced as a prescription for plagiarism issues in academic writing. Its design was based on the Teaching for Understanding theory developed by Entwistle (2009) and the framework of constructive alignment coined by Biggs (1996). Hence, this chapter first addresses why and how the UO pedagogy is supported by the two theories. After that, the construction of the UO pedagogy is proposed, and the specific instructional strategies and procedures are discussed accordingly.

4.1 Theoretical Basis of the UO Pedagogy: Teaching for Understanding The theory of Teaching for Understanding was proposed at the end of twentieth century when researchers and educators expressed their dissatisfaction with traditional instruction and explored ways of helping students get prepared for learning in the future (Darling-Hammond et al., 2015). Traditional instruction was criticized as teaching for knowing, instead of Teaching for Understanding (Perkins & Blythe, 1994). Teaching for knowing encourages rote learning, which only helps students memorize knowledge and skills but does not support their active use of knowledge and skills (Perkins, 2008). However, knowing cannot guarantee understanding, and it © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_4

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4 Design of an Understanding-Oriented (UO) Pedagogy

does little good to students’ further learning (Newton, 2011). Contrary to teaching for knowing, Teaching for Understanding focuses on students’ capacity in explaining, analyzing, evaluating, and representing knowledge and skills in innovative ways (Wiske & Breit, 2013). Performance of understanding is the keyword of the Teaching for Understanding theory. Research shows that there is a hierarchy of understanding from the lowest remembrance level to the highest performance level, and Teaching for Understanding aims at improving students’ understanding to the performance level (Cope & Prosser, 2005; Entwistle, 2007). So far, the theory has been well adopted by teachers from primary schools to universities (Wiske & Breit, 2013). Entwistle (2009) conducted research on Teaching for Understanding at the college level and provided significant inspiration for the instructional design of this book. According to Entwistle (2009), threshold concepts are crucial for students’ understanding in disciplines. These are key concepts in disciplines as well as gateway concepts through which students would establish disciplinary perspectives (Meyer & Land, 2003). When plagiarism in academic writing is discussed under the theory of Teaching for Understanding, it is viewed as a typical threshold concept for academic writing instruction (Hofer et al., 2012). In other words, students’ poor understanding of plagiarism may restrict their understanding of academic writing, while students’ rich understanding of plagiarism could provide them with a transformative understanding of academic writing and help construct their individual knowledge and skills of plagiarism-free academic writing. Therefore, I believe that the theory of Teaching for Understanding can provide theoretical and methodological inspiration for the current study. Then, how to conduct instruction to facilitate students’ understanding of plagiarism with the ultimate aim of promoting students’ plagiarism-free academic writing? The idea of constructive alignment is necessary to be adopted to provide an operational framework for the UO pedagogy.

4.2 Operational Framework for the UO Pedagogy: Constructive Alignment The linguist Pecorari (2010) once proposed that constructive alignment could be used as an effective instruction for text plagiarism education in the field of academic writing. Then what is constructive alignment? Which features make it suitable for plagiarism instruction? The review below addresses these two questions. Constructive alignment was first coined by Biggs (1996) in order to align learning objectives with the instructional approaches and assessment methods. The term “constructive” shows that constructive alignment is based on constructivism and that its core mission is to facilitate students’ knowledge construction through their engagement in learning activities. The term “alignment” indicates that the aim of constructive alignment is to align learning objectives with instructional activities and assessment methods. The constructive alignment is illustrated in Fig. 4.1.

4.2 Operational Framework for the UO Pedagogy: Constructive Alignment

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Learning objectives

Constructive Alignment Assessment methods

Instructional activities

Fig. 4.1 Constructive alignment. Note Adapted from Biggs’s (1996) research

Then how to achieve the constructive alignment? Biggs (1996) suggested that there were three steps for teachers or instructional designers to follow. The first step is to set learning objectives at the level of “performance of understanding” (p. 351). The second step is to design instructional activities in order to guide students to show their performance of understanding. The third one is to select appropriate assessment methods to evaluate students’ performance. The term “performance of understanding” comes from the theory of Teaching for Understanding. Based on this theory, Biggs (1996) believed that teachers and instructional designers who held performance of understanding in mind could conduct instructional system designs from the student perspective and adjust instructional system components to help students fulfill high levels of learning goals. Following the three steps, Biggs (2014) provided an operational framework for instructional design in university teaching: (1) use verbs to describe intended learning objectives; (2) design teaching and learning activities with the aim of engaging students in demonstrating those verbs; (3) design assessment activities containing those verbs and rubrics to evaluate to what extent students’ performance meets the targeted objectives; transform evaluation results into grades. The operational framework provides a general guideline for the design of the teaching and learning activities in this book. However, when this operational framework was adopted to develop and implement the UO pedagogy for plagiarism-free academic writing, I also had some specific instructional considerations, as explained in the next section.

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4.3 Construction of the UO Pedagogy Across Path, Pace, Time, and Place Using a Hybrid Learning Approach Even though Biggs (2014) proposed the three key components of instruction, i.e., learning objectives, instructional activities, and assessment methods, the question remains about how to transform the theoretical instruction into pedagogical practices. The successful implementation of a proposed pedagogy also depends on some contextual factors, including internal factors (e.g., students’ learning needs) and external factors (e.g., supports from faculties), which deserve due attention from researchers and practitioners (New London Group, 1996). In order to facilitate the dialogue between theory and practices, Sinnema and Aitken (2012) put forward five key principles of pedagogy: alignment, connection, community, interest, and inquiry. The connotation of each principle is defined as follows: • alignment refers to the idea that learning objectives should be designed to match students’ prior knowledge; • connection means that teaching should draw on students’ own learning experiences; • community indicates the establishment of productive learning relationship and mutual dialogue between the teacher and students as well as among students; • interest means that teaching should be conducted in a way that attracts students’ attentions and supports their active engagement in learning; • inquiry refers to the process of being conscious of students’ priority of learning during teaching. In this book, learning and teaching activities related to the UO pedagogy were designed by following Sinnema and Aitken’s (2012) five instructional principles, through which both teaching and learning could be underpinned by effective dialogue between them. Besides, it is hoped that the construction of the UO pedagogy would not just follow previous rules but rather provide robust evidence to enrich the principles in the process of implementing teaching and learning across classrooms and contexts. Sinnema and Aitken’s (2012) five instructional principles indicate a studentcentered philosophy. In the five principles, “alignment” focuses on students’ prior knowledge. “Connection” targets on students’ learning experiences. “Community” cares about students’ interaction with others. “Interest” pays attention to students’ attentions. “Inquiry” points to students’ priority of learning. Researchers have argued that learning cannot happen unless students are motivated to learn or they believe that they will benefit from using what they have learned in ways that interests them (New London Group, 1996). This suggests that the construction of the UO pedagogy should be student-centered, so students’ learning needs should be placed at the center of instructional design (Wood & Payne, 2018). Knowing about students’ learning needs became a main driving force for the design and implementation of the UO pedagogy. In the next section, Mainland Chinese undergraduates’ possible learning needs toward plagiarism and source use in Chinese academic writing are

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first discussed, based on which how learning objectives, instructional activities, and instructional strategies were designed to help satisfy these learning needs is explicated sequentially.

4.3.1 Learning Needs Analysis of the UO Pedagogy Learning needs refer to what students are supposed to do to achieve learning (Grant, 2002; Macalister & Nation, 2009). In this book, the situation that students would like to target is being free from plagiarism in their Chinese academic writing. According to Grant (2002), learning needs comprise four categories: felt needs (those said by students), expressed needs (those demonstrated by students in actions), normative needs (those identified by experts), and comparative needs (those emerge from comparisons across different groups). For students’ needs to be informed, it is suggested that all four categories of learning needs should be identified by researchers or practitioners. However, it is difficult to get to know the four learning needs within limited time. A proper solution is to have students’ learning needs in mind and treat learning needs analysis as an ongoing process throughout the whole instructional design process. In other words, students’ learning needs should be put at the center of instructional design instead of just at the beginning of instructional design, and instructional activities need to be designed based on these learning needs and later evaluated according to the same needs. To have a fruitful understanding of students’ learning needs, students’ felt needs, expressed needs and normative needs were identified and met in this book. The students’ learning needs (i.e., normative needs) were firstly gained from literature evidence, and in-depth learning needs analysis (i.e., felt needs and expressed needs) was obtained by exploring the student participants’ responses to the instructional intervention at the end of each research phase, based on which positive modifications of the UO pedagogy could be achieved. Previous research has informed that, in higher education, the errors that students encounter play an important role in motivating their learning (Zhao, 2011) and that it is extremely important for instructors to provide students with corresponding instruction (East, 2015). This suggests that the occurrence of plagiarism in students’ writings may arouse their desire to learn about it and find ways to cope with it. As mentioned in the Literature Review (see Chap. 2), the increasing plagiarism detected in students’ writings and strict punishment to it has raised students’ concern about plagiarism (East, 2010; Starr & Graham-Matheson, 2011). Moreover, the increasing patchwriting, over-citation, and excessive direct quotations in undergraduates’ academic writings show their lack of knowledge about and skills in plagiarism avoidance and proper source use (Hirvela & Du, 2013; Murphy, 2016). Researchers believe that if there is no effective instructional solution to those writing issues, plagiarism would occur (Murphy, 2016). Thus, literature proves students to have potential learning needs toward plagiarism avoidance and proper source use.

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4.3.2 Learning Objectives of the UO Pedagogy According to Pecorari and Petri´c (2014), anti-plagiarism pedagogy in academic writing consists of two parts: teaching explicitly about plagiarism and teaching about source use. Besides, the two parts are required to be combined to help effectively address plagiarism (Bloch, 2012; Pecorari & Petri´c, 2014). Therefore, the main learning objective should focus on facilitating students’ learning of source use and plagiarism. However, the learning of source use and plagiarism is too general to be used as the learning objectives of the newly designed pedagogy. The literature review has revealed that students’ poor understandings of plagiarism and sources use may be the main reason behind many plagiarism issues in writings (Howard et al., 2010), and there is a lack of instructional research and practices targeting at improving students’ understandings. Therefore, improving students’ understandings of source use and plagiarism became the specific learning objectives of the UO pedagogy. Apart from that, sub-learning objectives were identified to address the core knowledge and skills related to source use, which were paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation. Therefore, the intended learning objectives of the UO pedagogy are: • understanding of plagiarism • understanding of source use: paraphrasing (among which summarizing and synthesizing are included) and citation. By taking into account Bigg’s (1996) proposal of setting learning objectives at the level of “performance of understanding” (p. 351) and following the operational framework, the UO pedagogy’s learning objectives are described in detail as follows: • outline typical types and characteristics of plagiarism; • identify plagiarized parts in written texts and critically discuss them with peers; • describe the basic features of paraphrasing and summarizing and distinguish them from patchwriting; • apply the basic principle of source use to synthesize source information and finish an academic writing assignment; • modify one’s own writing to be plagiarism-free and properly cited together with peers.

4.3.3 Scaffolding Strategies and Instructional Procedure of the UO Pedagogy Pecorari’s (2010) research on plagiarism and academic writing provides suggestions on how to conduct academic writing instruction with the aim of preventing plagiarism, which offers useful strategies and methods to this book. Pecorari (2010) stated that source use was essentially a skill of academic writing, which meant that source use could not be acquired by merely attending lectures. Therefore, she suggested

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that the provision of multiple writing practices on source use could be more effective. Besides, she also advised that students’ review on each other’ written texts could help raise students’ awareness of writing from sources. During the review process, students could act as reviewers and reviewees, which would help them share individual understandings of source use and learn from one another (Nicol et al., 2014). Even though much useful advice on how to teach about source use and plagiarism has been suggested by researchers, few was put into practice (Halasek, 2011). In this book, by following the operational framework of constructive alignment, both instructional strategies and activities were designed to satisfy the intended learning objectives, i.e., students’ understanding of source use and plagiarism. The conceptual framework of the UO pedagogy is shown in Fig. 4.2.

4.3.3.1

Scaffolding Strategies

In order to organize teaching and learning activities in a systematic way, scaffolding strategies are necessary (Reigeluth, 2012). According to Saye and Brush (2002), there are two kinds of scaffolding strategies: “hard scaffolds” and “soft scaffolds” (p. 81). Hard scaffolds are instructional strategies which are planned based on instructional and learning resources at hand, such as identified learning needs and intended instructional goals. Soft scaffolds are instructional supports based on dynamically instructional diagnosis of students’ learning progress. For example, when students cannot understand a key concept, the provision of reflective questions, as a form of soft scaffolding, can help them understand the essential meaning of the concept. In this book, both hard and soft scaffolding strategies were developed to facilitate students’ plagiarism-free academic writing process. According to the intended learning objectives, i.e., students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use, and the learning characteristics of undergraduates in Chinese academic writing, deconstruction-peer construction-independent construction was proposed as a hard scaffold, which was adapted from the teaching/learning cycle in the Australian genre pedagogy tradition (Martin & Rose, 2005). Instructional supports with this hard scaffold were designed as follows. First, students followed instructional guidance to deconstruct previous preconceptions of plagiarism and source use by reviewing three writing examples and comparing the review results with those of their instructor. Second, students jointly constructed knowledge about and skills in plagiarism avoidance and proper source use during the process of reviewing each other’ written works (including both written peer review and oral peer discussions) and attending an in-class lecture. Finally, students independently constructed their performance of understanding of plagiarism and source use by making reflections on the plagiarism and source use issues in their own written works and making modifications on them. Detailed instructional process is explained in the following instructional procedure section. Apart from the hard scaffolding strategy, guiding questions (see Appendix D and H as two examples) were designed as soft scaffolds. As the questions were

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UO Pedagogy (in space dimension)

In class

S S

Online S

S

❶SelfStudent writing 3C model ❺Self revision Content, Construction, Consolidation

T

S

Instructor

❸Peer discussion S

S

Instructor ❹Lecturing

S

S

❷Peer review UO Pedagogy (in time dimension)

Learning objectives • Outline typical types and characteristics of plagiarism. • Identify the supposed plagiarized parts in written texts, and critically discussed with peers. • Describe the basic features of paraphrasing and summarizing, and distinguish them with patchwriting. • Apply the basic principle of source use to synthesize source information and finish an academic writing assignment. • Modify one's own writing together with peers. Teaching/ learning activities

Assessment • Formative assessment: peer review and peer discussion about writing assignments, as well as instructor’s comments on peer review. • Summative assessment: instructor’s grading and feedback to the final version of submitted writings based on level of plagiarism and writing quality revealed in writings with the help of the ICT tool.

Constructive Alignment

• Students finish a writing assignment. • Students review 3 writing examples with varying quality in plagiarism and source use. • Students review peer’s writing. • Students discuss with peers about plagiarism and source use issues arise from writings. • Instructor gives feedback to peer discussion and provide a lecture on plagiarism and source use. • Students make revisions on their writings and submit them for evaluation.

Teaching for Understanding Constructivist Learning Theory

Fig. 4.2 Conceptual framework of the UO pedagogy

designed to scaffold students’ academic writing process, they played different roles in different instructional stages. For example, during the deconstruction stage, the provision of guiding questions was to instruct students to concentrate on reviewing the provided writing examples and comparing reviewing results with those of the instructor, through which students’ preconceptions of plagiarism and source use could be challenged. During the peer construction stage, the role of guiding questions was to remind students to give timely feedback to peers’ works as well as instruct

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43

students to consider how to make comments on peers’ writing quality. During the independent construction stage, guiding questions were raised to remind students to make reflections on their written works according to feedbacks from both peers and the instructor as well as instruct students to revise their writing to satisfy the evaluation criteria.

4.3.3.2

Instructional Procedure

Detailed instructional procedure of the UO pedagogy is discussed as follows. First, students were required to read two academic papers (provided by their course instructor) and write an essay within two weeks. The academic papers were available in the online writing system. Writing requirements of the essay were designed on the basis of Lu’s (2013) research, and modifications were made to fit the Chinese writing assignment of this book (see Appendix D). Requirements were as follows. Students were asked to write an essay with six paragraphs based on two academic papers. Among the six paragraphs, the first two were two summaries of the academic papers. The third to the fifth paragraphs were used for synthesizing two source materials into a critical analysis and discussion. The final paragraph was the summary of the preceding three paragraphs. Besides, students were required to paraphrase more than three sentences from the original academic papers and mark them in bold black font in the essay. They were also asked to use a proper citation format. During the writing process, students were offered guiding questions (see Appendix D) to follow the requirements for each paragraph. Since the provision of the online writing system helped expand students’ learning space to a virtual environment, students could prepare their essays without space constraints. Then, after submitting their first essay drafts, students were provided with three writing examples with varying quality regarding to plagiarism and source use (i.e., in high, medium, and low quality). In the medium- and low-quality writing examples, there existed poor source use and text plagiarism problems. The three writing examples were chosen by students’ course instructors from previous students’ writings on a similar topic. Students were required to evaluate the quality of the three writings within two hours with a provided rubric, which was the same as the writing assignment assessment rubric (see Appendix G). To help students get involved in the review process, several guiding questions were designed (see Appendix H) and provided to students with the help of the online writing system. After that, students were offered the instructor’s evaluation and comments on the three writing examples to make comparisons with their own. By way of comparison, students’ previous perceptions on plagiarism and source use might experience the deconstruction process. Meanwhile, they would have chances to be familiar with the review criteria, which helped them become prepared for the following peer review process (Awada & Diab, 2023). During this phase, all instructional activities were held in the online writing system. Afterward, the student participants were divided into several groups and group members reviewed each other’ writing. According to previous literature, three to four students per group would be the most proper (Reinholz, 2016). In this book, each

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student was assigned to review two other group members’ writings within one hour and evaluate the writing quality with the same rubric as used in the previous phase (see Appendix G). To help students get involved in the peer review process, the same guiding questions were provided (see Appendix H). The aim of the instructional activity design was to facilitate students’ engagement into practices of source use as well as to improve their mutual communication (Evans, 2013; Van den Berg et al., 2006). Students were expected to identify poor source use and text plagiarism problems in peers’ writings and offer suggestions for revision. The peer review was conducted within the online writing system. During this process, the instructor could supervise communication between peers and provide feedback to peers’ review results. Besides, with the help of a plagiarism analysis module embedded in the online writing system, the instructor could gain information about students’ plagiarism level in writings. Detailed description of the plagiarism analysis module can be found in Sect. 5.3. After receiving peers’ and the instructor’s feedbacks, students brought their writings to class and discussed with their group members face-to-face. In the discussion session, the instructor provided scaffolding support whenever students asked for help. After that, the instructor provided one-hour lecture on how to write from sources to avoid plagiarism based on both the plagiarism issues revealed from the students’ writings and the students’ concerns expressed in the peer review and peer discussions. By lecturing, the instructor elaborated knowledge about plagiarism avoidance and proper source use. Typical writing examples from the students were used to emphasize the importance of understanding of source use and plagiarism. During this phase, both the peer review online and peer discussions in class, together with classroom teaching, constructed the peer construction process. Finally, students independently modified their writings according to peers’ and instructor’s feedbacks in one week and then submitted the revised versions to the online system for assessment. During the independent construction process, students were required to keep track changes of modifications for the evaluation purposes.

4.3.4 UO Pedagogy Enables Hybrid Learning From the instructional activities design and the ICT tool’s function layout mentioned above, it can be seen that the design of the UO pedagogy takes into account many factors that had received less attention in previous plagiarism instruction research, including students’ learning needs for understanding plagiarism and source use, the involvement of instructors from disciplines, the ICT’s potential in supporting both teaching and learning in plagiarism-free academic writing practices. More importantly, different from the traditional plagiarism instruction that focused on in-class delivery of content to students (Howard et al., 2010), the UO pedagogy was constructed by combining face-to-face instruction with the online instruction, which provided a hybrid learning experience for students on plagiarism-free academic

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writing under disciplinary contexts. Therefore, the UO pedagogy enables a typical hybrid learning scenario. Hybrid learning has been a hot research and development area in pedagogy and it refers to the combination of face-to-face instruction with ICT-mediated instruction (Cavanaugh et al., 2012). Its purpose is similar to other educational approaches in terms of enabling each student to reach his/her maximum learning potential (Powell et al., 2014). According to researchers, although hybrid learning may be diverse in forms of implementation, there are two key features of good-quality hybrid learning: satisfying learning objectives and scaffolding learners (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004). In this book, the design of the UO pedagogy embodied the key features of hybrid learning as follows. Driven by satisfying students’ learning needs for plagiarismfree academic writing in disciplinary contexts, understanding of plagiarism and source use were set as the learning objectives of the UO pedagogy and corresponding instructional activities and assessment methods were designed to align the learning objectives. Besides, it was the learning objectives that determined why and how to incorporate ICT into plagiarism instruction to support teaching and learning. The instructional procedure (see Sect. 4.3.3) provided detailed description and analysis on the instructional considerations on satisfying the learning objectives. I believe that it is the learning objectives that demand the implementation of plagiarism instruction in a hybrid form, not vice versa, which is consistent with Hutchison and Woodward’s (2014) statement regarding the importance of learning objectives for hybrid learning design. As for scaffolding learners, it has been researchers’ consensus that the purpose of incorporating ICT in teaching and learning is to facilitate students’ learning to be independent, personalized, and sustainable (e.g., Graham, 2006). However, it should be noted that the simple addition of ICT to instruction does not ensure the achievement of independent, personalized, and sustainable learning among students (O’Byrne & Pytash, 2015). In this book, with the students’ learning needs in mind, the learning tasks held in the virtual environment were specified in a way so as to complement the instructional activities in class (see Chap. 5). This book thus provides detailed information regarding how students’ plagiarism-free academic writing can be well-supported in a hybrid environment. The analysis above shows that the two key features for good hybrid learning are not related to ICT but to learning, which are essentially the same as those for good face-to-face and online instruction. Then, under what circumstances it is necessary to introduce hybrid learning? According to Graham et al. (2005), there are three purposes of adopting hybrid learning: intensified pedagogy, improved flexibility, and enhanced cost-effectiveness and resource use. Obviously, the intents of introducing hybrid learning lie in solving instructional problems, such as limited instructional benefits for students, lack of flexibility, or increased instructional cost. According to Chap. 3, these intents have been detailed in previous plagiarism instruction research, based on which the new UO pedagogy was designed. First, the intensified pedagogy Even though much plagiarism instruction has been implemented in higher education, frequent reports of plagiarism issues from campuses throughout the world

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suggest that plagiarism has not been effectively solved (Starr & Graham-Matheson, 2011). Therefore, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of plagiarism instruction, the UO pedagogy was designed, and corresponding instructional activities, including self-writing online, written peer review online, face-to-face peer discussions, in-class lecturing, and self-revision online, were introduced to both students and their instructors during the academic writing process in subject courses. As for to what extent the UO pedagogy might have effects on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing, research findings from the three-round experiment could help bring insights (see discussions in Chaps. 6 and 7). Second, the improved flexibility of instruction According to researchers, the power of hybrid learning lies in its flexibility to adapt to a broad range of different needs (O’Byrne & Pytash, 2015). In this book, the UO pedagogy was designed to cater for both instructional and learning needs by combining online and face-to-face instruction in a more efficient and meaningful way. For example, the newly designed ICT tool provided students with enhanced temporal and geographic flexibility in finishing academic writings anytime and anywhere as well as individualized support fitting into their own learning path and at their own pace. Apart from students, instructors benefited from hybrid learning as being able to detect students’ plagiarism and source use problems more easily and provide feedback more timely. Third, enhanced cost-effectiveness and resource use Compared with traditional plagiarism instruction by writing instructors and librarians in a separate course for students, the UO pedagogy lowered operating costs by involving subject instructors in plagiarism instruction during disciplinary courses and scaffolding students’ learning about plagiarism and source use during course writing assignments.

References Awada, G. M., & Diab, N. M. (2023). Effect of online peer review versus face-to-face peer review on argumentative writing achievement of EFL learners. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 36(1–2), 238–256. Beetham, H., & Sharpe, R. (2013). Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: Designing and delivering e-learning. Routledge. Biggs, J. (1996). Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education, 32(3), 347–364. Biggs, J. (2014). Constructive alignment in university teaching. HERDSA Review of Higher Education, 1(5), 5–22. Bloch, J. (2012). Plagiarism, intellectual property and the teaching of L2 writing: Explorations in the detection based approach (Vol. 24). Multilingual Matters. Cavanaugh, C., Freidhoff, J. R., & Ferdig, R. E. (2012). Lessons learned from blended programs: Experiences and recommendations from the field. iNACOL. Cope, C., & Prosser, M. (2005). Identifying didactic knowledge: An empirical study of the educationally critical aspects of learning about information systems. Higher Education, 49(3), 345–372.

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Daniels, H. (2016). Vygotsky and pedagogy (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/978131 5617602 Darling-Hammond, L., Barron, B., Pearson, P. D., Schoenfeld, A. H., Stage, E. K., Zimmerman, T. D., Cervetti, G. N., & Tilson, J. L. (2015). Powerful learning: What we know about teaching for understanding. United States. East, J. (2010). Judging plagiarism: A problem of morality and convention. Higher Education, 59(1), 69–83. East, J. (2015). Educational responses to academic integrity. Handbook of Academic Integrity, 1–13. Entwistle, N. (2007). 1–Research into student learning and university teaching. The British Psychological Society, 1(18), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1348/000709906X166772 Entwistle, N. (2009). Teaching for understanding at university: Deep approaches and distinctive ways of thinking. Palgrave Macmillan. Evans, C. (2013). Making sense of assessment feedback in higher education. Review of Educational Research, 83(1), 70–120. Garrison, D. R., & Kanuka, H. (2004). Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 7(2), 95–105. Graham, C. R., Allen, S., & Ure, D. (2005). Benefits and challenges of blended learning environments. In Encyclopedia of information science and technology (1st ed., pp. 253–259). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-59140-553-5.ch047 Graham, C. R. (2006). Blended learning systems: Definition, current trends, and future directions. In Handbook of blended learning: Global perspectives, local designs (pp. 3–21). Pfeiffer Publishing. Grant, J. (2002). Learning needs assessment: Assessing the need. BMJ, 324(7330), 156–159. Halasek, K. (2011). Theorizing plagiarism in the university. College English, 73(5), 548–568. Hirvela, A., & Du, Q. (2013). “Why am I paraphrasing?”: Undergraduate ESL writers’ engagement with source-based academic writing and reading. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(2), 87–98. Hofer, A. R., Townsend, L., & Brunetti, K. (2012). Troublesome concepts and information literacy: Investigating threshold concepts for IL instruction. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 12(4), 387–405. Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing and Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192. Hutchison, A., & Woodward, L. (2014). A planning cycle for integrating digital technology into literacy instruction. The Reading Teacher, 67(6), 455–464. Lu, H.-C. (2013). Developing Taiwanese EFL undergraduate students’ knowledge of plagiairism avoidance and enhancing their English paraphrasing and citation skills by using an online writing tutorial system National Cheng Kung University]. Macalister, J., & Nation, I. (2009). Language curriculum design. Routledge. Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2005). Designing literacy pedagogy: Scaffolding asymmetries. Continuing Discourse on Language, 251–280. Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2003). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. University of Edinburgh. Murphy, G. A. (2016). Worlds apart? International students, source-based writing, and faculty development across the curriculum [Ed.D., University of California, Los Angeles]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1798494014?accountid= 14548 New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–93. Newton, D. P. (2011). Teaching for understanding: What it is and how to do it. Routledge. Nicol, D., Thomson, A., & Breslin, C. (2014). Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: A peer review perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(1), 102–122. O’Byrne, W. I., & Pytash, K. E. (2015). Hybrid and blended learning: Modifying pedagogy across path, pace, time, and place. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(2), 137–140.

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Pecorari, D., & Petri´c, B. (2014). Plagiarism in second-language writing. Language Teaching, 47(03), 269–302. Pecorari, D. (2010). Academic writing and plagiarism: A linguistic analysis. A&C Black. Perkins, D., & Blythe, T. (1994). Putting understanding up front. Educational Leadership, 51, 4–4. Perkins, D. (2008). Smart schools: From training memories to educating minds. Simon and Schuster. Powell, A., Rabbitt, B., & Kennedy, K. (2014). iNACOL blended learning teacher competency framework. International Association for K-12 Online Learning. Reigeluth, C. M. (2012). Instructional theory and technology for the new paradigm of education. RED: Revista de Educación a Distancia, 32, 1–18. Reinholz, D. (2016). The assessment cycle: A model for learning through peer assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(2), 301–315. Saye, J. W., & Brush, T. (2002). Scaffolding critical reasoning about history and social issues in multimedia-supported learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 77–96. Sinnema, C., & Aitken, G. (2012). Effective pedagogy in social sciences. Educational Practices, 23. Starr, S., & Graham-Matheson, L. (2011). Efficacy of Turnitin in support of an institutional plagiarism policy. plagiarismadvice.org. Retrieved April 2, from http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/ 10061/1/Starr_-_Graham-Matheson_-_Canterbury_Christ_Church_University_-_Report_for_ plagiarismadvice.org_May_2011_-_FINAL.docx Van den Berg, I., Admiraal, W., & Pilot, A. (2006). Peer assessment in university teaching: Evaluating seven course designs. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(1), 19–36. Wiske, M. S., & Breit, L. (2013). Teaching for understanding with technology. Jossey-Bass. Wood, A., & Payne, A. (2018). Using evidence-based patterns to design innovative learning experiences. In: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, Washington, D.C., United States. Zhao, B. (2011). Learning from errors: The role of context, emotion, and personality. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(3), 435–463.

Chapter 5

Design of an ICT Tool: The Online Writing System

According to the instructional procedure mentioned in the previous chapter, apart from the face-to-face peer discussions and in-class lectures, most learning activities of the UO pedagogy took place in an online learning environment supported by a newly designed ICT tool. Apparently, the ICT tool acted as an important component of the UO pedagogy. In this chapter, the need of the ICT tool and its task design are outlined to demonstrate the instructional design behind it.

5.1 The Need for the ICT Tool Different disciplinaries view and address plagiarism in different ways, so it is necessary to conduct plagiarism instruction under disciplinary contexts (Hyland, 2013; Murphy, 2016). In this book, the UO pedagogy was introduced in disciplinary courses and the extra workload on instructors was considered. Previous research showed that instructors in disciplines were reluctant to introduce plagiarism instruction because of the extra burden it caused (Liu & Yang, 2012; Wingate, 2012). What’s more, even though peer interaction is important for students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use, it is time-consuming in class (Zhao, 2018). Thus, the implementation of the UO pedagogy might bring extra workload for instructors. As discussed in the literature review, even though limited time, energy, and expertise may hinder instructors from conducting plagiarism instruction in disciplines (Séror, 2009), instruction should not be delayed until instructors are ready and instructors should not bear the whole responsibility for teaching source use and plagiarism (Murphy, 2016; Tomaš, 2010). Since ICT can share part of the instructional responsibility and expand students’ learning space to the virtual environment (Liu et al., 2013), there is a need to introduce an ICT tool in plagiarism instruction. In order to ensure that students’ plagiarism-free academic writing practices could be well supported by ICT, some specific learning and instructional requirements

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_5

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received due attention during the adoption of an ICT tool in the UO pedagogy. First of all, students’ writing process and the peer review process were made transparent to their instructors, through which the instructors could know about students’ writing issues and provide proper supports (Aghaee & Keller, 2016). Besides, students were allowed to write at their own pace and communicate with peers during the writing process (Henry et al., 2012). I also considered whether the current ICT tools could satisfy the instructional and learning needs mentioned above. ICT tools have been created to provide plagiarism detection (e.g., CrossCheck, WCopyFind), writing practices (e.g., Criterion, WriteToLearn), or both functions (e.g., Turnitin, Glatt) (Liu et al., 2013). However, users of the plagiarism detection tools might have their writings labeled with similarity rates without knowing how to make changes to their writings, while users of the writing tools might not learn how to use sources properly. Also, users of all these tools would be limited to self-learning but have no chance to learn from others. Moreover, the common defect among the current ICT tools lies in that they could barely support students’ practices of plagiarism avoidance and source use in the "natural" or "real" academic writing progress or facilitate disciplinary instructors’ involvement in guiding students’ plagiarism-free academic writing process. In response to both the instructional and learning needs regarding plagiarism instruction, a new ICT tool, i.e., an online writing system (http://www.ows-edu.com/moodle/), was developed.

5.2 Task Design of the ICT Tool In this book, the online learning tasks were designed based on Bird’s (2007) ContentConstruction-Consolidation model (3C model), which was the first instructional design model for online courses (Liu & Yang, 2012). In the 3C model, “Content” means the knowledge to be learned by students. “Construction” indicates that knowledge is socially constructed rather than passively received. “Consolidation” refers to students’ deep reflections on the learned knowledge (Bird, 2007; Liu & Yang, 2012). The 3C model has been widely adopted because it is simple to follow in the process of constructing modules1 for online learning. Moreover, it can lead system designers to turn theoretical conceptions into practical down-to-earth activity designs (Bird, 2007). By following the 3C model, the online learning tasks were designed as follows in this book. Step 1: conduct module analysis The aim is to create modules across the 3C components, or in other words, to inspect if each proposed module focuses on content, construction, or consolidation. Besides, it is necessary to consider whether the desired modules can support students’ online coherent learning experiences capable of delivering the proposed learning objectives. Moreover, system designers need to properly allocate students’ possible 1

The term “module” refers to the fundamental organizational unit for containing and delivering instructional content within an online learning system.

5.3 Functions and Layout of the ICT Tool

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investment of time and effort in each module. In this book, in order to achieve the designed learning objectives (see Sect. 4.3.2), four modules were proposed, including the writing assignment module, peer review module, plagiarism analysis module, and communication module. Step 2: design module activities At this stage, the design focus is transferred from modules to specific learning tasks in each module. Besides, learning tasks need to be designed to align with the assessment strategies, and appropriate scaffolding strategies need to be adopted to facilitate students’ engagement in these learning tasks. In this book, the specific learning tasks in each module were designed sequentially. For example, conducting peer review among students was adopted as an important learning task in the peer review module, and some guiding questions were built in the peer review module to remind students to pay attentions to source use issues in the peers’ writings. Besides, in order to help students be familiar with the peer review criteria and motivate their involvement in the peer review process, students were provided with three writing examples to review and asked to compare their review results with those from their instructor before peer review began. Step 3: presentation design of online learning activities At this stage, modules and related learning tasks need to be organized with a proper structure for online presentation. It is suggested by Bird (2007) that the form of presentation need to cater for students’ learning needs and previous learning experiences with ICT. In this book, the online learning activities of the UO pedagogy were arranged in the way that followed the timeline of the instructional procedure (see Fig. 5.1). When students registered in the online writing system, they could access learning materials/modules by clicking corresponding links, such as the writing requirements (available in PDF format), the peer review training manual (available in PDF and mp4 format), and the peer review module (see the middle part of Fig. 5.1). However, students’ access to those online resources were constrained to their learning progress. For example, the peer review module and related learning resources were invisible to students until they had successfully submitted their first drafts to the online writing system. The purpose of such presentation design was to help students focus on their current learning tasks without being disrupted by the upcoming ones. There is one more thing worth noting here: the plagiarism analysis module could only be accessed by the instructors for diagnosing the quality of students’ writings.

5.3 Functions and Layout of the ICT Tool The online writing system was designed based on Moodle, a widely used opensource Learning Content Management System (LCMS). There were four reasons for choosing Moodle. First, Moodle was developed from a social constructivist perspective with an emphasis on communication and evaluation (Al-Ajlan & Zedan, 2008), which could satisfy the requirements for the system design in this book. Second,

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(Course: Instructional design)

(Course navigation)

(Preface)

(Brief introduction)

(Writing resources & requirements) (Peer review training manual) (Submit writings and conduct peer review) (Make revisions on writings and submit) (Plagiarism analysis module)

Fig. 5.1 Learning activities arrangement in the online writing system (in the middle)

Moodle was provided as open source, so that it allowed users to copy, use, and modify it freely (Nash & Rice, 2010). Therefore, I could directly add new modules and save much time in system development. Third, Moodle has been adopted on campuses all around the world to help teachers conduct instruction (Patel & Patel, 2017) and the usefulness and system usability of Moodle or Moodle-based learning systems have been well proved (Damnjanovic et al., 2015; Senol et al., 2014). Based on the learning activities design mentioned in the previous chapter, four functional modules were identified in the online writing system, including the writing assignment module, peer review module, plagiarism analysis module, and communication module. Apart from the plagiarism analysis module, the other three modules were built on the basis of Moodle’s original modules. For instance, the peer review module was built based on the “Workshop” activity in Moodle and the communication module was created on the basis of the “Forum” activity in it. The plagiarism analysis module was designed by me (see Fig. 5.2). The plagiarism analysis mechanism of the module was built upon the text similarity approach that many plagiarism detection tools used (Pradhan et al., 2015). Specifically, this module adopted the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) to measure the length of the longest word sets of a pair of strings (i.e., sentences), among which one string is from a student’s writing and the other from a source material (Chowdhury & Bhattacharyya, 2018; Saini et al., 2016). In this way, each sentence of a student’s writing was matched with sentences of the sources and the most relevant strings could be retrieved based on their similarity with the sources. Those strings were stored in the online writing system and highlighted (in yellow) for the students’ instructor to review in the plagiarism analysis results interface.

5.3 Functions and Layout of the ICT Tool

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(Plagiarism analysis module) Select source materials

Choose students’ writings

Fig. 5.2 Input interface of the plagiarism analysis module

To help instructors diagnose plagiarism in students’ writings, two widely used plagiarism assessment scales were adopted in the design of this module: the degree of similarity and the number of consecutively copied words. The degree of similarity refers to the extent to which a student writing is similar to its source materials from the perspective of lexical similarity and it has been well adopted in many Plagiarism Detection Software, e.g., Turnitin, to serve as a plagiarism assessment scale (Bruton & Childers, 2016). In this book, a writing’s degree of similarity was calculated by summing all the detected length of the longest Chinese characters in each sentence by using LCS and dividing it by the total number of Chinese characters of the writing. Apart from the degree of similarity, the number of consecutively copied words has been adopted as another signal by many research associations to estimate plagiarism (e.g., Committee On Publication Ethics, 1997; World Association of Medical Editors, 1995). In this book, the number of most consecutively copied words in each student’s writing could be obtained easily by using the “word count” function of the plagiarism analysis module. Compared with the current plagiarism detection tools, the plagiarism analysis module provides more flexibility for instructors in diagnosing plagiarism issues in students’ writings. In it, instructors can inspect possible plagiarism by setting plagiarism analysis parameters, such as the number and form of source materials, the number of students’ written works, and the minimal phrase match2 (see Fig. 5.2). By clicking the “Analyze” button, students’ writings will be compared with source materials. A very important feature for the plagiarism analysis module is its layout design for analysis results. Analysis results are presented in two views: the partial view and the full-text view. In the partial view, the plagiarism analysis results are arranged in a table, where the degree of similarity of each sentence is listed (as a percentage), 2

For example, once the number of minimum phrase match was set, the similar texts containing more than the number can be marked and counted during plagiarism analysis process. According to previous research, six is usually adopted as the minimum phrase match.

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5 Design of an ICT Tool: The Online Writing System

together with corresponding sentences from students’ writings and source materials. In the full-text view, two parallel boxes are provided to compare the source texts and the suspicious texts in student’s writing. The text in the left box is a student’s writing and the one in the right box is a source text, in which the highlighted areas in yellow indicate the similar parts between the two texts. By clicking the highlighted sentence in the student’s writing in the left box, the corresponding part of source text will be presented in the right box. Besides, instructors can get the exact number of words in any selected sentences or paragraphs with the help of the “word count” function. Based on the word count function, the exact number of most consecutively copied words, i.e., the number of consecutively copied words in the biggest highlighted area of each writing, can be determined which provides more detailed information on the plagiarism severity in the students’ writings. Moreover, the instructor can download the plagiarism analysis results with highlighted areas and use them as instructional materials in classroom teaching.

References Aghaee, N., & Keller, C. (2016). ICT-supported peer interaction among learners in bachelor’s and master’s thesis courses. Computers & Education, 94, 276–297. Al-Ajlan, A., & Zedan, H. (2008). Why moodle. In 12th IEEE International Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems, 2008. FTDCS’08. Bird, L. (2007). The 3 ‘C’ design model for networked collaborative e-learning: A tool for novice designers. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(2), 153–167. Bruton, S., & Childers, D. (2016). The ethics and politics of policing plagiarism: A qualitative study of faculty views on student plagiarism and Turnitin® . Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(2), 316–330. Chowdhury, H. A., & Bhattacharyya, D. K. (2018). Plagiarism: Taxonomy, tools and detection techniques. Computing Research Repository (CoRR), abs/1801.06323. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/ papers/1801/1801.06323.pdf Committee On Publication Ethics. (1997). Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors. Committee On Publication Ethics. https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines Damnjanovic, V., Jednak, S., & Mijatovic, I. (2015). Factors affecting the effectiveness and use of Moodle: Students’ perception. Interactive Learning Environments, 23(4), 496–514. Henry, L. A., Castek, J., O’Byrne, W. I., & Zawilinski, L. (2012). Using peer collaboration to support online reading, writing, and communication: An empowerment model for struggling readers. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 28(3), 279–306. Hyland, K. (2013). Writing in the university: Education, knowledge and reputation. Language Teaching, 46(01), 53–70. Liu, Lo, & Wang. (2013). Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study. Computers & Education, 69, 1–14. Liu, & Yang, S. (2012). Applying the practical inquiry model to investigate the quality of students’ online discourse in an information ethics course based on Bloom’s teaching goal and Bird’s 3C model. Computers & Education, 59(2), 466–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012. 01.018 Murphy, G. A. (2016). Worlds apart? International students, source-based writing, and faculty development across the curriculum [Ed.D., University of California, Los Angeles]. ProQuest

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Dissertations & Theses A&I. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1798494014?accountid= 14548 Nash, S. S., & Rice, W. (2010). Moodle 1. 9 teaching techniques: Creative ways to build powerful and effective online courses. Packt Publishing Ltd. Patel, D., & Patel, H. I. (2017). Blended learning in higher education using MOODLE open source learning management tool. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, 8(5), 439–441. Pradhan, N., Gyanchandani, M., & Wadhvani, R. (2015). A review on text similarity technique used in IR and its application. International Journal of Computer Applications, 120(9). Saini, A., Bahl, A., Kumari, S., & Singh, M. (2016). Plagiarism checker: Text mining. International Journal of Computer Applications, 134(3), 8–11. Senol, L., Gecili, H., & Durdu, P. O. (2014). Usability evaluation of a Moodle based learning management system. In EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology Séror, J. (2009). Institutional forces and L2 writing feedback in higher education. Canadian Modern Language Review, 66(2), 203–232. Tomaš, Z. (2010). Addressing pedagogy on textual borrowing: Focus on instructional resources. Writing & Pedagogy, 2(2), 223–250. Wingate, U. (2012). Using academic literacies and genre-based models for academic writing instruction: A ‘literacy’ journey. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 11(1), 26–37. World Association of Medical Editors. (1995). WAME history. http://www.wame.org/ Zhao, H. (2018). Exploring tertiary English as a Foreign Language writing tutors’ perceptions of the appropriateness of peer assessment for writing. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(7), 1133–1145.

Chapter 6

Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice

The main research question of this book is: How to design and develop a UO pedagogy to facilitate undergraduates’ understanding of plagiarism and source use in Chinese academic writing? As this book engages the design and development of the UO pedagogy as well as its implementation and assessment, a design-based research (DBR) methodology was adopted. This book comprised three research phases (i.e., Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3), and the research findings from previous research phases provide insights for the next research phase. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through multiple instruments, such as surveys, writing assignments, and interviews. The UO pedagogy supposedly was under continuous improvement over the three research phases. In this chapter, based on the analysis of how DBR is adopted to support the research design of this book, research findings of Study 1 and the refinement of UO pedagogy are outlined.

6.1 A Design-Based Research of Plagiarism Pedagogy 6.1.1 Design-Based Research (DBR) According to Brown (1992), DBR was adopted in educational research in the late twentieth century. The aim of DBR is to explore practical solutions to specific educational problems as well as to make theoretical contributions to general educational phenomena. In the short history, there has been an increasing attention to the potential of DBR for educational research, as a suitable methodology for the design and development of interventional products (e.g., instructional tool) to address educational problems. DBR can also bring about theoretical insights into the design principles of those products (Bakker & van Eerde, 2015; McKenney & Reeves, 2013). In order to clarify the role of DBR in educational research, previous literature has compared it with other research methods, such as design and development research © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_6

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as well as action research. Reeves and McKenney (2015) stated that both DBR and design and development research are similar as they both design and develop artifacts for educational problem solving (e.g., a tool for knowledge construction). However, DBR cares more about interventions by the artificial products in the educational processes, the interventions’ outcomes, and scientific understanding to the interventions. As for the differences between DBR and action research, Bakker and van Eerde (2015) pointed out that the two research methodologies have commonalities as interventional research. However, action research focuses on actions rather than design, which means that action research may not comprise designing and developing learning products. From the analysis above, it is inferred that DBR is a methodology that integrates design with research and thus carries the features of both. According to Anderson and Shattuck (2012), DBR has eight characteristics, such as involving the cooperation of researchers and practitioners, adopting triangulation methods, and evolving principles of design. However, McKenney and Reeves (2013) pointed out that Anderson and Shattuck’s research neglected an important characteristic of DBR, i.e., being triggered by educational problems. They further explained that a specific DBR study usually derived from a practical problem, which made DBR significant in conducting researchable practices and worthy of scientific exploration. Then, how to carry out DBR? In general, there are three basic stages: analysis, design, and evaluation (Reeves & McKenney, 2015). However, Bell (2004) stated that there is no fixed procedure for researchers to follow because of the diversity in research models, such as the Osmotic model (Ejersbo et al., 2008), the integrated learning design framework (ILDF) (Bannan, 2009), and the general model (Reeves & McKenney, 2015). Among them, Bannan’s (2009) ILDF interprets the research procedures in detail, which not only provides four basic stages, but also scaffolds researchers with specific steps, guiding questions, and suitable methods. After making careful analysis on the framework, especially on its applicability to the goal of this book, ILDF was selected as the research framework. The ILDF consists of four stages: informed exploration, enactment, local level of design evaluation, and broader level of design evaluation (Bannan, 2009). Bannan (2009) pointed out that ILDF comprises the components of instructional design, for example, the analysis on instructional problems and characteristics of potential users. However, it differs from instructional design in that it contains multiple research cycles. Research cycles occur throughout the whole research process, which can help generate research insights to refine products and produce valuable theoretical principles. As ILDF is able to focus on research process, provide step-by-step research guidelines, and afford multiple cycles of retrospection, researchers can make deliberative research decisions with it. Based on Bannan’s (2009) ILDF, the progress of design research in this book was developed (see Fig. 6.1), with adaptions from the design research of Oh (2011). As illustrated in Fig. 6.1, this book lasted for two years. The purposes of each stage are outlined below. • Informed exploration stage

6.1 A Design-Based Research of Plagiarism Pedagogy

Informed

Enactment

exploration

• Needs Analysis • Survey Literature • Context Exploration

59

Implementation

Evaluation

• Instructional

• Course

• Summarize

Design

Implication

Results

• System Design

• Data collection & • Evaluate

• Refine design &

analysis

Results

Prototype

• Refine Design

• Diffusion

and theory

Fig. 6.1 Progress of design research in this book. Note Adapted from Oh’s (2011) design research

The purpose of this stage was to establish a rationale for this book by conducting needs analysis, literature review and context exploration on plagiarism instruction research. Among them, needs analysis is essential to identify the current status of plagiarism instruction in Chinese higher education as well as both instructors’ and students’ voices from previous studies regrading plagiarism instruction. • Enactment stage The goal of this stage was to articulate the design of the UO pedagogy, construct a prototype of the online writing system, and design the implementation plan and evaluation procedures. • Implementation stage In the implementation stage, I and the course instructor participants worked closely to facilitate the implementation of the newly designed pedagogy under disciplinary contexts. During the stage, three phases of intervention were adopted to collect data from both students and their instructors, among which the first two were used to refine the UO pedagogy, while the third was undertaken to explore its effects on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing. • Evaluation stage The stage focused on summarizing the research findings by bringing together various threads that emerged and evaluating the book’s theoretical and practical contributions. What’s more, this stage also involved the diffusion of the research findings, including the design principles for plagiarism instruction, the UO pedagogy, and the online writing system, in a broader context. The four stages do not process in a linear direction. They overlapped with each other and generated multiple research cycles for researchers to get more information.

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6.1.2 Research Design 6.1.2.1

Participants

This book recruited two instructors and their undergraduate students from two disciplinary courses at two universities in northern China. As plagiarism problems in academic writing are related to disciplinary knowledge and understanding, its strategy was to design and develop an academic writing project (i.e., AW project) in one discipline based on the UO pedagogy and then apply the pedagogy to other disciplines after its effects were tested. Such a research idea has been proved to be feasible by researchers in academic writing (Wingate, 2012). In this book, all participants were from the education discipline. Specifically, in the first two research phases, one class of junior-year undergraduate students (n = 38) and their course instructor Mr. L1 from the Educational Technology discipline at a public university were invited to participate. In the third research phase, two classes of freshmen (n = 121) and their instructor Ms. Z2 from the same discipline at another university were invited. During the research periods, the instructors were enrolled to conduct the teaching of source use and plagiarism with the new pedagogy in their subject courses. The detailed background information of instructors and their students can be found in Sects. 6.2.1 and 7.3.1.

6.1.2.2

Research Plan

Based on the design-based research, the book consisted of three phases (see Table 6.1). The aim of the first two phases was to implement and refine the UO pedagogy, as well as explore students’ responses to it. The last phase was to probe the effectiveness of the UO pedagogy on students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use in academic writing. In the preparation of this research, as the key component of the UO pedagogy, a prototype of the online writing system was designed by me based on Moodle. Since previous research on the usefulness and system usability of Moodle or Moodlebased learning systems have shown promising results (Damnjanovic et al., 2015), the system development on the basis of Moodle helped to ensure the usability of the newly designed online writing system. In the first two research phases, the UO pedagogy along with the online writing system was introduced in a subject course as an academic writing (i.e., AW) project, and each phase lasted for one and a half months. Thirty-eight undergraduate students from a subject course and their instructor were recruited, and all participants attended a seminar to get familiar with the online writing system. Before the first phase began, writing assignments by previous students in the same subject course were analyzed first, in order to determine a baseline for measuring to what extent the 1 2

Code to keep the name of the instructor anonymous. Code to keep the name of the instructor anonymous.

6.1 A Design-Based Research of Plagiarism Pedagogy

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Table 6.1 Research plan of the book Study 1 (1st Research Phase, 1.5 months) Participants

Instrumentations (before)

Instructional strategy

Instrumentations (after)

38 undergraduates from a subject course

• Survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism • Previous students’ writing assignments

UO pedagogy

• Survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism • Student feedback questionnaire • Interview with selected students and instructor • Students’ submitted writing assignments

Study 2 (2nd Research Phase, 1.5 months) N/A

Improved UO pedagogy

• Survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism • Student feedback questionnaire • Interview with selected students and instructor • Students’ submitted writing assignments

Study 3 (3rd Research Phase, 2 months) Participants

Instrumentations (before)

Instructional strategy

Instrumentations (after)

Experimental group: a class of 66 undergraduates from a new subject course

• Survey on students’ perceptions of Plagiarism

Improved UO pedagogy

• Survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism • Student feedback questionnaire • Interview with selected students and instructor • Students’ submitted writing assignments

Control groupa : another class of 55 undergraduates from same subject course as experimental group

• Survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism

Traditional pedagogy

• Survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism • Students’ submitted writing assignments

a

Note After the experiment was completed, the control-group students were provided the UO pedagogical intervention in the subsequent stages of the subject course

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proposed instructional intervention could be refined to facilitate students’ learning on plagiarism and source use (Brown & Director, 2010). At the beginning of the first research phase (i.e., Study 1), student participants’ background information (see Appendix A) and perceptions of plagiarism (see Appendix B) were collected through questionnaires. When students were assigned a writing task, they participated in writing activities by following the instructional procedure of the UO pedagogy (see Sect. 4.3.3). Most writing activities were conducted online (including self-writing, peer review, and self-revision) supported by the online writing system, and one class session was used for face-to face peer discussions as well as the instructor’s lecture on plagiarism and source use. Once students submitted their final versions of the writing assignment, these writings were analyzed from the perspective of source use and plagiarism. Based on the analysis results, a comparison on writing performance was conducted between the previous students and the current participants to explore the limitations of the UO pedagogy and the online writing system in supporting students’ plagiarism-free academic writing. Besides, the current students’ perceptions of plagiarism and their feedback toward the UO pedagogy were also collected through questionnaires. Moreover, randomly selected student participants were interviewed to further explore their learning experiences with the UO pedagogy and the online writing system, especially the enabling and hindering factors for plagiarism-free academic writing. The course instructor’s opinions about the usefulness of the UO pedagogy were also collected through an interview to provide a holistic view to it. Based on data collected in the first phase, modifications were made to refine the UO pedagogy for the next phase. For the second phase (i.e., Study 2), the refined UO pedagogy was introduced again in the same subject course, with which the same students were required to finish a new writing assignment. After students submitted the final versions, these writings were analyzed and compared with the previous two versions from the perspectives of plagiarism and writing quality, one of which was the current students’ writing assignments in the first phase and the other was previous students’ writing assignments. At the end of the second research phase, the students’ perceptions of plagiarism and feedbacks to the UO pedagogy were collected to help further modify the pedagogy. Besides, randomly selected students and their instructor were interviewed again to collect their opinions on the UO pedagogy. After the first two research phrases, it is believed that the UO pedagogy was well refined and could be used in the following experiment. In the third phase (i.e., Study 3), another instructor and her two classes of undergraduates from another university were recruited. In order to explore the effects of the UO pedagogy on students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use, a quasiexperimental design (Mills & Gay, 2016) was adopted. One class of students was the experimental group, and the other class formed the control group. Before the experiment, seminars were conducted separately to help the two groups of students be familiar with the online writing system. According to the instructor participant from the third phase, she usually required students to submit electronic version of writings through Email. After discussing with the instructor, I decided that, like the experimental-group students, the control-group students would also submit their

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writings through the online writing system. The difference between the two cohorts lies in that, the experimental group could fully access the online writings system, while the control group could only access to the writing assignment module (detailed information about the module can be found in Sect. 5.3). In order to do so, two separate learning spaces were created in the online writing system. In the learning space for the experimental-group students, all modules were visible to them, while in another learning space for the control-group students, all modules except the writing assignment module were invisible to them. At the beginning of the experiment, all students’ background information and perceptions of plagiarism were collected through questionnaires. During the experiment, all students were required to finish a writing assignment. Those in the experimental group learned about plagiarism and source use with the UO pedagogy. They underwent the process of deconstruction-peer construction-independent construction (i.e., the hard scaffolding strategy of UO pedagogy, see Sect. 4.3.3) to build their understanding of plagiarism and source use. At the same time, the controlgroup students finished writing assignments without peer interaction and instructional supports from the online writing system, but they could access similar learning materials like the experimental-group students and received written feedbacks from their instructor after they submitted their writings as they usually did in other subject courses. At the end of the experiment, all students finished a survey on their perceptions of plagiarism. Apart from that, the experimental-group students finished a feedback questionnaire, and some of them were randomly selected to be interviewed about their perceptions of the UO pedagogy’s effectiveness and their learning experiences in the online writing system. The instructor’s viewpoints on the UO pedagogy were also collected through an interview. In order to provide the control-group students with the same learning experiences with the UO pedagogy and the online writing system, they were instructed to finish another new writing assignment through the pedagogy in the subsequent stages of the course, after the experiment completed. During the whole research process, the instructors were invited to engage in the instructional design and activities. Although it might have taken time and energy for the instructors to learn how to integrate the UO pedagogy in their subject courses, the use of the online writing system helped reduce parts of their instructional burden. Moreover, with the help of the online system, the instructors could have an in-depth understanding of students’ writing process and learning needs toward plagiarism avoidance and proper source use, which not only could increase instructors’ active participation in plagiarism instruction, but also could facilitate the implementation of the newly designed pedagogy. What’s more, the potential positive effects of the UO pedagogy and online writing system on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing would worth the instructors’ investment of time and effort.

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6.1.2.3

6 Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice

Instrumentation

In this book, both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to collect data. Instruments are discussed as follows. 1. Survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism The survey (see Appendix B) was developed on the basis of Lee et al.’s (2016) knowledge and attitudes to plagiarism survey. Ten questions were selected, and minor modifications were made by me to explore how students think about plagiarism before and after their learning with the UO pedagogy. The ten questions in the post-survey were identical to those in the pre-survey, but the randomized ordering of questions could help reduce the possible effects of item-memory. The survey was conducted in the online system, and it lasted about 10 min. As the book was conducted in Chinese academic writing, all questions were written in Chinese. 2. Student feedback questionnaire The student feedback questionnaire (see Appendix C) was developed to explore students’ views toward the UO pedagogy and their learning experiences with the online writing system. Therefore, the instrument comprised two parts, and all question items were developed on the basis of previous studies. The first part targeting on the students’ views to the effectiveness of the UO pedagogy was modified from Lee et. al’s (2016) survey, and small modifications were made to fit this book. The second part targeting on the students’ views to the usefulness and usability of the online writing system was developed from Liu et al.’s (2013) instrument, which was derived from Davis’ (1989) Technology Acceptance Model. According to Liu et al. (2013), a satisfactory online learning environment should have two key elements. One is that it should provide effective contents for students to achieve their learning goals, and the other is that it should provide easy-to-use learning experiences for students. Therefore, I borrowed the two constructs from the instrument of Liu et al. (2013) and made small modifications to make the questionnaire fit the book. The questionnaire was conducted in the online writing system at the end of each phase to collect students’ responses to the UO pedagogy, and it lasted about 10 min. 3. Writing assignments Using writing assignments as an instrument could help to reveal to what extents students’ writing performance could be influenced by the UO pedagogy. The specific writing requirement (see Appendix D) was designed on the basis of Lu’s (2013) research. According to the writing requirement, students were asked to write an essay with six paragraphs based on two provided source articles. Among the six paragraphs, the first two were two summaries of the source articles. The third to the fifth paragraphs should be used for synthesizing two source materials into a critical analysis and discussion. The final paragraph should serve as the summary of the preceding three paragraphs. Besides, students were required to paraphrase more than three sentences from the original academic paper and mark them in bold black

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65

font in the essay as well as to use a proper citation format. As the book targeted at improving students’ source use in paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing and citation, connotations of those particular terminologies were provided in the writing requirement. The two source materials were selected by the course instructors from journal publications in order to make sure that the contents were new to students. The theme of those materials was related to what students had learned in the subject course. For example, student participants in the first research phase were assigned to read two empirical studies on flipped classroom. Moreover, the course instructor was suggested to avoid choosing articles with difficult terminologies for the purpose of eliminating unnecessary interference. Writing assignments were conducted in the virtual learning environment constructed by the online writing system. Student participants could access learning resources online and submit their writings without space limitation. Students’ finished writings were rated by a writing assessment rubric (see Appendix G) based on the research of Liu et al. (2013) and Choi (2012). Modifications to the rubric were made to satisfy the research purpose. The rubric comprised four dimensions: assignment response, coherence and cohesion, vocabulary and language use, and citation. For each aspect, there were five levels of ratings from “very excellent” to “poor”. By providing detailed descriptive criteria on different levels of writing from sources, students’ writing performance in paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing and citation were evaluated. Besides, the extent of plagiarism in students’ writings was examined by using two widely used scales, i.e., the degree of similarity and the number of consecutively copied words. Degree of similarity refers to the extent to which a writing is similar to its source materials from the perspective of lexical similarity and it has been well adopted in many Plagiarism Detection Software (PDS), e.g., Turnitin (Bruton & Childers, 2016). Similarly, the number of consecutively copied words has been adopted as a signal by many research associations to estimate plagiarism (e.g., Committee On Publication Ethics). 4. Interviews At the end of each phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the UO pedagogy and their learning experiences in the online writing system. The student interview (see Appendix E) was designed on the basis of Lu’s (2013) student interview. As the aim of interview was to develop an in-depth examination on the students’ perceptions toward the UO pedagogy, a half number of the student participants were randomly selected to be interviewed at the end of the first two research phases (Creswell, 2012). For the third phase, the actual number of student interviewees decreased to 23, which accounts for one third of the experimental-group students (n = 66). The reason lies in that some of the randomly selected students were reluctant to be interviewed. Students were interviewed individually to express their opinions freely, and the interviews were documented by voice recorders. Apart from students, the instructors were also invited to interviews to express their opinions and feelings about their instructional experiences with the UO pedagogy as well as students’ writing performance with the new pedagogy.

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The instructor interview (see Appendix F) was designed on the basis of Grigg’s (2016) faculty interview. For the convenience of the interviewees, all interviews were conducted at their universities and each interview lasted about 15 min.

6.1.3 Validity and Reliability Validity and reliability are two essential factors influencing the quality of any research instrument, and they need to be assured by researchers before research commences (Creswell, 2012). Validity refers to the degree to which an instrument can accurately measure what it tries to measure (Cooper & Sandi-Urena, 2009). Reliability refers to the extent to which an instrument can produce consistent research results (Downing, 2004). In this book, adequate measures were taken to ensure the validity and reliability.

6.1.3.1

Validity

By using a methodological triangulation approach (Fellows & Lui, 1997; Love et al., 2002), the validity of the book was improved. In the book, students’ perceptions of plagiarism, feedback to the UO pedagogy, and writing performance with it were collected through quantitative research methods. In addition, students’ views to the new pedagogy were collected through qualitative research methods. By adopting both quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore the effects of the UO pedagogy on students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use, the validity of the book was improved (Hussein, 2015; Olsen, 2004). What’s more, by integrating both quantitative and qualitative research data, a deeper understanding of how students learned with the new pedagogy can be built, and more insights can be obtained (Guion, 2011). The validity of instruments which were adopted in this book is carefully examined as follows. 1. The survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism was designed on the basis of Lee et al.’s (2016) plagiarism knowledge and attitudes survey. Ten questions were selected and checked by me as well as an academic writing expert to construct the validity. Students’ responses to each item were rated on a 6-point Likert scale to show their extent of agreement with statements (Jamieson, 2004), which facilitated the data analysis with statistical techniques. 2. The requirements of writing assignments were developed on the basis of Lu’s (2013) research. Targeting at evaluating students’ writing performance in source use, especially in paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation, the writing assignment required students to finish an essay with six paragraphs. The theme and materials were determined by the subject instructors and me to ensure the validity. Students’ finished writings were evaluated from two perspectives: writing quality and extent of plagiarism. A writing assessment rubric (see

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Appendix G) was designed on the basis of the research of Liu et al. (2013) and Choi (2012) to examine the writing quality in students’ writings, and it was checked by me and an academic writing expert to ensure the validity. For the extent of plagiarism, as there has been no customized plagiarism assessment scale for students’ writings, two widely used plagiarism detection scales, i.e., the degree of similarity and the number of consecutively copied words were firstly used in the first research phase of this book. Then, their validity was discussed based on findings from the first research phase (see Sect. 6.2.4.2), and a new plagiarism assessment scale (see Sect. 6.3.2) was created to increase the accuracy of measurement. 3. Student feedback questionnaire was designed on the basis of Lee et al.’s (2016) student feedback survey and Liu et al.’s (2013) technology acceptance questionnaire, and they were checked by me and an academic writing expert to ensure the validity. 4. Guiding questions for the student interview were designed on the basis of Lu’s (2013) student interview. The instructor interview was designed on the basis of Grigg’s (2016) faculty interview. Both interview instruments were checked by me and an academic writing expert to ensure the validity. 6.1.3.2

Reliability

The reliability of instruments adopted in the book has also been carefully examined. 1. As for the reliability of the survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism and the student feedback survey, Cronbach’s alpha statistic was conducted to measure the internal consistency among question items in each instrument. 2. Based on the newly designed writing assessment rubric, students’ writing assignments in each research phase were rated by me (rater 1) and the instructor participant (rater 2) independently. By using a Pearson’s r correlation, the inter-rater reliability was evaluated. As for the extent of plagiarism, the specific amount of degree of similarity and the most consecutively copied words in each writing were revealed by using a plagiarism analysis module in the newly designed online writing system. 3. As interviews were conducted to inquiry the participants’ teaching and learning experiences with the new pedagogy, the coding scheme was mainly based on students’ feedback questionnaire. I and a critical friend3 coded fifty percentage of the interview data independently, the following-up active discussions could help to reduce the discrepancy between the two coders. Once the inter-rater agreement was reached to a satisfactory range (from 75 to 90%) (Stemler, 2004), the remaining part of the review data were coded by me. 3

In this book, a critical friend of the researcher was invited to be the coder. Previous research has proven that the utilization of a trustworthy and critical friend in an individual’s study could improve the research quality, as well as facilitate one’s reflection on his/her own research Patel and Herick (2010).

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6.1.4 Outline of Analysis This book comprised three research phases, and both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to answer the sub research questions in different phases (see Table 1.1). Even though the instruments used in each research phase were similar, the purposes of collecting and analyzing data were different. The data collected from the first two research phases were grouped as the first set to explore how the proposed UO pedagogy could be refined based on students’ and their instructor’s learning and teaching experiences with it. Data collected from the third research phase formed the second set to evaluate the effects of the proposed UO pedagogy on Chinese undergraduates’ understanding of plagiarism and source use in Chinese academic writing. Therefore, in this section, data analysis was addressed according to the sub research questions in different phases.

6.1.4.1

What Evidence Can Be Found from the First Two Phases for the Revisions of the UO Pedagogy?

1. How do the students’ perceptions toward plagiarism change during the first and second phase? According to the research design, pre- and post-surveys on students’ perceptions of plagiarism were used to collect data and provide possible answers to this question. In the first research phase, the differences between students’ perceptions of plagiarism in the pre-survey and the post-survey were revealed by using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. At the end of the second phase, the post-survey in Phase Two (i.e., post-survey 2) was compared with surveys in Phase One (i.e., pre-survey and post-survey 1) separately by using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test (McMillan & Schumacher, 2014). 2. How do the students perform in writing with the UO pedagogy? At the end of the first research phase, the current students’ final version writings were compared with those by previous students from two aspects: the extent of plagiarism and writing quality. By using a nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test, the writing performance differences between previous students and the current students were revealed (Creswell, 2012). At the end of the second research phase, a Wilcoxon signed-rank test was adopted to explore the current students’ possible changes by comparing their writing performance between Phase One and Phase Two. Compared with the Mann–Whitney U test’s focusing on unpaired data, the Wilcoxon signedrank test is frequently used for paired data; therefore, the latter is proper to be adopted for exploring the possible changes in the same group during the first two phases. 3. What are the students’ and the instructor’ perceptions toward the UO pedagogy?

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Both the students’ and their instructors’ perceptions toward the UO pedagogy and the online writing system were revealed by collecting data from feedback questionnaires and interviews. In the first two research phases, differences between students’ responses to questions in feedback questionnaires were revealed by using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. According to Creswell (2012), interview data analysis comprises several steps, including having a general idea about an interview transcription, coding the transcription, listing codes, and reducing codes into several themes. Following these steps, both student and instructor interviews were analyzed, and some key themes emerged from data. By interconnecting the themes, findings from the interview data could be reported (Creswell, 2013).

6.1.4.2

What Are the Effects of the UO Pedagogy on the Students’ Understanding of Source Use and Plagiarism?

In this book, there were three instructional interventions. Compared with the first two consecutive interventions (i.e., the first two research phases) which targeted at refining the UO pedagogy and online writing system, the purpose of the third intervention was to explore effects of the new pedagogy on students’ understanding of source use and plagiarism through a quasi-experiment. Therefore, the research question can be mainly answered by analyzing data from the third intervention session. By using a Mann–Whitney U test to compare students’ perceptions toward plagiarism before the pedagogical intervention between the experimental group and the control group, the differences and similarities within the two groups were revealed, which could serve as a baseline to monitor further data analysis. Then, further comparisons were made after the UO pedagogical intervention to explore the magnitude of possible changes within the two groups by using a Mann–Whitney U test. In order to explore effects of the new pedagogy on students’ writing performance, a Mann– Whitney U test was adopted to analyze possible differences in the extent of plagiarism and writing quality within the two groups. Moreover, by analyzing the experimentalgroup students’ feedback toward the UO pedagogy and the online writing system, together with interview data analysis, the effects of the UO pedagogy were fully uncovered (McMillan & Schumacher, 2014).

6.2 Study 1 What Are Students’ Learning Experiences with the UO Pedagogy? Based on the research design mentioned in the Sect. 6.1.2, the aim of the first research phase (i.e., Study 1) was to explore both students and teacher’s perceptions and behavioral feedback to the introduction of UO pedagogy with ICT tool in a subject course. In the first phase, the following three research questions were addressed.

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Table 6.2 Subject demographics in the first research phase (n = 38) Measure

Items

Frequency

Percentage

Gender

Male

10

26.3%

Female

28

73.7%

During university education

2

5.3%

Before entering university

0

0

None

36

94.7%

During university education

0

0

Before entering university

2

5.3%

None

36

94.7%

Anti-plagiarism learning experience

Learning experience in paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, or citation

1. How do the students’ perceptions toward plagiarism change during the first research phase? 2. How do the students perform in writing with the UO pedagogy? 3. What are the students’ and the instructor’s perceptions toward the UO pedagogy?

6.2.1 Participants and Research Context In the first two research phases, thirty-eight junior-year undergraduate students and their course instructor Mr. L4 from Educational Technology at a public university in Mainland China were invited to participate in the research. The UO pedagogy was introduced in a subject course named instructional design as an academic writing (i.e., AW) project. The instructional intervention in each phase lasted for one and a half months. The students’ background information can be found in Table 6.2. Few student participants had learning experiences in anti-plagiarism and source use.5 The course instructor Mr. L had been teaching for about 13 years since he received a Master’s degree in Educational Technology. According to Mr. L, instructional design was a compulsory course for students majored in Educational Technology, and he usually required students to finish several writing assignments to evaluate their understanding of the key themes related to the academic field. Concerning the plagiarism policies, Mr. L mentioned that there was no clear published plagiarism policy on the university website and there was no formal plagiarism instruction provided by faculties in the university. Due to the lack of guidance from the university, Mr. L and his colleagues did not set any plagiarism rules for students to follow in their courses. According to Mr. L, his students barely had chances to access the plagiarism-related regulations except when they were required 4

Code to keep the name of the instructor anonymous. Source use refers to writers’ making use of others’ words or ideas with the aim of generating their own texts in academically evidence-based way. In the book, source use skills comprise paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation. 5

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to submit their dissertations for plagiarism detection. Even at that time, students were only informed of the plagiarism detection requirement, e.g., the identification of plagiarism severity and corresponding punishment, instead of receiving instruction. Mr. L showed strong interests in and expectations for the adoption of the UO pedagogy together with the online writing system in class. Regarding his reasons for adopting it, he mentioned that, even though he had kept reminding students not to plagiarize in writing and paid attention to providing instructional feedback to ill source use problems in students’ writings, plagiarism was still often detected. Besides, due to limited time and energy, he was unable to check plagiarism in each writing. Therefore, he had deep concern about the situation that plagiarism made it difficult for him to distinguish students’ efforts and contributions in written works, which might cause discontent from students who believed that their efforts were not respected compared with the plagiarists. What made it worse was that there was no academic writing course offered in his university. He hoped that the adoption of the UO pedagogy could help change the current situation. The course instructor’s active participation was vital to the smooth implementation of the UO pedagogy. Firstly, Mr. L discussed with me about the implementation plan of the UO pedagogy according to the course outline, such as about the timing of assigning writing tasks, the themes of writing assignments, and the evaluation criteria to assignments. Secondly, with my help, Mr. L prepared instructional materials related to the writing assignments, including picking two research articles as the writing sources and choosing several previous students’ writings for the peer review training. Finally, Mr. L learned to use the online writing system to conduct instruction, such as issuing learning activity requirements and providing comments or feedback to students. Before the Study 1 began, a seminar was arranged to help the student participants get familiar with the online writing system. The 38 students had more than two years of learning experiences with educational technologies and media, and they showed interests in learning with the online system. The course instructional design was conducted in a multimedia classroom, where each student could access a computer and connect to the Internet easily. When required to finish the writing assignments, they began to access the UO pedagogy by participating in learning activities online and in class (see Sect. 4.3.4 for the specific instructional design and corresponding learning activities).

6.2.2 Measuring Instruments and Their Reliability In the first research phase, the students’ perceptions toward plagiarism were collected through the perception of plagiarism questionnaire. Their writing performance with the UO pedagogy was measured by making analysis on their finished writings. Besides, the students’ and the instructor’s perceptions toward the UO pedagogy were examined through feedback questionnaires and interviews.

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6 Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice

Survey on the Students’ Perceptions of Plagiarism

Lee et al. (2016) once designed a survey to test students’ perceptions and attitudes toward plagiarism, on the basis of which a new survey (see Appendix B) was developed to examine the students’ perceptions to plagiarism once before and once after this phase so that changes could be identified by comparison. Some modifications had been made to satisfy the research purpose. Ten questions were chosen and translated into Chinese, and a 6-point Likert scale was used to score each item (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). The Cronbach’s alpha was used to determine the internal consistency among items, which was 0.7, showing that there is a fair internal consistency among all factors (Robinson et al., 1991).

6.2.2.2

Student Feedback Questionnaire

In order to explore how the students would evaluate their learning experiences with the UO pedagogy as well as the online writing system, a feedback questionnaire (see Appendix C) was provided to them when they finished the writing project. The feedback survey consisted of two parts: the first part was for the validity of the UO pedagogy and the second for the usefulness and usability of the writing system. As the survey was developed on previous studies, i.e., Lee et al.’s (2016) feedback survey and Liu et al.’s (2013) instrument adapted from Davis’ (1989) Technology Acceptance Model, the Cronbach’s alpha was calculated to assess the reliability of the instrument, which turned out to be 0.94 for the UO pedagogy and 0.89 for the technology part, proving a good internal consistency.

6.2.2.3

Writing Performance in Writing Assignments

In order to explore students’ writing performance with the UO pedagogy, the current students’ final versions were compared with those by previous students in the same course one year before, as the writing requirements for the two cohorts of students were the same (see the “instructional procedure” part in Sect. 4.3.3 for detailed requirements). Figure 6.2 shows an example of a current student’s finished writing in the online writing system. The comparison comprised two parts: One was for the extent of plagiarism and the other for writing quality. Even though there has been fierce discussions on how to determine the extent of plagiarism (Eisa et al., 2015), two scales have been widely used across different disciplines. One is the degree of similarity, and the other is the number of consecutively copied words. The degree of similarity refers to the extent to which a writing is similar to source materials from the perspective of lexical similarity, and it has been well adopted in many Plagiarism Detection Software (PDS) like Turnitin (Bruton & Childers, 2016). According to the connotation of degree of similarity, the higher the degree, the more serious the plagiarism in a piece of writing. However, its validity is often challenged by researchers (Weber-Wulff, 2015). Besides, it has been publicity

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(My essay) (Link to writing requirements) (Title of the essay) (Student number & name) (Time of essay submission & time of modification)

Fig. 6.2 Example of students’ essays in the online writing system

announced by many universities that plagiarism is unacceptable for any amount of similarity (e.g., University College London). To them, the question “how much plagiarism is plagiarism” is similar to the query “how much stealing constitutes theft”. Even a small portion of plagiarized words or sentences can sufficiently denounce the whole work (The University of Hong Kong, 2002). Apart from the degree of similarity, the number of consecutively copied words has been adopted as a signal by many research associations to estimate plagiarism (e.g., Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE); World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)). However, the threshold for determining plagiarism varies dramatically among different organizations. For instance, it is decided by WAME that plagiarism occurs if there are six consecutive words copied from source materials (Masic, 2012). This book adopted both scales to examine the extent of plagiarism in students’ writings as well as to further explore their applicability to plagiarism instruction. With the help of a plagiarism analysis module embedded in the online writing system, specific degrees of similarity and amounts of the most consecutively copied words in each writing were easily obtained (see Sect. 5.3). Concerning how to assess writing quality, a four-dimension assessment scale, including assignment response, coherence and cohesion, vocabulary and language use, and citation (see Appendix G), was proposed based on the research of Liu et al. (2013) and Choi (2012). The students’ writings were assessed by me and the instructor participant with the four-dimension assessment scale and a Pearson’s r correlation was obtained (Pearson’s r = 0.89) to determine the good inter-rater reliability. The quality of each writing was calculated by averaging the ratings given by me and the subject instructor.

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6.2.2.4

6 Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice

Interviews with Students and Instructor

As the aim of the interviews was to conduct an in-depth exploration of both the students’ and the instructor’s perceptions toward the UO pedagogy (Creswell, 2012), half of the student participants were invited to be interviewed at the end of the first research phase and the remaining students were interviewed at the end of the second phase. Therefore, 19 randomly selected students out of 38 were interviewed in this phase. Eight semi-structured interview questions were designed on the basis of Lu’s (2013) student interview (see Appendix E). Apart from the students, the instructor was invited to express his opinions regarding the instructional experiences with UO pedagogy. Seven interview questions were designed on the basis of Grigg’s (2016) faculty interview (see Appendix F). In order to ensure the reliability of the interviews, data analysis followed the procedure as follows. Fifty percentage of the interview data were coded separately by me and a critical friend into themes and sub-themes. Any discrepancy between the two coders was settled by discussion. It was estimated that the inter-rater agreement reached to 86% which belongs to the satisfactory range (from 75 to 90%) defined by Stemler (2004). Giving the acceptable coding reliability, the remaining part of interview data were coded by me alone.

6.2.3 Findings of Study 1 6.2.3.1

The Evolvement of Students’ Perceptions Toward Plagiarism After the First Phase

In general, the students’ perceptions toward plagiarism evolved notably with the UO pedagogy. Table 6.3 demonstrates that even though the participants had few learning experiences in anti-plagiarism and source use before accessing the UO pedagogy, they were still able to distinguish some typical plagiarism from different scenarios (see Q5 to Q10). For instance, the students provided the highest ratings to “adding others’ writing texts to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism” (see Q5) among the 10 questions, which informs that most of the students agreed (from slightly agreed to strongly agreed) with its statement. In contrast, Q9, i.e., “using my previous writing assignment for the current one without acknowledging the source is plagiarism” was valued the lowest. When the students were asked to rate Q9 again after the UO instructional intervention, their views were improved dramatically. In addition to Q9, the students’ ratings to other items were found to have increased accordingly. By using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, significant statistical differences (p < 0.05) were found on seven items (Q1, Q3, Q5, Q6, Q8, Q9, Q10). As the students’ responses to other items (i.e., Q2, Q4, and Q7) did not change statistically, it inferred space for improvement. Besides, it was discovered that, compared with explicit plagiarism problems, e.g., the addition of others’ texts to one’s writings without source acknowledgement

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Table 6.3 Students’ perception of plagiarism in the first phase Survey items

Mean (SD) Pre (n = 38)

p value Post (n (Wilcoxon) = 38)

1. I am capable of identifying plagiarism-involving cases

4.00 (1.27)

4.66 (0.91)

0.005

2. I am capable of avoiding plagiarism

4.03 (1.17)

4.45 (0.98)

0.059

3. I have a good understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism

4.76 (1.20)

5.18 (0.77)

0.048

4. Plagiarizing is the same as cheating in an exam

4.63 (1.13)

4.92 (1.10)

0.079

5. Adding others’ writing texts to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.82 (1.06)

5.68 (0.53)

0.000

6. Paraphrasing others’ writing, and adding it to my writing 3.82 assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism (1.35)

5.03 (1.28)

0.000

7. Adopting others’ ideas, not texts, to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.47 (1.48) *

4.03 (1.72)

0.060

8. Introducing teachers’ course materials in my writing 3.45 assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism (1.27) *

5.11 (1.01)

0.000

9. Using my previous writing assignment for the current one without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

2.42 (1.13) *

4.63 (1.30)

0.000

10. Introducing Internet materials without source information in my writing assignment and submitting it in my name is plagiarism

3.74 (1.27)

5.11 (1.13)

0.000

Notes Adapted from Lee et al.’s (2016) questionnaire on perception and attitude The ratings are based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree”. *Mean score below the mid-point value, i.e., 3.5. Critical value for significance in the Wilcoxon signed-rank tests is 0.05

(see Q5), the students might have more difficulty in understanding implicit plagiarism problems, like the addition of others’ ideas to one’s writings without source acknowledgement (see Q7).

6.2.3.2

Students’ Writing Performance with the UO Pedagogy

The current students’ writing performance was examined by comparing their finished writings with those of previous students from two aspects—the extent of plagiarism and writing quality. To understand the previous students’ learning experiences about plagiarism and source use, their background information was also collected and analyzed. Among the 38 previous students, there were 28 female students and 10

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6 Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice

male students, and most students had not been instructed to avoid plagiarism or write from sources. As one of current students didn’t submit the final version of the writing assignments as required, the number of final version writings for data analysis decreased to 37. According to the instructional procedure mentioned in Sect. 4.3.3, the current students were required to submit two versions of writing assignments: the first draft before the UO pedagogical intervention and the final draft after the UO pedagogy. Different from current students, the previous students submitted their writings for only once, and they were not required to make revisions based on their instructor’s in-class feedback after submission. Therefore, by comparing the previous students’ writings with current students’ two versions of writings, the possible effects the UO pedagogy could be partially revealed. The extent of plagiarism in students’ writings was measured by the number of consecutively copied words and the degree of similarity. Results are presented in Table 6.4. In Table 6.4, the average number of the most consecutively copied words in the current students’ writings before the UO pedagogy was almost the same as in the previous students’ writings (i.e., about 75 Chinese characters), which served as a baseline for further comparison. The average number in the current students’ writings after the UO pedagogy decreased to 53 Chinese characters. Besides, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test found a statistically significant decrease in the current students’ writings after the UO pedagogy, so did the Mann–Whitney U test find between the previous students’ writings and the current students’ final versions after the UO pedagogy. Thus, most of the current students’ writing performance had been notably improved through the UO pedagogy from the perspective of the most consecutively copied words. However, contrary to the general decline trend, the extent of plagiarism in one-fifth of the writings kept the same or got even worse. The reason behind it deserves further exploration. Table 6.4 Extent of plagiarism in the students’ writings in the first phase Measure

Mean (SD)

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

p value (Wilcoxon)

Cur (n = CurU (n 38) = 37)

Pre versus Cur

Pre versus CurU

Cur versus CurU

1. Most 75.00 consecu(43.80) tively copied words

75.59 (56.74)

53.41 (49.35)

0.975

0.033

0.000

2. Degree of similarity

0.22 (0.17)

0.20 (0.14)

0.002

0.000

0.437

Pre (n = 38)

0.33 (0.16)

Notes “Pre” refers to previous students’ writings, “Cur” refers to current students’ writings before the UO intervention, and “CurU” refers to current students’ writings after the UO intervention Critical value for significance in the Mann-Whitney U tests is 0.05 Critical value for significance in the Wilcoxon tests is 0.05

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As for the degree of similarity in students’ writings, there were already statistical differences between the previous students’ and the current students’ writings before the UO pedagogy. Besides, the degree of similarity in the current students’ writings stayed unchanged after the UO pedagogy. In further exploration, large blocks of consecutively copied Chinese characters were found in the students’ writings with low degrees of similarity. For example, a current student directly copied 99 consecutively Chinese characters from a source without citation, but the degree of similarity in the writing was detected to be 15.3%. This suggests that writings with lower degrees of similarity might also have serious plagiarism. Obviously, the validity of the degree of similarity was challenged because it could not accurately measure the extent of plagiarism in writings. Apart from analyzing the extent of plagiarism in writings, the writing quality was assessed according to the four-dimension assessment scale mentioned in Sect. 6.2.2.3. Results were given in Table 6.5. As given in Table 6.5, there was no statistical difference between the previous students’ writings and those of the current students before the UO pedagogy in terms of writing quality. However, significant statistical differences (Mann–Whitney, p < 0.05) were found in three aspects (i.e., coherence and cohesion, vocabulary and language use, and citation) when the previous students’ writings were compared with the current students’ final versions after the UO pedagogy. Moreover, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test found significant statistical differences (p < 0.05) between the current students’ writings before and after the UO pedagogy in the all four aspects. The Table 6.5 Writing quality in writings in the first phase Measure

Mean (SD)

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

p value (Wilcoxon)

Pre (n = 38)

Cur (n = CurU (n 38) = 37)

Pre vs. Cur

Pre vs. CurU

Cur vs. CurU

19.93 (5.53)

19.96 (2.94)

21.96 (3.73)

0.218

0.184

0.001

2. Coherence and 19.54 cohesion (3.72)

19.53 (2.03)

22.57 (3.15)

0.778

0.000

0.000

3. Vocabulary and 17.57 language use (3.70)

17.89 (2.82)

20.34 (3.40)

0.611

0.002

0.000

4. Citation

13.29 (6.58)

19.73 (2.62)

0.642

0.000

0.000

70.62 (11.58)

84.60 (10.47)

0.787

0.000

0.000

1. Assignment response

13.36 (7.03)

Writing score 70.40 (including all four (13.91) aspects above)

Notes Adapted from the research of Liu et al. (2013) and Choi (2012) “Pre” refers to previous students’ writings, “Cur” refers to current students’ writings before the UO intervention, and “CurU” refers to current students’ writings after the UO intervention Critical value for significance in the Mann-Whitney U tests is 0.05 Critical value for significance in the Wilcoxon tests is 0.05

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findings indicate that the current students’ writing quality was improved through the instructional intervention.

6.2.3.3

Students’ and Instructor’s Perceptions Toward the UO Pedagogy

In order to explore the students’ and the instructor’s perceptions toward the UO pedagogy, data were collected through the feedback questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaire results were presented in Table 6.6. In general, the students showed satisfaction to the UO pedagogy and the online writing system with most ratings above the average Likert value in the 6-point Likert scale. They consented to the positive effects of the UO pedagogy on their understanding of plagiarism and source use (see Q1 to Q11), among which there was a general consensus about five items (see Q4, Q6, Q8, Q10, Q11). Moreover, they believed that their enhanced ability in source use would help them be more capable of avoiding plagiarism (see Q10, Q11). Compared with the students’ ratings to the effectiveness of the UO pedagogy, those to the usefulness and usability of the online writing system were generally lower (see Q12 to Q19). Even though more than 86% of the students agreed that the ICT tool was easy to use (see Q15) and over 94% were satisfied with the usefulness of the “peer review” model in facilitating peer communication online (see Q18, the highest rating among the 8 items), some students gave the lowest rate to the tool’s contributions to stimulating writing interests (see Q12). Besides, about 26.3% students indicated their reluctance to use the online writing system in other courses (see Q14). Apart from the feedback questionnaire, interviews were conducted with 19 students and their instructor. Findings are given in Table 6.7. The numbers in the column of “students’ feedback” refer to the numbers of interviewees who held positive or negative views to the related topics. All student interviewees showed satisfaction with learning with the UO pedagogy (see Item 1) and recognized its positive effects on learning about anti-plagiarism and source use (see Item 6). Besides, all of them agreed on the necessity of learning about plagiarism and source use (see Item 7). Concerning the advantages of the UO pedagogy, peer review, instruction from the instructor, and learning resources in the online writing system were the top three major enabling factors in facilitating learning about anti-plagiarism (see Item 2). Besides, three factors in promoting source use were identified as peer review, reading academic articles, and learning resources in the online writing system (see Item 3). It revealed that the students believed in peer review’s positive effects on their acquisition of plagiarism avoidance and source use. Concerning the usefulness of the online writing system, 84% students expressed satisfaction with the pleasant learning experience, especially with the facilitated writing and communication (see Item 4). Meanwhile, its major hurdles in terms of usability were also identified (see Item 5). When interviewed, three students (i.e., S3, S7, S15) mentioned that they encountered difficulties when submitted written works to the online writing system for the first time. The reason lay in that these students

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Table 6.6 Students’ feedback to the UO pedagogy and the online writing system in the first phase Survey Items

Mean(SD) (n = 38)

Proportion of agreement (%)

1. I am more capable of identifying plagiarism cases after working on the AW project

4.87 (0.88)

92.1

2. I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) after working on the AW project

4.87 (0.74)

97.4

3. I have a better understanding of the importance of avoiding plagiarism after working on the AW project

5.00 (0.74)

97.4

I The effectiveness of the academic writing (AW) project* Understanding Plagiarism

Source use: Paraphrasing, Summarizing, Synthesizing, and Citation 4. I am more capable of expressing others’ ideas in my own 4.76 (0.59) words (i.e., paraphrasing) after working on the AW project

100

5. I am more capable of presenting the main information in 4.68 (0.70) a concise statement (i.e., summarizing) after working on the AW project

94.7

6. I am more capable of distinguishing paraphrasing, 4.82 (0.65) summarizing, and patchwriting after working on the AW project

100

7. I am more capable of integrating several source materials 4.68 (0.66) with my own ideas (i.e., synthesizing) after working on the AW project

97.4

8. I am more capable of producing proper citations after working on the AW project

4.97 (0.64)

100

9. Due to a better understanding of plagiarism during 4.89 (0.65) writing in the AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

97.4

10. Due to my enhanced ability to use the skills of paraphrasing, summarizing and synthesizing during writing in the AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

4.87 (0.62)

100

11. Due to my enhanced ability to create proper citations during writing on the AV project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

4.97 (0.59)

100

Others

II Perceived usefulness and usability of the online writing system 12. Use of the online writing system helps to stimulate my interest in writing assignments

4.03 (1.08)

76.3

13. Use of the online writing system enhanced my engagement in writing assignments

4.32 (0.99)

81.6

14. I would like to use the online writing system in other courses

4.16 (1.18)

73.7 (continued)

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Table 6.6 (continued) Survey Items

Mean(SD) (n = 38)

Proportion of agreement (%)

15. The online writing system is easy to use in general

4.55 (0.92)

86.8

16. The benefits of using the online writing system outweigh its technical challenges for users

4.21 (1.07)

73.7

17. The online writing system helps me fulfill my learning goals

4.42 (0.92)

92.1

18. In the online writing system, peer review is helpful to 4.79 (0.84) exchange views on plagiarism and source use with peers

94.7

19. In the online writing system, peer review is effective at decreasing plagiarism in academic writing

89.5

4.61 (0.82)

Notes Adapted from the feedback survey of Lee et al. (2016) and the Technology Acceptance questionnaire of Liu et al. (2013) The ratings are based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” *The UO pedagogy with the online writing system was introduced to students as an “academic writing project” “Proportion of agreement” refers to the number of agreement (including slightly agree, agree, and strongly agree) compared to the total number of responses (i.e., 38)

had not used Moodle before and they might need time to be familiar with the writing assignment module of the online writing system. Apart from the students, the instructor was also interviewed for a better understanding of his instructional experience with the UO pedagogy as well as his views to the effects of the UO pedagogy on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing. The instructor showed satisfaction with the adoption of the UO pedagogy in his class and mentioned that “students were able to pay more attentions to avoiding plagiarism and writing from sources than before”. Besides, he was impressed with the ICT tool’s role in facilitating teaching and learning. With the help of the plagiarism detection module in the online writing system, the instructor was astonished to find out that there were serious plagiarism problems in the students’ writings. He mentioned that, even though he had thought about the possible detection results of plagiarism in writings, the large amount of consecutively copied words highlighted with color and the average score among the writings (i.e., 75 Chinese characters) shocked him. Mr. L reflected that the adoption of the online writing system, especially the plagiarism detection module, helped him understand students’ difficulties and learning needs regarding anti-plagiarism and sources use, with which he became more confident in instructing students on academic writing in his course. For example, based on the plagiarism analysis results from the plagiarism detection module, he could easily diagnose the students’ writing issues, such as copying a block of consecutive words from a source without proper quotation, reusing source language with little modifications, paraphrasing a paragraph from a source without proper citation, and citing a source in text without listing it as a reference. Based on these, he could provide specific and targeted instruction and feedbacks to improve the students’ plagiarism-free academic writing quality.

6.2 Study 1 What Are Students’ Learning Experiences with the UO Pedagogy?

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Table 6.7 Student interviews in the first phase Themes

Students’ feedback Positive Negative Codes

1. Learning experience with the UO pedagogy

19 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Be aware of the seriousness of plagiarism than ever (b) Self-reflect on academic writing (c) Understand plagiarism concept (d) Acquire strategies on anti-plagiarism (e) Improve writing skills in source use

2. Enabling factors of the UO in anti-plagiarism

19 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Peer review (b) Instruction (c) Learning resources in online writing system

3. Enable factors of the UO in source use

19 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Peer review (b) Reading academic articles (c) Learning resources in online writing system

4. Learning experiences with the online writing system

16 (84%)

3 (16%)

(a) Positive • Finish writings anytime and anywhere • Ease of use • Facilitates communication among students • Track one’s own writing process (b) Negative • Cannot support multimedia, e.g., video

5. Hindering factors for the online writing system

16 (84%)

3 (16%)

Uploading writings as attachments

6. Effects of the UO

19 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Know more about avoiding plagiarism (b) Know more about source use

7. Perceptions of undergraduates’ learning about anti-plagiarism and source use

19 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Finish dissertation (b) Facilitate future (research) work (c) Cultivate academic values

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6 Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice

According to Mr. L, the online writing system supported both teaching and students’ writing process. He thought that, because the system built a virtual learning environment to facilitate peer communication and broaden the writing space, it helped the students finish writings efficiently. Regarding the role of the ICT tool in helping the instructor supervise the learning process and make appropriate decisions in teaching, he showed his willingness to use the tool in the following sections of his course.

6.2.4 Discussion The findings above well addressed the three sub research questions proposed at the beginning of the first phase and raised some critical issues for discussion.

6.2.4.1

Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice

The UO pedagogy was designed based on previous literature and practical experiences of me. However, some key issues remained unaddressed, such as what its key elements would be and how the elements would interact with each other in terms of facilitating learning and teaching. In the first research phase, the application of the UO pedagogy in the students’ writing practices helped clarify these issues, which is illustrated in Fig. 6.3. As the UO pedagogy was designed based on the Teaching for Understanding theory (Pecorari, 2010) and the constructive alignment theory (Biggs, 2014), learning objectives, teaching and learning activities, and assessment comprise the basic parts Learning objectives

Writing

Scaffolding

assignments

strategies

Teaching/Learning

Assessment methods

ICT tool Instructor’s support

Fig. 6.3 Key components of the UO pedagogy

activities

6.2 Study 1 What Are Students’ Learning Experiences with the UO Pedagogy?

83

of the new pedagogy (see the three vertices of the triangle in Fig. 6.3).6 The other three key elements were the writing assignments, the ICT tool, and the scaffolding strategies. The reason why they were included in the pedagogy will be explained next. According to previous research, writing assignments can not only serve as incentives to ensure students’ participation in courses but also provide them with interests and sustainable engagement in writing (Bourke et al., 2009). Therefore, in order to improve students’ participation in learning with the UO pedagogy, the writing assignments, especially the writing requirement, were carefully designed. During the first research phase, it was discovered that the students benefited a lot from following the writing requirement (see Appendix D). When interviewed, five students (i.e., S1, S7, S13, S21, S27) mentioned that they always felt frustrated while preparing for writing assignments in subject courses, because previous writing requirements were obscure or indefinite. However, they found things changed with the UO pedagogy. When required to write an essay, they were provided with clear and definite requirements. For instance, there were specific guidance on the content of each paragraph and clear definitions to key terms (e.g., paraphrasing and summarizing). Students commented that the writing requirements brought them a clear structure of the essay and helped them understand what academic writing should look like. Apart from the writing assignments, there were two other important elements in the UO pedagogy: the ICT tool and the scaffolding strategies. The adoption of the ICT tool (i.e., the online writing system) was to build a virtual learning environment to facilitate students’ writing across time and space as well as to support instructional diagnosis and intervention. In the first research phase, most learning activities, except the peer discussions and the instructor’s lecturing, were conducted online. It was discovered from the feedback questionnaires and interviews that both the students and their instructor showed satisfaction with the use of the ICT tool. Scaffolding strategies are extremely important for novice academic writers (Smith & Shen, 2017), especially for those without prior training in academic writing. In the first research phase, both hard and soft scaffolds were adopted in the practice of the UO pedagogy (Saye & Brush, 2002). By following the procedural scaffolding strategies, i.e., the deconstruction-peer construction-independent construction, the students could learn to write from communicating with the instructor and their peers. Apart from the hard scaffolds, soft scaffolds in the form of guiding questions were also provided to students when they learned to prepare writing assignments, conduct peer review, and make revisions on their writings. By collecting data from the perception questionnaire and writing assignments, the students’ improved cognitive perceptions and behavioral performance toward anti-plagiarism and source use were revealed, which infers that the designed scaffolds probably had positive effects on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing.

6

Detailed description of the three elements can be found in Fig. 4.2 of Chap. 4.

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6.2.4.2

6 Invigorating the UO Pedagogy Through Practice

Students’ Learning Experiences with the UO Pedagogy

Exploring students’ learning experiences with the UO pedagogy was one of the important goals in the first research phase, because the students’ feedbacks toward the strengths and limitations of the pedagogy in facilitating plagiarism-free academic writing could help refine and prepare it for the next research phase. Even though the first instructional intervention only lasted for a short time, the students’ perception of plagiarism changed dramatically. The students became more capable of distinguishing plagiarism cases in different scenarios (see Table 6.3). When students were inquired about their views on writing with the UO pedagogy in the feedback questionnaire, more than 90% (n = 38) showed satisfaction with learning through the UO pedagogy and all indicated that their improved knowledge and skills in source use helped them become more capable of avoiding plagiarism (see Sect. 6.1 of Table 6.6), which was consistent with findings from the student interviews. Apart from the students’ positive views on the UO pedagogy, they also demonstrated great improvements in their behavioral performance of understanding plagiarism and source use. Compared with writings finished by previous students from the course one year before, statistically significant improvements were found in writings submitted by the current cohort in terms of plagiarism level and writing quality (see Tables 6.4 and 6.5). Besides being willing to engage in the UO pedagogy, most students were also satisfied with learning with the ICT tool, i.e., the online writing system (see Sect. 6.2 of Table 6.6). The instructor was also delighted to discover that plagiarism was detected easily and diminished greatly with the help of the UO pedagogy and the ICT tool. In addition, when interviewed, the instructor mentioned that the adopting the ICT tool in the subject course helped him know better about students’ writing process and problems as well as facilitate communication among students. Therefore, he hoped that the students’ further access to the new pedagogy together with the ICT tool could help them achieve greater progress. Surprisingly, there were two contradictory findings revealed from the first research phase. One concerned conflicting evidences for the students’ perceptional and behavioral changes toward plagiarism-free academic writing. Even though the feedback questionnaires indicated that the students’ perceived skills of anti-plagiarism and source use improved by writing with the UO pedagogy, their actual writings showed that their changes in anti-plagiarism and source use varied. Contrary to the decreasing number of consecutively copied words, the extent of plagiarism in one fifth of the writings remained the same or got even worse. Besides, although the average number of the most consecutively copied words in the students’ writings decreased from 75 Chinese characters to 53 Chinese characters, it indicated that there was still plagiarism. Therefore, it is necessary for the instructor to continue adopting the UO pedagogy in the students’ writing process to further examine the extent of their improvement in anti-plagiarism and source use. The other contradictory finding concerned the validity of the degree of similarity in measuring the extent of plagiarism in writings. This issue had been discussed by previous research, but without adequate clear evidence (Atkinson & Yeoh, 2008). In

6.3 The Refinement of the UO Pedagogy: Round One

85

the first research phase, the degree of similarity in each student’s writing was calculated with the help of the plagiarism detection module. However, it was discovered that even in some writings with low degrees of similarity, there was still serious plagiarism. For instance, large blocks of consecutively copied Chinese characters (more than 89) were detected in five writings with less than 18% of similarity before the intervention of the UO pedagogy. Therefore, the findings indicated that the degree of similarity could not provide solid evidence for plagiarism assessment. Concerning the limitations of the current scales in evaluating plagiarism, it was necessary to design a new scale. Besides, as more and more universities are paying attention to preventing plagiarism in academic writing, how to diagnose plagiarism and conduct instruction to help students become vital. Under this situation, designing a reliable plagiarism evaluation scale for instructional purposes deserves due attention. Based on the issues raised in the first research phase, some modifications were made to the UO pedagogy in the next research phase, including the construction of a new plagiarism evaluation scale.

6.3 The Refinement of the UO Pedagogy: Round One Both the students’ and their instructor’s feedbacks and suggestions raised in the first research phase provided evidence for the modification of the UO pedagogy and the ICT tool (i.e., the online writing system). This section will discuss the two major modifications.

6.3.1 The Provision of Multimedia Courseware for Peer Review Training Peer review was one of the important instructional strategies in the UO pedagogy, through which the students received comments from peers about possible plagiarism and source use problems in their writings. Research has proved that peer review can not only help students generate positive attitudes toward academic writing but also foster their deep understanding of the writing and revision processes (Min, 2005; Rahimi, 2013). But, in order to utilize peer review, proper training is necessary for students to learn how to review peers’ writings according to provided criteria (Kim, 2015). In this book, based on previous literature and my personal instructional experiences, several approaches were adopted for peer review training, including providing the students with a training manual and reviewing practices, selecting previous students’ writings as examples for review, and using guiding questions to keep the students’ attention to peers’ writings during the peer review. The training manual covered comprehensive information regarding reviewing criteria and procedure, with

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Table 6.8 Key frames of the multimedia courseware for peer review training

Raise the question

Introduce the four-dimension

Demonstrate

Step one

peer review steps

writing scale

Step two

Step three

Assign peer

The end

review practices

which the students could clearly understand what they were required to do in the process of peer review. Reviewing practices were organized to help the students get familiar with the reviewing procedure and learn to assess peers’ writings from the reviewer’s perspective. Reviewing materials used in the practices were three pieces selected from writings by previous students with varying quality in plagiarism and source use. In order to simplify the reviewing process and provide guidance for the students to conduct peer review, the reviewing criteria were transformed into guiding questions (see Appendix H). In the first research phase, the peer review training was conducted online before the actual peer review process. The students were required to evaluate the three writings examples with varying quality in plagiarism and source use. Even though the students reported fruitful learning experiences in the peer review training (see students’ feedback in Table 6.6), several of them complained that the reviewing procedure was too complicated. Besides, as most of the materials for the peer review training were in words, it reminded me that the plain form of learning materials might have hindered the students’ interests. After consulting with experts in academic writing, a multimedia courseware (see Table 6.8) was designed and adopted to demonstrate the reviewing procedure and criteria, and it was uploaded to the online writing system for the students’ easy access.

6.3.2 A New Plagiarism Assessment Scale for Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing Instruction In order to explore the extent of plagiarism in writings, two scales—the degree of similarity and the number of consecutively copied words—had been used in the first research phase. However, findings indicated that the degree of similarity could not

6.3 The Refinement of the UO Pedagogy: Round One

87

provide robust evidence for the diagnosis of plagiarism in writings. What’s more, as the other scale, i.e., the number of consecutively copied words, focused on partial rather than complete texts, it could only provide limited analysis results on plagiarism. Therefore, there was a need to design a new plagiarism assessment scale to help detect plagiarism in academic writing from the second phase on. After consulting with Chinese applied linguists, Chinese writing instructors, and experts in anti-plagiarism education, I designed a new plagiarism assessment scale (see Table 6.9). Chu and Hu (2017) once designed a plagiarism assessment scale to measure the degree of originality in junior secondary school students’ group works, which provides insight into the design of the new scale. The new scale categorized four levels of plagiarism: none, minor, moderate, and serious. According to the definition of plagiarism, i.e., the action of wrongly taking ideas or works of another as one’s own (Plagiarism, 2019), as well as researchers’ discussion and explanation on its connotation (e.g., McGregor & Streitenberger, 2004; Yeo, 2007), some key terms related to plagiarism were used to describe plagiarism in the scale, such as “copying”, “with/without quotation”, and “with/without citation”. In order to distinguish the differences among levels, two threshold values were determined. One was the mean score of the most consecutively copied words in each writing. The average number was calculated by me with the help of a plagiarism analysis module in the online writing system. The average number in previous students’ writings (i.e., 75 Chinese characters) was similar to that in the current students’ writings before the UO pedagogical intervention, which indicated that the number was relatively stable among writings in the subject course. Therefore, it could be used as a signal to indicate possible plagiarism in writings. Apart from the mean score of the most consecutively copied words, the six-Chinese-character length was adopted as Table 6.9 Plagiarism assessment scale Level Label

Description

Level None 1

No plagiarism has been found

Level Minor 2

Copying a block of text, which is greater than x and less than y Chinese characters, from a source, with phrases rearranged, words added, synonyms used, yet without citation

Level Moderate • Copying a block of consecutive Chinese characters, which is greater than 3 x and less than y, from a source without correct quotation, or • Copying a block of text of over y Chinese characters from a source without citation, but with a reference at the end of the work Level Serious 4

• Copying more than y consecutive Chinese characters from a source without correct quotation, or • Copying a block of text of over y Chinese characters from a source without citation

Notes x refers to the minimal phrase match, and it was 6 Chinese characters for student writings in the second research phase; y refers to the mean score of the most consecutively copied words in each writing. And it was 75 Chinese characters for student writings in the second research phase

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another benchmark to indicate level of plagiarism. In fact, six was set as the minimum length of phrase match in the plagiarism analysis module, based on which any copied texts containing more than six Chinese characters would be highlighted and counted. The number six was chosen because previous research suggested so (Kostoff et al., 2006). Besides, I made a comparison among different analysis results generated by the plagiarism analysis module by providing the minimum unit of different character lengths (i.e., 4, 6, 8). The comparison showed that the six-character minimum length could help reveal the most plagiarism issues in writings while avoiding mistakenly highlighting phrases without plagiarism. The scale may be challenged that the evaluation criteria are too loose to identify plagiarism, especially that the mean score of the most consecutively copied words in each writing was used as a threshold value. However, I would like to argue that, as the aim of designing the scale was for instruction instead of punishment, the threshold value needed to be determined based on the students’ learning status before the instructional intervention so that it could serve as a baseline to measure the extent to which the students could improve their plagiarism-free academic writing with the UO pedagogy. As the threshold value of the scale is changeable among different student groups or in different disciplines, which provides more flexibility in its adoption in different courses than previous plagiarism assessment scales. The average 75 copied Chinese characters detected in the first research phase proved that plagiarism was severe in the students’ writings, which could not be cured overnight. With the help of the new plagiarism assessment scale, both the students and their instructor would be able to measure the students’ improvements in their anti-plagiarism writing performance. Therefore, the new scale was more like an instructional/learning tool than an identifier for punishment. According to the new scale, students’ writings in the first phases were reexamined from the perspective of level of plagiarism. The specific level of plagiarism in each student’s writing was rated by me and a critical friend independently, and a Spearman’s r = 0.90 was used to ensure the inter-rater reliability. Each writing’s extent of plagiarism was calculated by averaging the ratings given by me and the critical friend. Results were given in Table 6.10. Table 6.10 Extent of plagiarism in the students’ writings in the first phase (with the newly designed assessment scale) Measure

Level of plagiarism

Median (IQR)

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

p value (Wilcoxon)

Pre (n = 38)

Cur (n = 38)

CurU (n = 37)

Pre versus Cur

Pre versus CurU

Cur versus CurU

3.00 (2.00)

4.00 (2.00)

2.00 (2.00)

0.498

0.002

0.000

Notes “Pre” refers to previous students’ writings, “Cur” refers to current students’ writings before UO intervention, and “CurU” refers to current students’ writings after UO intervention Critical value for significance in the Mann-Whitney U tests is 0.05 Critical value for significance in the Wilcoxon tests is 0.05

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Significant statistical differences (p < 0.05) were found between the current students’ writings before and after the UO pedagogical intervention as well as between previous students’ and the current students’ writings after the UO pedagogy. It was further discovered that the level of plagiarism in the current students’ writings decreased from 4 before the UO pedagogy to 2 after the intervention, indicating that the pedagogy had greatly helped the students diminish plagiarism in the writing process.

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Chapter 7

The Effects of the UO Pedagogical Intervention on Students’ Plagiarism Prevention and Academic Writing

This chapter respectively reports the research findings of Study 2 and Study 3. As the aim of the Study 2 is to refine the UO pedagogy and that of the Study 3 is to explore the effects of UO pedagogy on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing, findings from Study 2 laid foundation for Study 3.

7.1 Study 2 What Are Students’ Perceptional and Behavioral Changes Toward Plagiarism? The aim of the second research phrase (i.e., Study 2) was the re-introduction of the modified pedagogy to the same class as the one in Study 1 to explore both the students’ and the teacher’s perceptions and behavioral feedbacks. As such, the second phase addressed the following three sub research questions: 1. How do the students’ perceptions toward plagiarism change during the second research phase? 2. How do the students perform in writing with the UO pedagogy? 3. What are the students’ and the instructor’s perceptions toward the UO pedagogy?

7.1.1 Modifications of Instruments and Their Reliability In order to answer the research questions of the second research phase, both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to collect data. Similar to the instruments used in the first research phase, the students’ perceptions toward plagiarism and the UO pedagogy were collected through two questionnaires. The students’ writing

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_7

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performance with the UO pedagogy was measured by analyzing their writing assignments from the extent of plagiarism and writing quality perspectives. Besides, interviews were conducted with half of the students, who had not been interviewed in the first phase, and their instructor to explore their views on learning and teaching with the UO pedagogy. In order to improve research quality, some modifications were made to the instruments. The questionnaire on students’ perceptions of plagiarism experienced several changes to improve reliability, including the deletion of Item 4 and the addition of four new questions. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.85, higher than that in the first research phase (i.e., 0.7). According to Robinson et al. (1991), if Cronbach’s alpha ranges between 0.7 and 0.79, the reliability is at the extensive level, and if it reaches more than 0.8, it shows a higher degree of internal consistency among items. Since the students were required to finish a new writing assignment in the second research phase, their writings were assessed in terms of writing quality and the extent of plagiarism. Writing quality was scored by me and the subject instructor using the four-dimension writing assessment scale (see Appendix G) and a Pearson’s r correlation was obtained (Pearson’s r = 0.85) to determine good inter-rater reliability. As the level of plagiarism in writings was assessed by me and a critical friend with the newly designed plagiarism assessment scale (see Table 6.9), Spearman’s correlation, instead of Pearson’s r correlation, was used to examine the relationship between two nonparametric ratings. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was 0.83, which indicated a good consistency between the raters. Because there was a desirable reliability in the student feedback questionnaire (Cronbach’s alpha was 0.9 for all) and a satisfactory inter-coder agreement in interview analysis by me and a critical friend in the first research phase, related instruments and scales were re-introduced in the second research phase without re-tests on reliability. Besides, the same critical friend was invited again to help analyze data in the second phase.

7.1.2 Findings of Study 2 7.1.2.1

The Evolvement of Students’ Perceptions Toward Plagiarism

In general, the students’ perceptions of plagiarism showed only limited changes in the second research phase. Table 7.1 demonstrates that significant statistical differences were found on four items (Q6, Q7, Q11, Q12), while the students’ responses to the other nine items did not change much after the UO pedagogical intervention in the second phase. However, this did not mean that the new pedagogy had little effects on the students’ views on plagiarism. The students’ responses toward plagiarism before the intervention were generally high with all ratings above the mid-point (3.5) on the 6-point Likert scale. In addition, many students agreed that they already had a good understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism (see Q3) at the beginning of the second research phase. Thus,

4.97 (1.20) 5.05 (0.96)

5.29 (0.93) 4.84 (0.92)

4.34 (1.34) 4.63 (1.05) 4.63 (1.03)

5. Paraphrasing others’ writing, and adding it to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

6. Adopting others’ ideas, not texts, to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism 4.42 (1.13) 4.66 (1.15)

4. Adding others’ writing texts to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

7. Introducing teachers’ course materials in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

8. Using my previous writing assignment for the current one without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

9. Introducing Internet materials without source information in my writing assignment and submitting it in my name is plagiarism

a 10.

4.97 (0.82) 4.66 (0.99)

a 12.

When I agree with an author’s conclusion, copying it in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

a 13.

Notes Adapted from Lee et al.’s (2016) questionnaire on perception and attitude The ratings are based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” a The four new added items Critical value for significance in the Wilcoxon signed-rank tests is 0.05

Even though I help my friend finish his/her writing assignment, it is plagiarism for me to copy his/her manuscript and hand it in my name

4.63 (0.94)

Adopting the data that has no author’s information in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

Inserting Internet picture(s) in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

5.05 (1.06)

5.11 (0.56)

3. I have a good understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism

4.87 (1.14)

5.37 (0.68)

5.24 (0.75)

4.89 (1.13)

4.89 (1.11)

4.55 (1.50)

5.37 (0.75)

5.24 (0.75)

4.74 (1.01)

4.55 (0.72)

2. I am capable of avoiding plagiarism

4.76 (0.85)

4.63 (0.88)

a 11.

p value (Wilcoxon)

0.146

0.025

0.001

0.051

0.097

0.191

0.025

0.014

0.275

0.804

0.330

0.226

0.349

Pre (n = 38) Post (n = 38) Pre versus post

Mean (SD)

1. I am capable of identifying plagiarism-involving cases

Survey items

Table 7.1 Students’ perception of plagiarism in the second phase

7.1 Study 2 What Are Students’ Perceptional and Behavioral Changes … 95

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7 The Effects of the UO Pedagogical Intervention on Students’ Plagiarism …

attention should not be paid only to data collected from the second phase. Since the UO pedagogy had been continuously introduced in the subject course during the two research phases, its effects on the students’ perceptions toward plagiarism need to be explored by combing data from both phases (see Table 7.2). From the mean value of each group (see columns labeled “Pre1”, “Pre2”, and “Post2” in Table 7.2), it can be seen that the students’ views on plagiarism had been improved during the two research phases. Specifically, there was statistically significant increase in eight items (see the column labeled “Pre1 vs. Pre2”) after the first round of UO intervention, and statistical differences were not found in Q3 until the students finished the required writing assignments with the UO pedagogy during the second phase (see Q3 in the column labeled “Pre1 vs. Post2”). When the students’ growths in plagiarism awareness were examined from the two research phases separately, it turned out that the efficiency of the UO pedagogy varied (see Fig. 7.1). Compared with Phase Two, the students made more improvements in Phase One, as illustrated by the space between lines in Fig. 7.1. What’s more, the UO had different impacts on the students’ understanding of explicit and implicit plagiarism. For instance, before the UO intervention, their recognition of explicit plagiarism problems (e.g., “copying others’ writing texts to my writing assignment without source acknowledging” or Q4) was stronger than that of implicit plagiarism problems (e.g., “using others’ ideas to my writing assignment without source acknowledgement” or Q6). Learning with the UO pedagogy in the first phase helped with rapid growths in the students’ perceptions of explicit and implicit plagiarism problems, while the intervention in the second phase contributed more to their continued improvements in awareness of implicit problems than in explicit ones.

7.1.2.2

Students’ Writing Performance with the UO Pedagogy

The students’ writing performance with the UO pedagogy in the second phase (i.e., Study 2) was measured by the extent of plagiarism as well as writing quality. For the former, the new plagiarism assessment scale was adopted to reveal the results. Besides, in order to explore rich information about the extents of plagiarism, the number of consecutively copied words was used in the second phase. As the degree of similarity was proven unreliable, it was removed. At the end of the second research phase, when the students finished their writings and submitted them to the online writing system, the extents of plagiarism in this round of assignments were measured and compared with those in their first-phase submissions as well as in previous students’ writings (see Table 7.3). Table 7.3 demonstrates that statistical differences were found between the current students’ submissions in the second phase and previous students’ writings in terms of the levels of plagiarism and most consecutively copied words. Even though no statistical difference was noted in the levels of plagiarism when the current students’ submissions were compared with their works in the first phase, the students learned to avoid using large consecutively copied words from sources as well as adopt more proper formats of citations and references in their writings (see Items 2, 3, and 4 in

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97

Table 7.2 Students’ perceptions of plagiarism in the first two phases Survey items

Mean (SD)

p value (Wilcoxon)

Pre1 (n = 38)

Pre2 (n = 38)

Post2 (n = 38)

Pre1 versus Pre2

Pre2 versus Post2

Pre1 versus Post2

1. I am capable of identifying plagiarism-involving cases

4.00 (1.27)

4.63 (0.88)

4.76 (0.85)

0.003

0.349

0.001

2. I am capable of avoiding plagiarism

4.03 (1.17)

4.55 (0.72)

4.74 (1.01)

0.008

0.226

0.000

3. I have a good understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism

4.76 (1.20)

5.11 (0.56)

5.24 (0.75)

0.152

0.330

0.035

4. Adding others’ writing texts to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.82 (1.06)

5.29 (0.93)

5.37 (0.75)

0.017

0.804

0.008

5. Paraphrasing others’ writing, and adding it to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.82 (1.35)

4.84 (0.92)

5.05 (1.06)

0.001

0.275

0.000

6. Adopting others’ ideas, not texts, to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.47 (1.48)

4.42 (1.13)

4.97 (1.20)

0.004

0.014

0.000

7. Introducing teachers’ course materials in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.45 (1.27)

4.66 (1.15)

5.05 (0.96)

0.000

0.025

0.000

8. Using my previous writing assignment for the current one without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

2.42 (1.13)

4.34 (1.34)

4.55 (1.50)

0.000

0.191

0.000

9. Introducing Internet materials without source information in my writing assignment and submitting it in my name is plagiarism

3.74 (1.27)

4.63 (1.05)

4.89 (1.11)

0.002

0.097

0.000

Notes Adapted from Lee et al.’s (2016) questionnaire on perception and attitude The ratings are based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” Critical value for significance in the Wilcoxon signed-rank tests is 0.05 “Pre1” refers to students’ perceptions of plagiarism before the UO intervention in the first phase, “Pre2” refers to students’ perceptions of plagiarism before the intervention in the second phase, and “Post2” refers to students’ perceptions of plagiarism after the intervention in the second phase As data from the four new added items could not contribute to the comparison of findings from the two research phases, they were deleted from the table

98

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NEAN

4 3 2 1 0 Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q5

Q6

Q7

Q8

Q9

ITEM Pre1 (n=38)

Pre2 (n=38)

Post2 (n=38)

Fig. 7.1 Trend analysis on students’ perceptions of plagiarism in the first two phases. Notes “Pre1” refers to students’ perceptions of plagiarism before the UO intervention in the first phase, “Pre2” refers to students’ perceptions of plagiarism before the intervention in the second phase, and “Post2” refers to students’ perceptions of plagiarism after the intervention in the second phase Table 7.3 Extent of plagiarism in students’ writings in the second phase Measure

Mean (SD)

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

p value (Wilcoxon)

Pre (n = Phase 1 (n 38) = 37)

Phase 2 (n = 38)

Phase 2 versus Pre

Phase 2 versus Phase 1

1. Level of plagiarism

2.97 (0.79)

2.24 (0.98)

2.00 (1.14)

0.000

0.328

2. Most consecutively copied words

75.00 (43.80)

53.41 (49.35)

28.26 (35.71)

0.000

0.011

3. Proper format of 0.11 citation (0.31)

0.27 (0.45)

0.74 (0.45)

0.000

0.000

4. Proper format of 0.08 reference (0.27)

0.30 (0.46)

0.63 (0.49)

0.000

0.003

Notes: For item3 and 4, 1- “Yes” and 2- “No”. To ensure inter-rater reliability, I and a critical friend separately rated the items. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was 0.9, demonstrating a satisfactory consistency between the raters “Pre” refers to previous students’ writing, “Phase 1” refers to current students’ writings in the first research phase, and “Phase 2” refers to current students’ writings in the second research phase Critical value for significance in the Mann–Whitney U tests is 0.05 Critical value for significance in the Wilcoxon tests is 0.05

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99

Table 7.4 Writing quality in students’ writings in the second phase Measure

Mean (SD)

Pre (n = Phase 1 (n 38) = 37)

Phase 2 (n = 38)

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

p value (Wilcoxon)

Phase 2 versus Pre

Phase 2 versus Phase 1

1. Assignment response

19.93 (5.53)

21.96 (3.73) 21.58 (3.04) 0.597

0.639

2. Coherence and cohesion

19.54 (3.72)

22.57 (3.15) 23.62 (2.30) 0.000

0.122

3. Vocabulary and 17.57 language use (3.70)

20.34 (3.40) 22.04 (4.19) 0.000

0.064

4. Citation

19.73 (2.62) 21.32 (4.14) 0.000

0.071

84.60 (10.47)

0.150

13.36 (7.03)

Writing Score 70.40 (including all four (13.91) aspects above)

88.55 (9.58) 0.000

Notes Adapted from the research of Liu et al. (2013) and Choi (2012) “Pre” refers to previous students’ writing, “Phase 1” refers to current students’ writings in the first research phase, and “Phase 2” refers to current students’ writings in the second research phase Critical value for significance in the Mann–Whitney U tests is 0.05 Critical value for significance in the Wilcoxon tests is 0.05

Table 7.3). It inferred that, the students made efforts to avoid plagiarism in academic writing during the two phases, but their attention was paid more to the formats, such as avoiding direct copying or adopting citations and references, than the contents. In addition, the writing quality of the second-phase submissions was assessed using the four-dimension writing assessment scale (see Appendix G). Findings were revealed in Table 7.4. Even though there was gradual increase in writing quality during the students’ continuous learning with the UO pedagogy, there was no notable improvement in the second phase. Examining the students’ and their instructor’s experiences with the UO pedagogy in this phase might shed light on the hindering factors.

7.1.2.3

Students’ and Instructor’s Perceptions Toward the UO Pedagogy

Both the students’ and their instructor’s views on the UO pedagogy were analyzed from the student feedback questionnaires and the interviews. Table 7.5 illustrates results from the questionnaires. In general, the students’ responses to the UO pedagogy together with the online writing system in the second phase were more positive than those in the first phase. In terms of the UO pedagogy’s usefulness in anti-plagiarism and source use, the students gave higher rates of consensus on some items in Phase Two (see the column

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Table 7.5 Students’ feedbacks to the UO pedagogy and the online writing system in the second phase Survey items

Mean (SD) Phase1 (n = 38)

Proportion of agreement Phase2 (n = Phase1 38)

p value (Wilcoxon)

Phase2

I The effectiveness of the academic writing (i.e., AW) project* Understanding of plagiarism 1. I am more capable 4.87 (0.88) of identifying plagiarism-involving cases after working on the AW project

5.03 (0.79)

92.1%

100%

0.335

2. I am more capable 4.87 (0.74) of avoiding plagiarism (if any) after working on the AW project

5.00 (0.81)

97.4%

97.4%

0.322

3. I have better 5.00 (0.74) understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism after working on the AW project

5.05 (0.80)

97.4%

97.4%

0.683

Source use: paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation 4. I am more capable 4.76 (0.59) of expressing others’ ideas in my own words (i.e., paraphrasing) after working on the AW project

4.87 (0.84)

100%

94.7%

0.414

5. I am more capable 4.68 (0.70) of presenting the main information in a concise statement (i.e., summarizing) after working on the AW project

4.76 (0.94)

94.7%

92.1%

0.580

6. I am more capable of distinguishing paraphrasing, summarizing and patchwriting after working on the AW project

4.82 (0.83)

100%

94.7%

0.984

4.82 (0.65)

(continued)

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101

Table 7.5 (continued) Survey items

Mean (SD) Phase1 (n = 38)

Proportion of agreement

p value (Wilcoxon)

Phase2 (n = Phase1 38)

Phase2

7. I am more capable of 4.68 (0.66) integrating several source materials with my own ideas (i.e., synthesizing) after working on the AW project

4.89 (0.83)

97.4%

97.4%

0.211

8. I am more capable of producing proper citations after working on the AW project

4.97 (0.64)

5.08 (0.78)

100%

97.4%

0.414

4.89 (0.65)

5.05 (0.70)

97.4%

100%

0.221

10. Due to my 4.87 (0.62) enhanced ability of using the skills of paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing during writing on the AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

5.08 (0.72)

100%

100%

0.088

Others 9. Due to a better understanding of plagiarism during writing on the AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

(continued)

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Table 7.5 (continued) Survey items

Mean (SD) Phase1 (n = 38)

11. Due to my 4.97 (0.59) enhanced ability of creating proper citations during writing on the AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

Proportion of agreement

p value (Wilcoxon)

Phase2 (n = Phase1 38)

Phase2

5.13 (0.78)

100%

0.239

100%

II Perceived usefulness and usability of the online writing system 12. Use of the online writing system helps to stimulate my interest in writing assignments

4.03 (1.08)

4.08 (1.30)

76.3%

76.3%

0.823

13. Use of the online writing system enhanced my engagement in writing assignments

4.32 (0.99)

4.32 (1.19)

81.6%

86.8%

0.897

14. I would like to use the online writing system in other courses

4.16 (1.18)

4.03 (1.22)

73.7%

78.9%

0.525

15. The online writing system is easy to use in general

4.55(0.92)

4.58 (1.00)

86.8%

89.5%

0.872

16. Benefits of using 4.21 (1.07) the online writing system outweighed its technical challenges for users

4.55 (0.89)

73.7%

92.1%

0.059

17. The online writing system aids me in fulfilling learning goals

4.34 (1.07)

92.1%

84.2%

0.585

4.42 (0.92)

(continued)

7.1 Study 2 What Are Students’ Perceptional and Behavioral Changes …

103

Table 7.5 (continued) Survey items

Mean (SD) Phase1 (n = 38)

Proportion of agreement

p value (Wilcoxon)

Phase2 (n = Phase1 38)

Phase2

18. In the online 4.79 (0.84) writing system, peer review is helpful to exchange peers’ views about plagiarism and source use

4.79 (0.70)

94.7%

97.4%

0.860

19. In the online writing system, peer review is effective in decreasing plagiarism in academic writing

4.82 (0.73)

89.5%

97.4%

0.159

4.61 (0.823

Notes Adapted from the feedback survey of Lee et al. (2016) and the Technology Acceptance questionnaire of Liu et al. (2013) The ratings are based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” *For students’ sake, the UO pedagogy with the online writing system was introduced to students as an “academic writing project” “Proportion of agreement” refers to the number of agreement (including slightly agree, agree, and strongly agree) compared to the total number of responses (i.e., 38)

labeled “proportion of agreement” in Table 7.5) while offering the same or lower rates on the other items, as compared to their responses in Phase One. However, no statistical differences were found between their feedbacks in the two phases. Possible reasons might be: (1) The students’ ratings to the UO pedagogy together with the online writing system had reached a high level in the first research phase, especially toward the overall benefits of the new pedagogy in their understanding of plagiarism and source use (e.g., almost full ratings in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q9, Q10, and Q11), which provided a limited space for improvement in the second phase. (2) As each instructional intervention lasted one and a half months, the limited time span might have led to restrictions in individual changes in perceptions and performance. To get a deeper understanding, the second-phase interviews with both the students and the instructor were analyzed (see Table 7.6). The numbers in the column of “students’ feedback” refer to the numbers of interviewees who held positive or negative views to the related topics. Since 19 out of the 38 students had been interviewed at the end of the first research phase, the remaining students were invited to be interviewed in this phase. One student refused to be interviewed, so the actual number of interviewees was 18. Analysis of the student interviews revealed that some findings were similar to those from the first research phase, while others brought new implications for further refinements of the UO pedagogy.

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Table 7.6 Student interviews in the second phase Themes

Students’ feedback Positive Negative Codes

1. Learning experience with the UO pedagogy

18 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Facilitate self-reflection in academic writing (b) Improve ability of identifying plagiarism in writings (c) Obtain strategies on anti-plagiarism (d) Improve writing skills in source use

2. Enable factors of the UO in anti-plagiarism

18 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Peer review (b) Instruction (c) Learning resources in online writing system

3. Enable factors of the UO in source use

12 (67%)

(a) Peer review • Specific writing requirement and assessment scale • Learning resources on online writing system • Instruction (a) Negative • The provided literature was difficult to be understood

6 (33%)

4. Learning experiences with the online 18 0 writing system (100%) (0%)

5. Hindering factors for the online writing

(a) Finish writings anytime and anywhere (b) Ease-of-use (c) Facilitate communication among students (d) Track one’s own writing process

18 0 (100%) (0%) (continued)

7.1 Study 2 What Are Students’ Perceptional and Behavioral Changes …

105

Table 7.6 (continued) Themes

Students’ feedback Positive Negative Codes

6. Effects of the UO

18 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Know better about avoiding plagiarism (b) Know better about source use

7. Perceptions of undergraduates’ learning about anti-plagiarism and source use

18 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Objective • Plagiarism is rife in campus, which is becoming serious • Lack of knowledge and skills on anti-plagiarism and source use • There has been no plagiarism-related instruction (b) Subjective • Affect the quality of dissertation • Affect future (research) work

In terms of similarity, the students continued to show satisfaction with learning with the new pedagogy (see Item 1) and approved its effects on anti-plagiarism and source use (see Item 6). Moreover, most interviewees in this phase began to realize their learning needs regarding effective plagiarism-free academic writing skills and recognized the necessity of learning about plagiarism and source use in undergraduate education (see Item 7). With closer examination, I discovered that the second-phase interviewees provided richer information to help verify their statements. More than two-thirds of them indicated the importance of writing practices in improving their understandings of academic writing. Among them, two (S6 and S18) students experienced academic writing instruction in high schools, specifically in paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation. However, without chances to practice, they could barely recite what they had learned then and did not know how to write properly. When the enabling factors of the UO were discussed, 18 students expressed satisfaction with the peer review’s role in facilitating anti-plagiarism and source use. One student (S10) further elaborated that “as the peer review was conducted online anonymously, I could freely express my opinions without the fear of being rejected by peers”. As for the usefulness and usability of the online writing system, the students also provided positive feedbacks. Two (S2 and S10) students responded that they were more familiar with the working mechanism of the ICT tool than in the first phase and thus they did not encounter any technical problems while writing online. What’s more, the ICT tool helped build a virtual learning environment, in which the students could not only finish the assignments as required but also learn from each other through peer review (see Item 4).

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Apart from the similarities between the interview data from the two phases, some unexpected findings were also revealed from Phase Two. Six second-phase interviewees (S4, S6, S12, S20, S24, and S30) talked about their worries about how to write properly, especially how to paraphrase, summarize, synthesize, and cite based on sources. Three students (S4, S12, and S24) further explained that, as the literature adopted in the second writing assignment was found to be more difficult than that in the first phase, they encountered difficulties in understanding the main ideas. Therefore, they felt frustrated while trying to write essays based on the literature and unsatisfied with their final writings. These feedbacks from the students might partly explain why they rated lower on their improvements in paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation than they did in the first phase (see Q4 to Q8 in Table 7.5) as well as doubted if the ICT tool could help them fulfill the learning goals (see Q17 in Table 7.5). Apart from the students, the instructor was also interviewed about his experiences with and reflections on the adoption of the UO in his course. He mentioned that, compared to the first phase, most students were more familiar with the learning procedure set by the UO pedagogy as well as more skilled at using the online writing system to finish writings and conduct peer communication in the second one. However, he discovered that there was a trend of polarization in the writing quality. He proposed that, compared with skillful student writers, struggling students tended to pay more attentions to reusing source language with little modifications and this could hinder their improvements in anti-plagiarism and source use, which might help explain why many students’ writings in the second phase did not show notable progress in terms of the levels of plagiarism and writing quality.

7.1.3 Discussion The findings in the second research phase revealed that most students believed in the benefits of adopting the UO pedagogy in academic writing. As the students’ perceptions of plagiarism showed, most of them recognized the importance of avoiding plagiarism and writing properly from sources. Even though the students’ writing performance did not improve notably in the second phase, there were gradual decreases in the extents of plagiarism and increases in writing quality. Regarding both the students’ and their instructor’ feedbacks to the UO pedagogy, they not only mentioned features of the UO pedagogy that helped improve plagiarism-free academic writing but also discussed difficulties they encountered and provided suggestions for the writing process. Compared with the significant statistical evidences found in the students’ perceptional and behavioral changes to plagiarism in the first phase, their improvements in anti-plagiarism and source use in the second phase produced less statistical differences before and after the pedagogical intervention. Accordingly, the UO pedagogy might be questioned about its effects on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing. However, the acquisition of academic writing is a long-term matter (Al-Badwawi,

7.2 The Refinement of the UO Pedagogy: Round Two

107

2011), which requires students’ continuous engagement in writing practices. Besides, acquiring academic writing skills is not a linear journey, but a spiral learning process (Defazio et al., 2010). Therefore, this suggests that findings from the second research phase together with concerns raised by the students and their instructor could confirm what previous research has uncovered. What’s more, the effects of the UO pedagogy could not be judged only by temporary results. In order to facilitate students’ development in plagiarism-free academic writing, more attention need to be paid to examining students’ learning process with the new pedagogy, exploring their learning needs, and helping them cope with difficulties by modifying the pedagogy. According to findings revealed from the plagiarism perception questionnaires, the UO’s impacts on the students’ understandings of explicit and implicit plagiarism problems varied. Compared with explicit problems, the students might need more practices to reflect on implicit plagiarism. In terms of the students’ writing performance, frequent patchwriting in their submissions resulted in serious plagiarism and poor writing quality. This suggests that, compared with changes in the format of academic writing (e.g., the addition of references and citations), it is more difficult for students to write correctly from sources and bring out their own voices. According to Pecorari (2010), patchwriting is a necessary learning phase for novice writers. Therefore, it is crucial for students to take more time and practices to acquire skills in anti-plagiarism and source use.

7.2 The Refinement of the UO Pedagogy: Round Two Even though findings from the second phase suggest that providing enough time and practices are important for students’ development in plagiarism-free academic writing. There is still space for pedagogical improvements that needs scholarly attention. One way to improve may be offering students proper instructions as early as possible. Indeed, three interviewees in the second phase (S4, S22, and S32) made a suggestion regarding the timing of adopting the UO pedagogy in class that it should be introduced in freshman year courses. They argued that the early introduction of the UO pedagogy in class could provide more opportunities for students to practice anti-plagiarism academic writing. They added that the sooner students learned about anti-plagiarism and source use, the better they could form habits in academic writing. In addition, the instructor raised similar opinions. He indicated that, as freshmen had fewer experiences in academic writing than junior students, their early access to the UO pedagogy would help reduce unintentional plagiarism. Therefore, both the students and the instructor in the second phase suggested providing the new pedagogy to freshmen, which was carried out in the third research phase.

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7.3 Study 3 Providing Pedagogical Intervention to Younger Students Findings from the second research phase provided bases for refinements of the UO pedagogy. The further modified pedagogy was introduced in the third research phase in a different subject course at another university in Mainland China to explore its effects on students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use in academic writing. This section will interpret how the students and their instructor in the third phase responded to the instructional intervention. Three sub research questions were addressed in this phase: 1. What are the effects of the UO pedagogy on the students’ perceptions of plagiarism? 2. What are the effects of the UO pedagogy on the students’ writing performance? 3. What are the students’ and the instructor’s perceptions toward the UO pedagogy?

7.3.1 Participants and Context Via convenience sampling, two classes of freshmen and their instructor Ms. Z1 from the Educational Technology discipline at another Chinese public university were invited to participate in the third phase. The reason for recruiting lower-grade undergraduates in this phase is to be discussed next. The first two research phases enrolled a cohort of junior-year students. Their participation not only provided evidence to test the UO pedagogy, but also brought justification for the timing of the UO’s involvement in undergraduate studies. By reviewing the students’ writing performance in the first two research phases, the course instructor expressed satisfaction with their improvements in understanding plagiarism and source use. However, he suggested that the UO pedagogy would have more significant influences if it was introduced earlier in the students’ academic writing practices. Furthermore, he mentioned that the early access to the UO pedagogy might bring two advantages to students’ plagiarism-free academic writing: increasing opportunities for academic writing practices and decreasing risks of unintentional plagiarism. He believed that if students were provided with the UO pedagogy as soon as they entered university, they would have more chances to learn about plagiarism, develop habits of proper source use, reflect on their practices as academic writers, and improve greatly in being free from plagiarism. Apart from the instructor, the students from the previous two phases also shared their opinions regarding the timing of the UO intervention. One student (S1) mentioned in the interview that he treasured the chance of writing with the new pedagogy because he believed that it would help him be well prepared for the coming dissertation project in the next academic year. Another student (S22) with a similar viewpoint to the UO added that, since plagiarism was too complicated to be fully 1

Code to keep the name of the instructor anonymous.

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understood through limited times of writing practices and learning to writing from sources was really time-consuming, he suggested the UO to be adopted in freshman courses to provide enough time and instructional support for students to develop plagiarism-free academic writing skills. Both the instructor’s and the students’ responses reminded me that the timing of adopting the UO pedagogy in class deserves more attention. Therefore, two classes of first-year undergraduate students were invited in the third research phase to explore their academic writing process with the UO pedagogy. Class One was the experimental group and Class Two was the control group. The UO pedagogy was introduced to the experimental-group students in a subject course called instructional design as an academic writing (i.e., AW) project. In comparison, the students from the control group finished the writing assignments without the UO pedagogy, except that they submitted their writings through the online writing system. The instructional intervention lasted for one and a half months from March to May in 2018. In order to provide the control-group students chances to write with the UO pedagogy, they were assigned to finish another writing task with the UO pedagogy after the experiment. Background information of the student participants is given in Table 7.7, which indicates that the two groups of students both had few prior learning experiences regarding plagiarism and source use before. The course instructor Ms. Z had been teaching for about twenty years since she received a Bachelor’s degree in Educational Technology. She had obtained a Master’s degree in the same field in 2005. Just as the teacher participant (Mr. L) in the first two phases, Ms. Z offered the same course instructional design, a compulsory course Table 7.7 Subject demographics in the third research phase Measure

Gender Anti-plagiarism learning experience

Learning experience in paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, or citation

Experimental Group (n = 66)

Control Group (n = 55)

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Male

13

19.7%

11

20%

Female

53

80.3%

44

80%

During university education

0

0

1

1.8%

Before entering university

0

0

3

5.5%

None

66

100%

51

92.7%

During university education

0

0

2

3.6%

Before entering university

2

3.0%

2

3.6%

None

64

97.0%

51

92.8%

Items

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in Educational Technology, to students and had conducted the course for ten years. However, compared with the junior students that Mr. L taught, Ms. L’s students were the first-year students. According to Ms. Z, the reason was that instructional design was a prerequisite course for some other subject courses according to curriculum design at her university and students were found to have no difficulties in learning about the course at the first-year level. When inquired about the plagiarism policies in her university, Ms. Z provided a similar answer with that given by Mr. L (the instructor participant in the first two research phases). There was no clear published plagiarism policy on the university website, and there was no formal plagiarism instruction provided by faculties in the university. Ms. Z also did not set any plagiarism rules for students to follow in her course. According to Ms. Z, her students would be informed about the plagiarism detection information when they submitted their dissertations for graduation. During students’ four-year undergraduate study, instructional supports on students’ antiplagiarism were seldom discussed among faculties. In Ms. Z’s course, writing assignments had been an important instructional component to examine and assess students’ perceptions or misconceptions of the key notions in instructional design. According to Ms. Z, her previous students experienced some difficulties in finishing the academic writing tasks, which might account for the occurrence of plagiarism in their writings. For example, some of them had no idea about what academic writing should look like and continued to write in the tone or style as what they did in high school. Others were not able to create their own ideas based on provided academic materials and were prone to directly copy source texts. Even though Ms. Z had realized the importance of academic writing instruction, she could contribute little due to limited time and energy. Therefore, when the UO pedagogy was introduced to her, she showed great interests in using it in her course. Even though the UO pedagogy had been tested and refined through the previous two research phases, its implementation in a new subject course still deserved careful attention. Before the commence of the experiment, the instructional plan was cooperatively examined by Ms. Z and me, including the timing of assigning the writing tasks, the writing topic, and the assignment evaluation criteria. With my help, Mr. Z prepared the instructional materials related to the writing assignments and learned to use the online writing system. As the online writing system was adopted to provide a virtual learning environment for academic writing, two seminars were conducted separately to help the experimental-group and control-group students get familiar with the system. The experimental-group students were granted full access to the online writings system, while the control group was limited to use the writing assignment module only (see the module design in Sect. 5.3). The course instructional design was conducted in a traditional classroom with one projector and one computer. When the students were assigned a writing task, they were provided with two multimedia labs (one for each class) to finish it, where each student could access a computer and connect to the Internet easily. The experimental group finished the writing assignment with the UO pedagogy, while the control group finished the same assignment without it. The following section will explain what the

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two cohorts of students did online and in class during academic writing process and what were the differences between them.

7.3.2 Comparison of Instructional Activities Between the Two Cohorts The experimental-group’ learning process with the UO pedagogy was demonstrated in the top area of Fig. 7.2, while that of the control-group students was displayed in the bottom area. When assigned a writing task, the two cohorts of students were instructed to read the provided academic materials and finish the first draft of writing. Once they made submissions to the online writing system, i.e., the ➊ in Fig. 7.2, the two groups followed different learning paths to make revisions on their writings. The experimental-group’ learning activities were as follows: (1) The students were trained about the peer review process and criteria by examining three writing examples with varying quality in plagiarism and source use and then comparing their review results with those of the instructor; (2) the students reviewed their peers’ writings and evaluated them using the same criteria as in the peer review training; (3) after receiving both their peers’ and the instructor’s feedbacks, the students were provided chances to conduct face-to-face communication with peers in class about

Experimental Group with UO

In class Online S

S

❶Self writing

S

❺Self revision S

S

❸Peer discussion S

T S

S

❹Lecturing

Control Group without UO

S

❷Peer review Online

In class

❶Self writing S

S

❸Self revision

T S ❷Lecturing/ S

S

S

Fig. 7.2 Experimental and control groups’ learning activities. Notes “OWS” refers to the online writing system. Feedback with dashed line refers to weak interaction between instructor and students

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the writing issues raised in the peer review process; (4) with the help of the plagiarism analysis module embedded in the online writing system, the instructor gained information about the students’ plagiarism levels and source use quality. Then, the instructor provided one-hour instruction based on the received detection results as well as the students’ concerns expressed in the peer review and peer discussions, especially on the plagiarism and source use issues; (5) the students made reflections on their writings, revised them accordingly, and submitted them to the online writing system. Similar to the experimental group, the students from the control group could access the learning materials, i.e., the three writing examples with varying quality in plagiarism and source use, with the instructor’s review comments on them. They were also provided with instructional feedbacks from their instructor regarding writing issues in their first drafts. However, the control group did not participate in the peer review training, written peer review online, or oral peer discussions in class. Besides, the instructor’s online access to their writings was restricted. Specifically, the instructor could access these students’ writings and provided feedbacks as she usually did previously. However, she could access neither the plagiarism analysis module nor the peer review module and thus was unable to supervise these students’ writing process online. Figure 6.1 presents that the control group received feedbacks and instruction mainly from their instructor based on their academic writing assignments and that their interactions with peers were lower than the experimental-group students’. For ethical considerations over the experimental procedure, the control group was provided with the UO pedagogical intervention in the following writing assignment of the same subject course, after the experiment ended.

7.3.3 Measuring Instruments and Their Reliability In order to answer the research questions mentioned above, a quasi-experiment was carried out, during which both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to collect data. The effects of the UO pedagogy on students’ perceptions of plagiarism were explored by analyzing data from the student perception survey, and its effects on students’ writing performance were examined by analyzing the students’ submitted writings from the perspectives of plagiarism level and writing quality. Both the students’ and their instructor’s viewpoints toward the UO pedagogy were examined by analyzing data from the feedback questionnaires and interviews. The research instruments used in the third research were the same as those in the second phase. Since new participants were invited in this phase, the reliability of each instrument was measured again.

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Table 7.8 Plagiarism assessment scale used in the third research phase Level

Label

Description

Level1 None

No plagiarism has been found

Level2 Minor

Copying a block of text, which is greater than 6 and less than 85 Chinese characters, from a source, with phrases rearranged, words added, synonyms used, yet without citation

Level3 Moderate • Copying a block of consecutive Chinese characters, which is greater than 6 and less than 85, from a source without correct quotation, or • Copying a block of text of over 85 Chinese characters from a source without citation, but with a reference at the end of the work Level4 Serious

• Copying more than 85 consecutive Chinese characters from a source without correct quotation, or • Copying a block of text of over 85 Chinese characters from a source without citation

Notes: The number “6”2 refers to the minimal phrase match, and number “85” refers to the mean score of the most consecutively copied words among all students’ writings before the pedagogical intervention

The survey on students’ perceptions of plagiarism was conducted both at the beginning and the end of the experiment to examine possible perceptional changes during the experiment as well as perceptional differences on plagiarism between the experimental group and the control group. There were 13 items: The first three focused on the students’ self-evaluation of their capability in anti-plagiarism, while the other ten items explored the students’ ability to distinguish plagiarism from various scenarios. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.74, showing that all items had fair internal consistency (Robinson et al., 1991). The feedback questionnaire was used at the end of the experiment to collect the students’ views on the usefulness and validity of the UO pedagogy as well as the online writing system. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.93 for the UO pedagogy and 0.91 for the ICT tool, demonstrating good internal consistency. The students’ writing performance was measured from two perspectives: the extent of plagiarism and writing quality. The extent of plagiarism in each writing was evaluated in the following two steps. First, the most consecutively copied words in each writing (i.e., the first draft before the intervention) were revealed with the help of the plagiarism analysis module in the online writing system, based on which the mean score of the most consecutively copied words among all writings were calculated as the key threshold of plagiarism assessment (i.e., 85 Chinese characters). Second, each writing (i.e., the revised draft after the intervention) was measured with the newly designed plagiarism assessment scale (see Table 7.8) to obtain its specific plagiarism level. I and a critical friend rated the levels of plagiarism independently, and Spearman’s r = 0.93 was used to ensure the inter-rater reliability. Each writing’s level of plagiarism was determined by averaging the ratings given by me and the critical friend. 2

Regarding the reason for choosing the number six, previous research had suggested the use of six words as the minimal phrase match in plagiarism identification. Kostoff, R. N., Johnson, D., Del

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The writing quality was measured with the four-dimension writing assessment scale (see Appendix G). The students’ writings were assessed by me and the course instructor, and a Pearson’s r correlation was obtained (Pearson’s r = 0.83) to determine the good inter-rater reliability. The writing quality was calculated by averaging the ratings given by me and the critical friend. For the student interviews, it was designed that half randomly selected students were invited to join the face-to-face communication with me at the end of the experiment. However, as several students showed their reluctance to attend the interview, the actual number of interviewed students decreases to 23. Apart from the students, the instructor was also invited to comment on her instructional experiences with the UO pedagogy. To ensure the reliability of the interviews, 50% of the interview data were separately coded by me and a critical friend into themes and sub-themes, and active discussions were conducted to reduce the discrepancy between the two coders till the inter-rater agreement reached the level of 83%, indicating a satisfactory reliability (Stemler, 2004). Then, the remaining part of the interview data was coded by me alone.

7.3.4 Findings of Study 3 7.3.4.1

Students’ Perceptions of Plagiarism

In order to explore the students’ possible perceptional changes toward plagiarism during the experiment, data were collected from pre- and post-surveys on their perceptions of plagiarism and analyzed as follows. First, the students’ perceptional baseline was established by comparing the experimental and control-groups’ perceptions of plagiarism at the beginning of the experiment. Second, their perceptions of plagiarism were compared again at the end of the experiment to detect differences between the two cohorts. Third, each group of students’ possible perceptional changes toward plagiarism was presented in a visual form by comparing the pre- and post-survey results within each cohort. By comparing the two cohorts of students’ responses to the pre-survey items, it was discovered that their views on plagiarism were similar (see Table 7.9) except on Q12. The Mann–Whitney U test was utilized to determine the differences in perceptions of plagiarism between experimental and control groups, and significant statistical differences were found on one item (Q12). Table 7.9 illustrates that, even though most students lacked prior learning experiences related to anti-plagiarism, their responses were generally high with most ratings above the mid-point (3.5) on Rio, J. A., Bloomfield, L. A., Shlesinger, M. F., Malpohl, G., & Cortes, H. D. (2006). Duplicate publication and “paper inflation” in the fractals literature. Science and engineering ethics, 12(3), 543–554. Besides, the researcher made a comparison among different analysis results generated by the plagiarism analysis module by providing the minimum unit with different number (i.e., 4, 6, 8). The comparison showed that the number 6 could help reveal the most plagiarism issues in writings than others as well as avoid highlighting phases without plagiarism.

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the 6-point Likert scale. Besides, both cohorts of students gave the highest rating to Q3, i.e., “I have a good understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism”. This suggests that most students had high self-evaluations about their perceptions of plagiarism. Apart from Q3, the students rated high on Q4, i.e., “Adding others’ writing texts to my writing assignments without acknowledging the sources is plagiarism”, which shows that most of them could easily distinguish the typical explicit plagiarism problem. However, the students’ lower ratings on other items (from Q5 to Q11) indicated that they might have difficulties in judging whether those cases fell into plagiarism. After the experiment, the students’ perceptions of plagiarism were measured again. As 17 students did not submit the perception surveys, the specific number of collected questionnaires from the experimental-group students was 61 and that from the control-group students was 43. The experimental group rated higher than the control group in ten out of thirteen items, i.e., Q4 to Q13 (see Table 7.10). By using a Mann–Whitney U test, the differences between the two groups were noted, and significant statistical differences were found on five items, i.e., Q3, Q6, Q10, Q11, and Q12 (see Table 7.10). Surprisingly, the experimental-group students’ responses to Q3 decreased greatly, which were lower than not only their previous responses in the pre-survey but also those of control-group counterparts. Figure 7.3 illustrates the differences between the two groups. In Fig. 7.3, the blue solid line refers to the experiment group’s perceptions of plagiarism after the experiment, and the red solid line refers to those of the control group. The blue and red dash lines indicate both groups’ perceptions of plagiarism before the experiment, which help illustrate the differences between the two groups. Since the waveforms of two dash lines are similar, the two groups of students’ original perceptions of plagiarism before the experiment were alike. However, the waveforms of the two solid lines are very different, showing that the experimental group gave higher ratings in the post-survey in general (see the blue solid line) while the control group rated some items higher and others lower after the experiment (see the red solid line). In sum, information from both Table 7.10 and Fig. 7.3 show that the experimental-group students’ perceptions of plagiarism were improved with the UO pedagogy. However, when compared with the ratings by the control group, statistical increases were found only in four out of the thirteen items (i.e., Q6, Q10, Q11, and Q12). This suggests that more writing practices with the UO pedagogy are needed for students to achieve continual progresses in perceptions of plagiarism.

7.3.4.2

Students’ Writing Performance with the UO Pedagogy

During the experiment, 11 students quitted without finishing or submitting their writings. As a result, the number of the experimental-group students decreased from 66 to 64 and that of the control-group students dropped from 55 to 46. Their wring performance was measured from two perspectives: the extent of plagiarism and writing quality. Table 7.11 shows the students’ writing performance in their first drafts before the UO pedagogical intervention. The Mann–Whitney U test was utilized

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Table 7.9 Students’ perceptions of plagiarism revealed in the pre-survey in the third phase Survey items

Mean (SD)

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

All (n = 121)

Experimental group (n = 66)

Control group (n = 55)

1. I am capable of identifying plagiarism-involving cases

4.05 (1.04)

4.06 (0.96)

4.04 (1.14)

0.742

2. I am capable of avoiding plagiarism

3.98 (1.05)

4.05 (1.07)

3.91 (1.02)

0.671

3. I have a good understanding 5.25 on the importance of avoiding (0.86) plagiarism

5.17 (0.97)

5.35 (0.70)

0.414

4. Adding others’ writing texts to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.63 (1.21)

4.52 (1.28)

4.76 (1.12)

0.338

5. Paraphrasing others’ writing, and adding it to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.28 (1.29) *

3.32 (1.26) *

3.24 (1.35) *

0.854

6. Adopting others’ ideas, not texts, to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.26 (1.39) *

3.17 (1.42) *

3.36 (1.35) *

0.393

7. Introducing teachers’ course materials in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.34 (1.36) *

3.26 (1.36) *

3.44 (1.36) *

0.346

8. Using my previous writing 2.26 assignment for the current one (1.19) * without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

2.23 (1.28) *

2.31 (1.09) *

0.340

9. Introducing Internet materials without source information in my writing assignment and submitting it in my name is plagiarism

4.30 (1.24)

4.38 (1.20)

4.20 (1.30)

0.484

10. Inserting Internet picture(s) in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.93 (1.28)

3.97 (1.22)

3.89 (1.37)

0.851

(continued)

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Table 7.9 (continued) Survey items

Mean (SD) All (n = 121)

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

Experimental group (n = 66)

Control group (n = 55)

11. Adopting the data that has no 3.83 author’s information in my (1.22) writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

3.67 (1.17)

4.02 (1.25)

0.071

12. When I agree with an 4.55 author’s conclusion, copying (1.19) it in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.36 (1.19)

4.78 (1.17)

0.028

13. Even though I help my friend 4.26 finish his/her writing (1.38) assignment, it is plagiarism for me to copy his/her manuscript and hand it in my name

4.21 (1.44)

4.33 (1.31)

0.757

Notes Adapted from Lee et al.’s (2016) questionnaire on perception and attitude The ratings are based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” a Mean score below the mid-point value, i.e., 3.5 Critical value for significance in the Mann–Whitney U tests is 0.05

to determine the differences in writing performance between the experimental and control groups, and no significant statistical differences were found, indicating that the two groups wrote with similar quality before the experiment. Apart from the general interpretation, Table 7.11 also shows that, the extents of plagiarism in both cohorts of students’ writings were found to be serious with the mean value of the most consecutively copied words being 85 Chinese characters. Besides, “citation” was rated the lowest among the four aspects of writing quality, which inferred that the students’ writings lacked proper source use. Table 7.12 presents the students’ writing performance in the revised drafts after the UO pedagogical intervention. The experimental group was found to perform better than the control group in decreasing the extents of plagiarism and increasing the writing quality. Besides, significant statistical differences were found on four specific aspects, i.e., the level of plagiarism, the most consecutively copied words, coherence and cohesion, and citation, proving notable effects of the UO pedagogy on avoiding plagiarism and improving students’ writing quality. As for the “most consecutively copied words”, the mean value among the experimental-group’s writings decreased from 85 to 52 Chinese characters, while that for the control group reduced from 85 to 74 Chinese characters. Regarding the “level of plagiarism” in writings, it was found that experimental-group students’ writings declined to the second level, i.e., the minor plagiarism level. Even though the level of plagiarism in control-group’s

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Table 7.10 Students’ perceptions of plagiarism revealed in the post-survey in the third phase Survey items

Mean (SD)

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

All (n = 104)

Experimental group (n = 61)

Control group (n = 43)

1. I am capable of identifying plagiarism-involving cases

5.18 (0.86)

5.11 (0.99)

5.28 (0.63)

0.588

2. I am capable of avoiding plagiarism

4.29 (0.95)

4.28 (0.93)

4.30 (0.99)

0.454

3. I have a good understanding on 4.26 the importance of avoiding (0.91) plagiarism

4.13 (0.94)

4.44 (0.85)

0.045

4. Adding others’ writing texts to 4.54 my writing assignment without (1.23) acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.57 (1.27)

4.49 (1.18)

0.548

5. Paraphrasing others’ writing, and adding it to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.76 (1.22)

4.92 (1.22)

4.53 (1.20)

0.060

6. Adopting others’ ideas, not 3.74 texts, to my writing assignment (1.67) without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.33 (1.59)

2.91 (1.41) *

0.000

7. Introducing teachers’ course materials in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.37 (1.45)

4.56 (1.46)

4.09 (1.41)

0.053

8. Using my previous writing assignment for the current one without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.76 (1.21)

4.93 (1.15)

4.51 (1.26)

0.053

9. Introducing Internet materials without source information in my writing assignment and submitting it in my name is plagiarism

5.10 (0.90)

5.10 (1.01)

5.09 (0.72)

0.482

10. Inserting Internet picture(s) in 3.90 my writing assignment (1.56) without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

4.18 (1.59)

3.51 (1.45)

0.024

(continued)

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Table 7.10 (continued) Mean (SD)

Survey items

11. Adopting the data that has no author’s information in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism 12. When I agree with an author’s conclusion, copying it in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism 13. Even though I help my friend finish his/her writing assignment, it is plagiarism for me to copy his/her manuscript and hand it in my name

p value (Mann–Whitney U)

All (n = 104)

Experimental group (n = 61)

Control group (n = 43)

3.76 (1.50)

4.07 (1.52)

3.33 (1.39) *

0.014

4.47 (1.17)

4.67 (1.11)

4.19 (1.20)

0.042

4.91 (1.12)

4.92 (1.23)

4.91 (0.97)

0.504

Notes Adapted from Lee et al.’s (2016) questionnaire on perception and attitude The ratings are based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” *Mean score below the mid-point value, i.e., 3.5 Critical value for significance in the Mann–Whitney U tests is 0.05

Mean

6 4 2 0

1

2

3

4

Pre Exp

5

6 Pre Con

7

Items

8 Post Exp

9

10

11

12

13

Post Con

Fig. 7.3 Differences in plagiarism perceptions between groups in the third phase. Note “Pre Exp” refers to experimental-group students’ responses to pre-survey, “Pre Con” refers to control-group students’ responses to pre-survey, “Post Exp” refers to experimental-group students’ responses to post-survey, and “Post Con” refers to control-group students’ responses to post-survey

writings was also found to have decreased, the finial result, i.e., the third level, proved that these students still wrote with many plagiarism problems. Apart from the reduction of the extent of plagiarism, writing quality was found to have improved among almost all writings by both cohorts of students in each aspect (i.e., assignment response, coherence and cohesion, vocabulary and language use, and citation). However, the experimental group made greater progresses than the control group.

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Table 7.11 Comparison of the students’ writing performance before the UO pedagogy in the third phase Measure

Mean (SD) Exp (n = 64)

Con (n = 46)

p value Median (IQR) (Mann–Whitney U) Exp (n = Con (n = 64) 46)

I Extent of plagiarism 1. Level of plagiarism

2.91 (1.11) 3.28 (0.98) 0.060

3.00 (2.00) 4.00 (1.00)

2. Most consecutively copied words

85.41 (74.94)

85.41 (52.92)

0.450

66.50 (95.00)

86.00 (59.25)

1. Assignment response

14.77 (4.64)

15.05 (3.35)

0.970

15.00 (5.00)

15.00 (5.00)

2. Coherence and cohesion

17.62 (4.26)

17.93 (2.65)

0.997

17.50 (5.00)

17.50 (2.50)

3. Vocabulary and language use

15.90 (4.09)

16.85 (3.31)

0.252

15.00 (7.50)

17.50 (5.00)

4. Citation

10.08 (6.90)

8.48 (6.40) 0.145

10.00 (15.00)

10.00 (13.13)

Writing score (including all four aspects above)

58.36 (16.89)

58.32 (13.45)

60.00 (17.50)

60.00 (16.25)

II Writing quality

0.718

Notes Critical value for significance in the Mann–Whitney U tests is 0.05

7.3.4.3

Students and Instructor’s Feedbacks Toward the UO Pedagogy

The experimental-group students’ views on the efficacy of the UO pedagogy and the online writing system were revealed by analyzing data from the feedback questionnaires and student interviews. As two experimental-group students did not submit the feedback questionnaires, the specific number of collected questionnaires from the experimental-group students was 64. Results from the questionnaires were presented in Table 7.13. In general, the experimental group expressed high satisfaction with the UO pedagogy and the online writing system with all ratings above the average value in the 6-point Likert scale. The UO pedagogy was considered useful by many experimentalgroup students in improving their ability to identify plagiarism, avoid plagiarism, and become aware of the importance of avoiding plagiarism (see the high mean scores on Q1, Q2, Q3). Moreover, most of the students believed that their enhanced capability in paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and making citations facilitated their ability to avoid plagiarism (see the high rates of agreement on Q10 and Q11). Compared with the ratings on the effectiveness of the UO pedagogy, the students’ feedbacks to the usefulness and usability of the online writing system were relatively

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Table 7.12 Comparison of the students’ writing performance after the UO pedagogy in the third phase Measure

Mean (SD) Exp (n = 64)

Con (n = 46)

p value Median (IQR) (Mann–Whitney U) Exp (n = Con (n = 64) 46)

I Extent of plagiarism 1. Level of plagiarism

2.34 (1.04) 3.00 (1.05) 0.002

2.00 (1.75) 3.00 (2.00)

2. Most consecutively copied words

52.25 (46.42)

74.33 (5.057)

0.009

47.50 (66.00)

71.00 (61.00)

1. Assignment response

17.81 (4.89)

16.25 (3.06)

0.114

17.50 (7.50)

17.50 (5.00)

2. Coherence and cohesion

22.58 (3.67)

19.08 (2.90)

0.000

25.00 (5.00)

20.00 (3.13)

3. Vocabulary and language use

19.22 (4.18)

17.50 (3.33)

0.059

17.50 (6.88)

17.50 (5.00)

4. Citation

16.41 (8.44)

14.40 (6.92)

0.025

20.00 (7.50)

15.00 (10.00)

Writing score (including all four aspects above)

76.02 (16.58)

67.23 (13.85)

0.003

78.75 (25.00)

67.50 (22.50)

II Writing quality

Notes Critical value for significance in the Mann–Whitney U tests is 0.05

lower (see Q12 to Q19). Most students regarded the online writing system easy to use (see Q15) and felt contented with the usefulness of the peer review module in facilitating communication between peers and decreasing plagiarism (see Q18, Q19). However, 15.3% of the students disagreed with the statement “The benefits of using the online writing system outweigh its technical challenges for users” (see Q16), which infers that they might have encountered some technical problems during the academic writing process. What’s more, the students gave the lowest rating to the system’s potential roles in stimulating writing interests, enhancing writing engagement, and helping fulfill learning goals (see Q12, Q13, Q17). The underlying reasons require attention and possible explanations could be obtained from the interview data. Interviews were conducted with 23 students randomly selected from the experimental group (see Table 7.14). The original research design demanded interviewing half of the students. But the actual number of interviewees decreased to 23 because several randomly selected students refused the interview invitation. The numbers in the column of “students’ feedback” refer to the numbers of interviewees who held positive or negative views to the related topics. When inquired about previous learning experiences, all interviewed students replied that they had never been instructed to study anti-plagiarism and source use. One student (S3) mentioned that he was previously required not to plagiarize in

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Table 7.13 Experimental-group students’ feedbacks to the UO pedagogy and the online writing system in the third phase Survey items

Mean (SD) (n = 64)

Proportion of agreement

1. I am more capable of identifying plagiarism cases after working on the AW project

4.81 (0.84)

94.9%

2. I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) after working on the AW project

4.97 (0.74)

98.3%

3. I have a better understanding of the importance of avoiding plagiarism after working on the AW project

5.03 (0.74)

96.6%

4.61 (0.70)

96.6%

5. I am more capable of presenting the main information in a concise 4.53 statement (i.e., summarizing) after working on the AW project (0.73)

96.6%

6. I am more capable of distinguishing paraphrasing, summarizing and patchwriting after working on the AW project

4.59 (0.65)

98.3%

7. I am more capable of integrating several source materials with my 4.68 own ideas (i.e., synthesizing) after working on the AW project (0.68)

96.6%

8. I am more capable of producing proper citations after working on 4.81 the AW project (0.68)

98.3%

I The effectiveness of the academic writing (AW) project a Understanding plagiarism

Source use: paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation 4. I am more capable of expressing others’ ideas in my own words (i.e., paraphrasing) after working on the AW project

Others 9. Due to a better understanding of plagiarism during writing in the 4.80 AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in (0.81) my work

94.9%

10. Due to my enhanced ability to use the skills of paraphrasing, 4.76 summarizing and synthesizing during writing in the AW project, (0.68) I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

98.3%

11. Due to my enhanced ability to create proper citations during writing on the AV project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

4.78 (0.62)

98.3%

12. Use of the online writing system helps to stimulate my interest in writing assignments

4.39 (1.03)

88.1%

13. Use of the online writing system enhanced my engagement in writing assignments

4.49 (0.92)

88.1%

14. I would like to use the online writing system in other courses

4.54 (0.82)

94.9%

15. The online writing system is easy to use in general

4.76 (0.70)

96.6%

16. The benefits of using the online writing system outweigh its technical challenges for users

4.39 (0.97)

84.7%

II Perceived usefulness and usability of the online writing system

(continued)

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Table 7.13 (continued) Survey items

Mean (SD) (n = 64)

Proportion of agreement

17. The online writing system helps me fulfill my learning goals

4.37 (0.96)

88.1%

18. In the online writing system, peer review is helpful to exchange views on plagiarism and source use with peers

4.80 (0.81)

94.9%

19. In the online writing system, peer review is effective at decreasing plagiarism in academic writing

4.71 (0.89)

91.5%

Notes Adapted from the feedback survey of Lee et al. (2016) and the Technology Acceptance questionnaire of Liu et al. (2013) The ratings are based on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” a For students’ sake, the UO pedagogy with the online writing system was introduced to students as an “academic writing project” “Proportion of agreement” refers to the number of agreement (including slightly agree, agree, and strongly agree) compared to the total number of responses (i.e., 64)

writing assignments, but he had not been supported to learn about active plagiarism avoidance. Regarding the learning experiences with the UO pedagogy, all students were content with its role in supporting plagiarism-free academic writing (see Item 1), and most of them were most satisfactory with the peer review section in facilitating anti-plagiarism and source use (see Item 2 and Item 3). One student (S10) mentioned, “I might not be able to learn about anti-plagiarism and academic writing without the ‘academic writing project’ (i.e., the UO pedagogy), because the related learning contents have not been provided in any formats by my faculty”. As to what extent they believed that the UO pedagogy had effects on their plagiarism-free academic writing, 19 interviewees responded that the proportion was more than 70% and its positive effects were mainly on helping them know how to conduct academic writing with proper source use and without plagiarism (see Item 6). However, there were still some students who worried about the long-term effects of the UO pedagogy. One student (S13) remarked, “I feel that my capability of avoiding plagiarism and source use hasn’t been greatly improved with it (refers to writing with the UO). It is just a beginning and I need more similar writing practices to improve better”. When the interviewees were asked to make comments on the usefulness and usability of the online writing system, most of them showed their satisfaction with the tool’s features in enabling academic writing without time and space restriction, ease of use, and providing a well-designed learning path to follow. To some students, the biggest difficulty that they experienced was not related to the technical challenges but academic writing itself. When interviewed, nine students (S2, S5, S7, S12, S15, S16, S18, S21, S22) mentioned difficulties they had encountered during the academic writing process. For example, one student (S7) remarked, “When I read the literature, I totally agreed with the authors’ viewpoints and could not bring out any new thoughts”. Another student (S17) said, “It (refers to the writing experience with the UO pedagogy) provided me with lots of useful information and techniques

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Table 7.14 Experimental-group student interviews in the third phase Themes

Students’ feedback Positive Negative Codes

1. Learning experience with 23 0 the UO pedagogy (100%) (0%)

(a) Be more aware of the importance of anti-plagiarism than before (b) Know about how to avoid plagiarism, especially how to distinguish plagiarism (c) Improve writing skills in source use

2. Enable factors of the UO in anti-plagiarism

23 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Peer review (b) Learning resources in the online writing system, especially the three writings with varying quality in plagiarism and source use (c) The course instructor’s instruction

3. Enable factors of the UO in source use

23 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Peer review (b) Learning resources in the online writing system, especially the three writings with varying quality in plagiarism and source use (c) The course instructor’s instruction

4. Learning experiences with the online writing system

23 0 (100%) (0%)

(a) Enable academic writing without time and space restriction (b) Ease-of-use (c) Provide the well-designed learning path to follow

5. Hindering factors for the online writing

20 (84%)

3 (16%)

(a) A bit complicated in the part of peer review

6. Effects of the UO

19 (87%)

4 (13%)

(a) Know about what is academic writing (b) Know better about how to finish plagiarism-free academic writing (c) Know better about source use than before

7. Perceptions of 23 0 undergraduates’ learning (100%) (0%) about anti-plagiarism and source use

(a) Objective • Plagiarism is getting serious, and it needs to be handled with caution • Lack of skills in academic writing, especially writing from sources (b) Subjective • Serious plagiarism detected from dissertation will affect one’s graduation (according to university’s policy on dissertation)

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to prepare my writings. Regardless of the difficulties I have encountered at present, I believe that more writing practices will help me overcome those difficulties and improve my academic writing ability”. Apart from the students, the instructor, Ms. Z, was also invited to make comments on her instructional experience with the UO pedagogy together with the online writing system. According to Ms. Z, she was astonished to learn about the serious plagiarism problems in students’ writings with the help of the plagiarism analysis module embedded in the online writing system, and she was eager to know to what extent the UO pedagogy could help her students be free from plagiarism. By working collaboratively with me, the instructor could supervise the students’ online writing process, provide prompt feedbacks during peer review and peer discussions, and conduct instruction in class, through which she indicated a better understanding of the students’ learning needs regarding plagiarism and source use as well as her stronger confidence in supporting students’ plagiarism-free academic writing practices in her courses. To her delight, the level of plagiarism in the students’ writings greatly decreased with the newly designed pedagogy. Besides, she found that the students became more willing to share with peers about their thoughts and make revisions on their writings.

7.3.5 Discussion The findings revealed in the third research phase provided robust evidences for the positive effects of the UO pedagogy on students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use. Compared with the control group, the experimental-group’s perceptions of plagiarism improved more during the instructional intervention period. Meanwhile, it was found that the experimental group also performed statistically better than the control group in writing assignments. Besides, the instructor and most experimental-group students recognized and valued the benefits of using the UO pedagogy together with the newly designed ICT tool to teach about or achieve plagiarism-free academic writing. Most interviewees expressed enjoyment in teaching and learning with the UO pedagogy.

7.3.5.1

The Effects of the UO Pedagogy on Students’ Understandings of Plagiarism and Source Use

Statistical differences between the experimental and control groups were derived approximately in all analytical perspectives, and the significant effects of the UO pedagogy on the students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use were recognized. Indeed, over 94% of the experimental group (n = 64) confirmed that, due to their improved understandings of plagiarism and enhanced ability in source use, they were more capable of avoiding plagiarism (see Q9, Q10, Q11 of Table 7.13). Besides, most of them expressed satisfaction with writing with the UO pedagogy (see Q1, Q2,

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Q3 of Table 7.13). The results provided evidence to researchers’ earlier hypothesis regarding the adoption of source use practices in anti-plagiarism instruction (e.g., Halasek, 2011; Tomaš, 2010). Apart from positive feedbacks to the usefulness of the UO pedagogy, the experimental-group students’ improvements in perceptions of plagiarism and writing performance further verify the UO’s positive effects on students’ plagiarism-free academic writing. Compared with the control-group students, their perceptions of plagiarism kept increasing during the instructional intervention, and the extent of improvement was statistically significantly larger among four out of the thirteen items (see Table 7.10). Besides, it was discovered that the experimental group performed better in decreasing the extent of plagiarism and improving writing quality than their control-group counterparts (see Table 7.12). Apart from both the instructor’s and experimental-group students’ noticeable acceptance of the UO pedagogy, they expressed satisfaction with the usefulness and usability of the online writing system. More than 96% of the experimentalgroup students (n = 64) indicated that the ICT tool was easy to use, and around 94% showed their willingness of using it in their following courses (see Q14, Q15 of Table 7.13). Compared with these students, the instructor paid more attention to the tool’s role in facilitating her understanding of students’ learning needs on plagiarismfree academic writings. According to Ms. Z, as the ICT tool makes students’ writing process transparent by allowing instructors to access students’ manuscripts, peer view comments, and plagiarism analysis results, it enables instructors like her to diagnose students’ learning problems and provide feedbacks more easily than before.

7.3.5.2

Discrepancy and Similarity Between Students’ Perceptions and Behaviors Toward the UO Pedagogy

In order to answer the sub research questions proposed in the third research phase, the students’ perceptional and behavioral data were collected and analyzed. It was discovered that the students’ perceptions were consistent with their behavioral performance from one perspective, while the two conflicted from another perspective. According to Hecht et al. (2001), the relationship between perception and behavior deserves close investigation because it is complicated and a clear cause-and-effect relationship cannot be guaranteed. Besides, I believe that making analysis on the link between students’ perception and behavior could help further understand their learning needs and preference with the UO pedagogy. In terms of the similarity between the students’ perceptions and behaviors, more than 94% of the experimental-group students (n = 64) consented that they were more capable of writing from sources and avoiding plagiarism after the instructional intervention (see the Section I of Table 7.13). These self-evaluations were in line with their statistically greater improvements in writing performance than the control-group students (see Table 7.12). What’s more, the experimental group stated that they were more capable of distinguishing plagiarism from various scenarios. For example, their responses to Q5 in Table 7.9, i.e., “paraphrasing others’ writing and adding

References

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it to my writing assignments without acknowledging the sources is plagiarism”, were found to have improved with significant statistical differences between the preand post-surveys. The perceptional improvement was consistent with their enhanced writing performance in paraphrasing with proper citations (see the “coherence and cohesion”3 and “citation”4 aspects in Table 7.12). As for the discrepancy between the students’ perceptions and behaviors, it was discovered that the experimental group improved better in their source use and anti-plagiarism than the control group after the UO pedagogical intervention (see Table 7.12). However, the behavioral trend did not correspond with the students’ perceptional changes. The experimental-group’s self-evaluations regarding “I have a good understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism” (see Q3 of Fig. 7.3) became lower than the control group’s after the UO instructional intervention, and their post-rating was also lower than their pre-rating before the instructional intervention. Why the students had lower self-evaluations and whether the UO misled them remain questions unaddressed. According to Festinger (1962), when people have self-evaluation that is discrepant from their observed behaviors, they would be aware of the behaviors and make changes to their perceptions accordingly. This suggests that the experimental-group students might over-estimate their understandings of plagiarism before the instructional intervention. However, their high self-evaluations were challenged when they encountered plagiarism problems during the writing process. They might doubt whether they really understood anti-plagiarism and begin to know about the complexity and importance in avoiding plagiarism, based on which they would actively make changes to their self-evaluations toward anti-plagiarism. Instead of feeling disappointed, I was delighted to gain insights into the students’ changes during the academic writing process, especially to have a deep understanding of their possible reactions to the instruction intervention. Since students’ self-evaluation of plagiarism-free academic writing is changeable, I believe that students’ ratings on their understandings of plagiarism would increase if they are provided with more chances to practice academic wring with the UO pedagogy.

References Al-Badwawi, H. S. Q. (2011). The perceptions and practices of first year students’ academic writing at the Colleges of Applied Sciences in Oman [Doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds]. Leeds, England. Choi, Y. H. (2012). Paraphrase practices for using sources in L2 academic writing. English Teaching, 67(2), 51–79. 3

The “coherence and cohesion” aspect refers to sequencing information and opinions in reasonable ways, forming all aspects in a united whole and using paragraphing appropriately (see Appendix G). 4 The “citation” aspect concerns that the form of citation and reference is accurate (see Appendix G).

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Defazio, J., Jones, J., Tennant, F., & Hook, S. A. (2010). Academic literacy: The importance and impact of writing across the curriculum–A case study. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(2), 34–47. Festinger, L. (1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance (Vol. 2). Stanford university press. Halasek, K. (2011). Theorizing plagiarism in the university. College English, 73(5), 548–568. Hecht, H., Vogt, S., & Prinz, W. (2001). Motor learning enhances perceptual judgment: A case for action-perception transfer. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 65(1), 3–14. Kostoff, R. N., Johnson, D., Del Rio, J. A., Bloomfield, L. A., Shlesinger, M. F., Malpohl, G., & Cortes, H. D. (2006). Duplicate publication and ‘paper inflation’ in the fractals literature. Science and Engineering Ethics, 12(3), 543–554. Lee, C. W. Y., Chu, S. K. W., Cheng, J. O. Y., & Reynolds, R. (2016, October 14–18). Plagiarismfree inquiry project-based learning with UPCC pedagogy. In ASIS&T 2016 Annual Meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark. Liu, Lo, & Wang, (2013). Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study. Computers & Education, 69, 1–14. Pecorari, D. (2010). Academic writing and plagiarism: A linguistic analysis. A&C Black. Robinson, J. P., Shaver, P. R., & Wrightsman, L. S. (1991). Criteria for scale selection and evaluation. Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes, 1(3), 1–16. Stemler, S. E. (2004). A comparison of consensus, consistency, and measurement approaches to estimating interrater reliability. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 9(4), 1–19. Tomaš, Z. (2010). Addressing pedagogy on textual borrowing: Focus on instructional resources. Writing & Pedagogy, 2(2), 223–250.

Chapter 8

Key Points Derived from the Research Findings

The main purpose of this chapter is to make sense of the research findings by bringing together various threads that have emerged from the methodology and each research phase. First, the UO pedagogy is interpreted through the lens of pedagogical principles, based on which the design principles of the UO pedagogy are discussed (see Sect. 8.1). Second, findings are summarized across the three-phase study to explicate some conflicting or unexpecting findings (see Sect. 8.2). Third, how new insights can be captured from those findings and used for the improvement of the UO pedagogy is further discussed (see Sects. 8.3 and 8.4).

8.1 Six Design Principles for Plagiarism Instruction The UO pedagogy was designed on the basis of the Teaching for Understanding theory developed by Entwistle (2009) and the framework of constructive alignment coined by Biggs (2014). More importantly, its instructional activities were constructed by following Sinnema and Aitken’s (2012) five instructional principles, i.e., alignment, connection, community, interest, and inquiry. The research findings from this book have revealed that the construction of the UO pedagogy not only complies with those theories and principles, but also contributes to the derivation of design principles for plagiarism instruction with the formulation of six principles, i.e., the “6R”. The “6R” represents six dimensions of relationships among components of the UO pedagogy, and each is discussed as follows. Principle 1: Generate proper objectives and Relate teaching to them In plagiarism instruction, the generation of proper objectives is vital to the potential effectiveness of the instruction. According to literature review, much of plagiarism instruction failed to support students to be free from plagiarism in academic writing because they focused too much on their acquisition of knowledge and skills about plagiarism or source use instead of their true understandings of plagiarism and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_8

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source use (Hirvela & Du, 2013; Murphy, 2016). In this book, the teaching activities were targeted at students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use (see Sect. 1.2.2). Principle 2: Relate teaching to students’ prior learning experiences This principle embodies the typical learning-centered characteristic of constructivist learning (Vermunt, 1998), and its purpose is to facilitate students’ knowledge construction by activating their learning engagement (Biggs, 2014). According to Merrill (2012), students’ prior knowledge and experience are foundational for acquiring new knowledge and skills. The alignment of teaching to students’ previous learning experience can help to minimize frustration and improve instructional efficiency (Frick & Dagli, 2016). In this book, I was informed about students’ prior learning experiences by collecting their background information. It showed that most students had not been provided with anti-plagiarism and source use instruction before. Besides, some of them had misconceptions toward plagiarism. For example, some thought the adoption of others’ ideas to their writing assignments without acknowledging the sources was not plagiarism (see Item 7 in Table 6.3). Therefore, by providing demonstration cases during in-class instruction and encouraging the students to discuss the plagiarism issues in those cases, the intervention raised their interests in sharing with others about their perceptual experiences in plagiarism. This form of teaching was found to be more effective than the traditional telling-and-asking instruction. Principle 3: Create a dynamic teacher-student Relationship and establish productive learning community According to Asikainen et al. (2018), a dynamic teacher-student relationship is vital to the construction of learning communities, which can facilitate dialogue, communication, collaboration, and learning among students. In order to build a learning community under the UO pedagogy, three steps were carried out sequentially. First, the students were given the authority to assess peers’ writings, through which they could not only learn from each other but also learn to distinguish good writings with the provided evaluation criteria. Then, after the students received feedback from peers and their instructors, they brought their writings to class and discuss with peers. The writing issues addressed by reviewers (including the peers and the instructors) made the dialogue necessary. It was observed that many students paid whole attentions to such peer discussions, and some of them even had heated arguments on writing issues. Third, the instructors were suggested to be open to any available learning information that might potentially inform instructional decision making and create space for dialogue among the students. One important issue needs to be addressed. Instructors’ sharing power with students does not mean the relinquishment of instructional responsibilities. Since students’ role as reviewers was still questioned by some research findings (e.g., Brill, 2016), the adoption of peer review in the UO pedagogy required cautious design. Besides, with the help of the newly designed ICT tool, i.e., the online writing system, the students’ peer review was transparent to the instructor, which facilitated the instructors’ supervision over the peer review process and improved its validity in this book.

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Principle 4: Improve learning interests by constructing Relationships among various learning experiences According to Sinnema and Aitken (2012), variety is important for learning, because students need to experience a variety of learning activities in different forms, such as reading books and watching videos, to develop their interests in understanding specific learning contents. When variety is discussed in the design of the UO pedagogy, corresponding instructional strategies were taken into consideration. One was the provision of multimedia courseware for peer review training (see Sect. 6.3.1). Before peer review, the students were offered three rounds of practices to get familiar with the peer review procedure and criteria. In order to enrich their learning experience during the training, a multimedia courseware was developed and used. Another important instructional strategy was the combination of peer review and peer discussions. According to previous research, peer review and peer discussions are complementary strategies for academic writing instruction (To & Carless, 2016). The combination of written peer review and oral peer discussions can facilitate in-depth communication between peers by providing both reviewers and reviewees with chances to clarify their own writings and receive feedback from peers (Miller et al., 2017). The research findings of this book are congruent with previous research in that the students’ learning experiences were enriched through participating in peer review online and peer discussions in class and that the students showed high satisfactions with the instructional activity design. Principle 5: Relate teaching to students’ priorities for learning According to previous research, even though limited time, energy, and expertise may hinder subject instructors from conducting plagiarism instruction, instruction could not be delayed until instructors get ready (Murphy, 2016). Plagiarism instruction is an urgent priority. As for students’ priority in learning about plagiarism, the most important issue concerns their plagiarism-related writing problems, e.g., patchwriting. Therefore, different from traditional telling-and-asking instruction, the plagiarism instruction in this book was conducted during the students’ academic writing process. The instructional approach embodies the learning-by-doing instructional theory (Mowl & Pain, 1995), and it was found to be effective in satisfying the students’ priority in learning about plagiarism. Principle 6: Inquiry into the Relationship between timing and learning effects According to previous research, the timing of teaching may influence learning effects (Lefevre & Cox, 2017). Limited time is one key factor that hinders instructors to conduct plagiarism instruction in class (Wingate, 2012), so it is important to be conscious of the proper time for the UO pedagogy to be involved in class and the lengths of the instructional activities. In this book, the UO pedagogy was designed to be introduced in class when the students had just finished submitting their first drafts of writing tasks. The reason was that the difficulties that the students encountered during their preparation for the first drafts might arouse their desire for exploring how to write properly from sources. Then, the provision of the UO pedagogy could satisfy their needs by instructing them to deal with plagiarism and source use issues in their writings. The instructional approach was proven effective in attracting the

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students’ attentions of learning, as indicated by both the instructors’ and the students’ feedbacks toward the UO pedagogy.

8.2 Discrepancy and Similarity Between Students’ Perceptions and Behaviors Toward the UO Pedagogy In general, the students’ perceptions of plagiarism were constantly improved with the help of the UO pedagogy in this book. In particular, significant statistical differences revealed from the perception survey in the first research phase (see the pre- and postsurvey comparison in Table 6.3) and the third research phase (see the control and experimental-group post-survey comparison in Table 7.10) show that the students under the UO pedagogy had better understandings of plagiarism than before the intervention as well as than peers who did not experience the pedagogy. In terms of the students’ writing performance under the UO pedagogy, it was discovered that most of them performed better in decreasing plagiarism and improving writing quality during the pedagogical intervention period. Moreover, significant statistical differences were found in the extent of plagiarism and writing quality in the first two research phases (see the comparison between writings by the current students and the previous students in Table 7.3 and Table 7.4) and in the third research phase (see the comparison between the experimental and control groups in Table 7.12), which proves that the students under the UO pedagogy had better understandings of source use than those without the pedagogy. Indeed, the research findings showed that students’ perceptional advancement toward plagiarism was consistent with their improved writing performance in general. For example, compared with the control group, the experimental group in Phase Three rated higher in distinguishing plagiarism from the ten scenarios (see Table 7.10, Q4 to Q13) after the UO pedagogical intervention, which was in line with their significant lower levels of plagiarism in writings (see Item 1 and 2 in Table 7.12). However, it was revealed that the experimental-group students’ behavioral trend did not correspond with their perceptional changes as they gave a lower rating to “I have a good understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism” (see Q3 of Table 7.10) than themselves before the intervention as well as the control-group counterparts. The reason lies in the students’ over-estimated self-evaluation on their understanding of plagiarism before the plagiarism instruction. According to Festinger (1962), when people have self-evaluations discrepant from their observed behaviors, they would become quite aware of the behaviors and make changes to their perceptions accordingly. Therefore, the students’ writing experiences with the UO pedagogy might provide chances for them to reflect on whether they really understood the importance and complexity of avoiding plagiarism in writings and adapt their self-evaluations accordingly. Besides, the conflicting findings resonate with the claim put forward by Hecht et al. (2001) that there might not be clear cause-and-effect relationship

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between students’ perceptions and their actions, and thus it is important to make sense of the findings by combining the two.

8.3 Uneven Acquisition of Knowledge and Skills of Anti-plagiarism and Source Use Even though the students’ perceptions of plagiarism and their writing performance were improved greatly with the UO pedagogy, the effects of the pedagogy on their acquisition of knowledge and skills of anti-plagiarism and source use were found uneven. Research findings from the first two research phases show a dissociation between explicit knowledge and skilled performance, which is in line with the discovery by Sun et al. (2001). For example, although the student participants made steady improvements in their understandings of plagiarism through identifying plagiarism issues from various scenarios, they encountered difficulties in writing from sources. Especially, it was discovered that even though some of them could write by following academic writing formats, e.g., adding references and citations, they depended heavily on source language and could not create their own texts and ideas. This finding provides evidence for the frequent patchwriting detected in students’ writings. According to Pecorari (2010), patchwriting is a typical learning phase for novice writers. Therefore, providing more time and writing practices for students to improve skills in plagiarism-free academic writing is crucial. By interviewing the instructor and the students at the end of the second research phase, I learned that the timing of the UO instructional intervention needed to be put earlier. According to them, the sooner students got involved in writing practices with the UO pedagogy, the better they would be able to practice writing from sources and develop related skills and the easier they would achieve plagiarism-free writing.

8.4 Prohibitive and Facilitative Factors for Applying the UO Pedagogy in Subject Courses In this section, prohibitive and facilitative factors that may exert influences on the applications of the UO pedagogy in Chinese academic writing tasks in subject courses are discussed, including students’ concerns with plagiarism and source use and instructors’ limited experiences in anti-plagiarism instruction. Students’ concern of plagiarism and source use might impact the adoption of the UO pedagogy. It was discovered that year-three student participants’ concerns of plagiarism and source use were mostly related to their worries about how to prepare undergraduate dissertations in the coming academic year. According to the university policy, students’ dissertations would be randomly selected for plagiarism detection,

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which is the key reason that may have aroused the students’ concerns over plagiarism. Compared with junior students, the year-one student participants expressed a different concern about how to finish academic essays as required. According to previous studies, students’ various concerns about plagiarism and academic writing would create feelings that could act as facilitative factors to engage them in related learning activities (McGowan & Lightbody, 2008; Murphy, 2016). In this book, the students’ high acceptance of the adoption of the UO pedagogy in their writing practices resonated with previous research. Apart from students’ concerns with plagiarism and source use, the instructors’ limited experience in plagiarism instruction was identified as a prohibitive factor to the introduction of the UO pedagogy in subject courses. It has been well proven that leading students to learn about plagiarism and source use in disciplinary contexts can bring them improvements in plagiarism-free academic writing as well as understandings of disciplinary cultures (Murphy, 2016). However, limited time, energy, and expertise may hinder instructors from conducting academic writing instruction (Séror, 2009). In this book, even though an online writing system was designed to help shoulder part of the instructional responsibilities, interviews with the instructors revealed that it was equally important for them to have supports on knowledge and skills for plagiarism instruction. In fact, some researchers had conducted action research on faculty training, e.g., Murphy’s (2016) research on Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program (mentioned in Sect. 2.2.3). The insights from previous research deserve attention in the process of applying the UO pedagogy in Chinese academic writing tasks in subject courses.

References Asikainen, H., Blomster, J., & Virtanen, V. (2018). From functioning communality to hostile behaviour: Students’ and teachers’ experiences of the teacher–student relationship in the academic community. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 42(5), 633–648. Biggs, J. (2014). Constructive alignment in university teaching. HERDSA Review of Higher Education, 1(5), 5–22. Brill, J. M. (2016). Investigating peer review as a systemic pedagogy for developing the design knowledge, skills, and dispositions of novice instructional design students. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(4), 681–705. Entwistle, N. (2009). Teaching for understanding at university: Deep approaches and distinctive ways of thinking. Palgrave Macmillan. Festinger, L. (1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance (Vol. 2). Stanford University Press. Frick, T., & Dagli, C. (2016). MOOCs for research: The case of the Indiana University plagiarism tutorials and tests. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 21(2), 255–276. Hecht, H., Vogt, S., & Prinz, W. (2001). Motor learning enhances perceptual judgment: A case for action-perception transfer. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 65(1), 3–14. Hirvela, A., & Du, Q. (2013). “Why am I paraphrasing?”: Undergraduate ESL writers’ engagement with source-based academic writing and reading. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(2), 87–98. Lefevre, D., & Cox, B. (2017). Delayed instructional feedback may be more effective, but is this contrary to learners’ preferences? British Journal of Educational Technology, 48(6), 1357–1367.

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McGowan, S., & Lightbody, M. (2008). Another chance to practice’: Repeating plagiarism education for EAL students within a discipline context. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 4(1), 16–30. Merrill, M. D. (2012). First principles of instruction. John Wiley & Sons. Miller, M., Järvelä, S., & Hadwin, A. (2017). Self-regulation, co-regulation, and shared regulation in collaborative learning environments. In Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance (pp. 99–122). Routledge. Mowl, G., & Pain, R. (1995). Using self and peer assessment to improve students’ essay writing: A case study from geography. Innovations in Education and Training International, 32(4), 324–335. Murphy, G. A. (2016). Worlds apart? International students, source-based writing, and faculty development across the curriculum [Ed.D., University of California, Los Angeles]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1798494014?accountid= 14548 Pecorari, D. (2010). Academic writing and plagiarism: A linguistic analysis. A&C Black. Séror, J. (2009). Institutional forces and L2 writing feedback in higher education. Canadian Modern Language Review, 66(2), 203–232. Sinnema, C., & Aitken, G. (2012). Effective pedagogy in social sciences. Educational Practices 23. Sun, R., Merrill, E., & Peterson, T. (2001). From implicit skills to explicit knowledge: A bottom-up model of skill learning. Cognitive Science, 25(2), 203–244. To, J., & Carless, D. (2016). Making productive use of exemplars: Peer discussion and teacher guidance for positive transfer of strategies. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 40(6), 746–764. Vermunt, J. D. (1998). The regulation of constructive learning processes. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 68(2), 149–171. Wingate, U. (2012). Using academic literacies and genre-based models for academic writing instruction: A ‘literacy’ journey. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 11(1), 26–37.

Chapter 9

Conclusion: Future Directions for the UO Pedagogy

This chapter discusses both theoretical and practical implications from this book based on preceding analyses, as well as the suggestions for future research. It begins with a discussion of the learning needs analysis and its role for the UO pedagogy design, followed by the theoretical contributions of the proposition of UO pedagogy to the plagiarism research. Concerning the further recommendations for the stakeholders who bear responsibilities in anti-plagiarism education, suggestions for both teachers and administers in universities are outlined.

9.1 What Adds to the Plagiarism Research Field? 9.1.1 Taking Learning Needs Analysis as an On-Going Process During the Anti-plagiarism Pedagogical Design This book sheds light on why students could learn about plagiarism and source use by writing with the UO pedagogy. Its findings accentuate students’ learning needs for avoiding plagiarism and writing from sources in their academic writing practices. According to the procedure of design-based research, conducting a learning needs analysis is an important first step in the development of a research product (Bannan, 2009; Oh, 2011). Therefore, by adopting the design-based research methodology, this book made learning needs analysis a routine component of it (see Fig. 6. 1). However, I believe that the learning needs analysis is essentially an on-going process for improving the responsiveness of the new-designed pedagogy to students’ changing learning situations rather than a routine that only works in the protected niches of educational research. Therefore, the student participants’ learning needs were analyzed and reflected at each phase of the book, and in this way their learning needs served as activators for the design and refinement of the UO pedagogy.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9_9

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In order to have a fruitful understanding of the students’ learning needs, both their felt needs (what they said they needed) and expressed needs (what their actions showed they needed) were treasured in this book (Grant, 2002). The students’ learning needs were gained from various sources, including literature evidence, questionnaires, and interviews. Previous literature informed me of students’ general learning needs for avoiding plagiarism and writing from sources. For instance, it was reported that patchwriting, over-citation, and excessively direct quoting had become frequently occurring problems in undergraduates’ academic writings (Hirvela & Du, 2013; Murphy, 2016), and students had expressed their desire to be instructed to cope with plagiarism (Adam et al., 2016). Apart from literature, data collected from the questionnaires and interviews in this book helped to identify some specific learning needs. By analyzing data from the perceptions of plagiarism questionnaire, it was discovered that the student participants previously had limited personal experiences in relation to plagiarism. For example, compared with the easy acquisition of typical features of explicit plagiarism, many student participants from the first research phase still had difficulty in distinguishing implicit plagiarism in writings. Besides, the student interviews revealed that their concerns about not knowing how to write from sources restricted their capability of avoiding plagiarism, which is consonant with the prior observation that students’ lack of source use knowledge and skills accounts for much plagiarism in academic writing (Halasek, 2011). In addition to the data acquisition channels mentioned above, the students’ writing performance was also treated as an important source for learning needs analysis. I believed that, even though the students’ writing performance at each research phase was an important output of the UO pedagogical intervention, it could also serve as an input to inform to what extent their learning needs had or had not been satisfied, which provided inspiration for the further revisions of the UO pedagogy. The learning needs assessment revealed the contextual challenges for the students’ learning about anti-plagiarism and source use, including the instructors’ misconceptions about anti-plagiarism, insufficient scaffolding from the instructors, and space constrains. According to the teacher participants, the avoidance of plagiarism is viewed as a students’ personal issue in their universities and departments, and many of their colleagues agree with this view. Once students are discovered to plagiarize, they need to take full responsibility and face sanctions ranging from an F (failure) grade for a course to expulsion from the universities, which is consistent with the observation from previous research (Adam et al., 2016). However, Schinkel (2015) argued that the dismissal of plagiarists from campus might not be a proper solution to plagiarism problems. To my viewpoint, compared with their peers, student plagiarists have more urgent learning needs for anti-plagiarism. A proactive instructional solution would be more suitable and valuable than punishments in satisfying their learning needs. As for the instructors’ misconceptions in this book, it was noticed that they might depress the students’ desire to seek help from the instructors when encountering plagiarism issues. One of the typical learning phenomena among the student participants was that they were prone to finish writing assignments independently and seldom discuss with their instructors and peers about plagiarism and source use issues before the UO’s intervention in class.

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Obviously, the instructors who had misconceptions about anti-plagiarism might be reluctant to provide plagiarism related instructional supports for the students. As for insufficient scaffolding from the instructors, some potential reasons were revealed from the instructor interviews, including the lack of expertise in anti-plagiarism, limited time and energy on plagiarism instruction, which were consistent with findings from previous research (see Sect. 3.3.2). For the last inhibiting factor, i.e., space constraints, an ICT tool was designed to cope with it in this book (see Chap. 5).

9.1.2 Theoretical Insights into Anti-plagiarism Pedagogy From the theoretical perspective, this book has made five major contributions to existing literature on anti-plagiarism pedagogy. First, it puts forward propositions that were neglected or overlooked by previous research on anti-plagiarism academic writing instruction: It highlights that students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use should be identified as the main learning objectives of plagiarism instruction as well as features the adoption of plagiarism instruction in academic writing practices in subject courses across disciplines. It emphasizes the importance of involving subject instructors in plagiarism instruction. It focuses on the potentials of ICT in scaffolding learning and teaching under plagiarism pedagogy beyond merely detecting plagiarism. Much previous research had explored instructional solutions to preventing plagiarism in academic writing, but plagiarism was not effectively controlled. The reason lies in that students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use were neglected (Howard et al., 2010). Besides, subject instructors’ possible investment of efforts in instruction and ICT’s potential in supporting teaching and learning in anti-plagiarism was seldom discussed (Liu et al., 2013). Therefore, by addressing and testing these propositions using an empirical research process, this book supplements the existing literature on plagiarism instruction research, especially the plagiarism instruction in academic writing and further provides a theoretical insight about the relationship among plagiarism, pedagogy, and technology. Among the relationship of plagiarism, pedagogy, and ICT, pedagogy could be an effective solution to plagiarism under the learning environment supported by ICT. Besides, students’ learning needs for avoiding plagiarism played a major factor in determining the forms of pedagogy and the role of ICT. The second theoretical contribution is associated with the design principles for plagiarism instruction (see Sect. 8.1). By following Sinnema and Aitken’s (2012) instructional principles, this book constructed a pedagogy named UO for plagiarismfree Chinese academic writing. Then, the UO pedagogy was introduced in subject courses three times and its construct was tested, modified and reevaluated, through which six theoretical design principles were derived. In so doing, I tried to extract the

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specific principles for plagiarism instruction from the general pedagogical principles and through empirical investigation. Third, this book enriches research on adopting design-based research (i.e., DBR) methodology in plagiarism problem solving. Triggered by the increasing plagiarism problems in undergraduates’ academic writings, this book adopted the DBR methodology to design and develop a UO pedagogy and explored its effects on students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use. The research process and findings have showed that the adoption of the DBR methodology could satisfy the research design and help address all proposed research questions. Therefore, this book contributes to the DBR methodology by providing robust evidences for its usability in plagiarism instruction research. Meanwhile, it extends the DBR methodology by proposing that the learning needs analysis should be integrated at the center of the DBR research process instead of merely at the beginning of it. Fourth, this book contributes to the discussion about the validity of current plagiarism assessment scales by providing evidences to challenge them and proposing a new one. By analyzing the students’ writing performance in the extent of plagiarism with the current typical plagiarism assessment scales, i.e., the degree of similarity and the number of consecutively copied words (Eisa et al., 2015), I discovered that they could not provide solid measurements of plagiarism. More importantly, as these scales were not designed for instructional purposes, they could not satisfy the needs of plagiarism instruction. Therefore, a new plagiarism assessment was developed (see Table 6.9), and its adoption in plagiarism instruction would help to provide accurate evaluations on the extents of plagiarism in writings and to faithfully reflect writing quality. Finally, the book adds to the knowledge of plagiarism instruction by offering original insights about how Chinese undergraduates and their instructors view plagiarism and cope with plagiarism in discipline-based courses. Plagiarism issues among Chinese students have raised much attention from researchers in recent years (Hu & Lei, 2015; Li & Casanave, 2012). However, previous studies were mostly observational research instead of intervention research (Murphy, 2016; Wette, 2010). In this book, by introducing a UO pedagogy in students’ academic writing practices, an indepth analysis on how Chinese undergraduates and their instructors might perceive and deal with plagiarism issues was conducted. It reveals that: Most student participants had a basis understanding of plagiarism even though few of them had been instructed to learn about plagiarism before. Besides, compared with explicit plagiarism issues, many of them had more difficulties in identifying implicit plagiarism in writings before the UO pedagogical intervention. The students were effectively scaffolded to learn about plagiarism and source use during their academic writing process. Besides, the learning and teaching experiences with the UO pedagogy helped to build both the students’ and their instructors’ confidence in dealing with plagiarism. The students might have over-estimated self-evaluations toward their understandings of plagiarism, and their learning experiences with the UO pedagogy helped

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them be aware of their behavioral performance in plagiarism and make changes to their perceptions accordingly.

9.2 What Can Teachers and Universities Do? Currently, plagiarism has become a serious problem faced by universities all over the world. Because plagiarism endangers the academic integrity of higher education and poses a serious threat to the quality of higher education, universities throughout the world have introduced and implemented various policies to prevent plagiarism, which is prominently reflected in the punishment of plagiarists. However, plagiarism in higher education is different from plagiarism in other fields, and the practice of punishing plagiarists without educational guidance goes against the purpose of education. So far, researchers have produced a wealth of research on anti-plagiarism based on the research logic of what, why, and how. For instance, there is an urgent need for the intervention of all stakeholders to solve the plagiarism problem in higher education. However, the surge of plagiarism on campus around the world shows that plagiarism has not been effectively addressed. A typical case is ChatGPT. With the widespread penetration of ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) on campus, the situation that plagiarism is getting more complex and serious has drawn increasing concerns from researchers. Since ChatGPT is an intelligent chat robot program based on a powerful computing power language model, the text that it generates is close to human natural language, which has brought ethical panic to the higher education researchers and practitioners. Up to now, many higher education institutions have explicitly prohibited teachers and students from using ChatGPT in class, especially in finishing assignments and examinations. However, the practice of colleges and universities to eliminate the ethical challenges brought by technologies through policy constraints cannot affect the continuous application of these technologies into the “real world”. Therefore, if we cannot help learners understand and effectively respond to plagiarism today, they will face a huge risk of being surpassed by technological progress when they enter the real world in the future. This book contributes to existing literature on instructional solutions to plagiarism issues by focusing on how students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use can be conceived and achieved during their college experience. A UO pedagogy together with an online writing system was designed and proved to effectively facilitate undergraduates’ understandings of plagiarism and source use, which bring practical implications for stakeholders (including both teachers and university policymakers) in implementing better anti-plagiarism educational practice in the changing technology-driven world.

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9.2.1 For Teachers This book carries the following practical implications for teachers in plagiarism instruction practices. First, subject instructors could conduct plagiarism instruction with the UO pedagogy in subject courses to help students be free from plagiarism. Different from previous research that focused on writing instructors’ dominating role in conducting plagiarism instruction in traditional classrooms s (e.g., Jamieson & Howard, 2017), this book calls for the active participation of subject instructors in plagiarism instruction and the utilization of ICT in teaching plagiarism avoidance. Research findings have revealed that the implementation of the UO pedagogy in writing practices not only improved the students’ perceptional and behavioral performance in plagiarism-free academic writing, but also facilitated the instructors’ understanding of the students’ learning needs toward plagiarism and source use. More importantly, both the student participants’ and their instructors’ positive learning and teaching experiences with the new pedagogy could encourage the diffusion of the pedagogy in different instructional settings. Second, the teachers could benefit from adopting the ICT tool, i.e., the online writing system, in their courses, through which the students’ academic writing process became transparent to them and they could provide instructional supports more timely. This book designed and developed the online writing system, which ensured the efficiency of the plagiarism instruction. With the help of the online writing system, the UO pedagogy offered the students a hybrid learning experience that combined face-to-face instruction with online instruction to facilitate their plagiarism-free academic writing process. Apart from intensifying plagiarism instruction, the ICT tool also increased flexibility in both learning and teaching. The students were provided with enhanced temporal and geographic flexibility in finishing academic writings without time and space constraints. The teachers could set parameter values for plagiarism analysis with the help of the plagiarism analysis module embedded in the online writing system and got detailed plagiarism analysis results on each student’s writings, which helped to improve the usability of the ICT tool under various instructional contexts. Moreover, as the effectiveness of the hybrid plagiarism instruction was confirmed in this book, its possible diffusion across disciplines might decrease the overall expenditure of instruction implementation at the institutional level. Third, the detailed description of the instructional procedures and evidences revealed from the three research phases could form an experience report for teachers to identify the critical success factors in plagiarism instruction as well as the learning issues that deserve attention during instruction. To promote students’ engagement with the UO pedagogy, much attentions need to be paid to inquiring about their learning needs toward plagiarism and source use. Besides, it is highly desirable to use students’ written works as instructional materials and offer them specific and detailed writing requirements. In this book, the instructional strategies that have been proven effective in facilitating students’ plagiarism-free academic writing, such as the combination of written peer feedback and oral peer discussions as well as the

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provision of guiding questions during the writing process, could be used by teachers to adopt in future instructional practices.

9.2.2 For University Policymakers Even though the institutional context is seldom discussed in this book, the ways that institutional contexts might exert influences on anti-plagiarism practices could not be ignored. Inquiries into the plagiarism policies issued by the student participants’ universities indicated the contexts’ potential impacts on the adoption of the UO pedagogy in disciplinary courses. According to Mr. L (the instructor participant in the first two research phases), there is no clear published plagiarism policy on the university website. He and his students barely have chances to access the plagiarism-related information issued by the university except when students submit their dissertations for plagiarism detection, when a plagiarism-related notice or regulation would appear on the website with dissertation detection requirements in it. To Mr. L’s viewpoint, the university adopts a reactive approach to formulating and implementing the plagiarism policy, which is consistent with Adam et al.’s (2016) observation that many institutions focus more on regulating students’ behaviors to meet plagiarism policy requirements than providing them with necessary resources and instruction to avoid plagiarism. When interviewing Ms. Z, the instructor participant from the third research phase had the similar opinions. Apparently, the two universities have paid more attention to adopting the reactive approaches (i.e., punishment) than the proactive approaches (i.e., instruction), which constrains instructors’ commitment to plagiarism instruction. In order to prevent plagiarism in campus, it is necessary for universities to take more proactive approaches than reactive ones, and previous research has provided insights into how university policymakers did for plagiarism elimination. For example, the Lancaster University developed an institutional framework for plagiarism prevention (Park, 2004). According to the framework designers, students could commit plagiarism in different scenarios, e.g., duplicate almost identical work for more than one courses, or paraphrase texts from a source material without appropriate acknowledgement. Therefore, they believed that different stakeholders, including academic markers, academic officers, members of the student registry, students’ union staff, and standing academic committee members, should work together and take different responsibilities in solving students’ plagiarism issues. The framework designers proposed that the procedures for dealing with student plagiarism must be open and transparent, and university policies on how plagiarism behaviors can be detected and explained should be redesigned to align with the framework. Even though the institutional framework was believed by some researchers to provide more practical guidance for universities to deal with plagiarism than before, it is criticized for letting students take the key responsibilities for solving plagiarism problems, and other stakeholders (e.g., academic staff, policymakers) take the role

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of provide sufficient punishments (Macdonald & Carroll, 2006). Besides, the framework designers did not offer the guidance as to how the framework operates at an institutional level. Macdonald and Carroll (2006) have proposed a holistic institutional approach that brings together a shared responsibilities between the stakeholders, including the students, staff, and university administers. According to the researchers, the approach should match three dimensions of the complex plagiarism problem solving, including ensuring students access related information and skills to learn to cope with plagiarism, developing curriculum and assessment approaches that do not encourage students commit plagiarism, having the institutional procedures or regulations support students’ understanding of plagiarism and avoidance of plagiarism. In order to illustrate the complexity and variety of plagiarism problem solving from the institutional perspectives, Macdonald and Carroll made analysis on three cases, including the University of Newcastle, Oxford Brookes University, and Sheffield Hallam University, and concluded that the holistic approaches have resulted in institutional changes and provided significant impacts on the development of those universities. Based on the literature on how universities react to student plagiarism, it can be seen that most studies have provided implications regarding how institutions could prevent plagiarism by integrating stakeholders’ demands on plagiarism problem solving and making actions from macro and meso views. In this book, I propose a UO pedagogy for both students and their teachers from a micro-level perspective and hope that the research findings could serve as robust evidence to support universities make innovative reforms on preventing plagiarism from a bottom-up perspective. It is highly suggests that the policymakers could understand both students and their instructors’ concerns about anti-plagiarism, and work with different stakeholders to design and issue regulations on student-centered anti-plagiarism rules, instead of only on plagiarism-centered punishment ones.

9.3 Where Does the Debate About Culture’s Influence on Plagiarism Go? There has been a huge debate about whether culture has effects on students’ plagiarism in academic writing (Lund, 2004; Wheeler, 2014). Some researchers argued that cultural difference existed from the perspectives of history and philosophy (Bloch, 2012; Ehrich et al., 2016; Sowden, 2005). For example, influenced by the Confucian doctrine, it is believed that Asians would prone to copy distinguished scholars’ ideas in order to show respect (Fallon, 2008; Sapp, 2002). However, others who rejected cultural differences held some empirical evidence. For example, after surveying 384 Japanese undergraduates, Wheeler (2014) concluded that their perceptions of plagiarism were similar to their Western counterparts’ and the formal training on source use they had received was thought to be the main reason in explaining the research

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finding. Similarly, due to China’s reform and opening-up since the 1970s, Chinese views to copying may have undergone great changes (Flowerdew, 2015). According to Flowerdew (2015), no matter this huge debate continues or not, culture’s influence on students’ plagiarism continues. Compared with the traditional culture, culture in today’s information society has changed a lot, which exercises great influences on the young generation. With multiple pathways to access information and resources, the young generation has different life experiences to information technology from their parents. Therefore, it is assumed by researchers that the youth may have different values and attitudes to plagiarism (Blum, 2011). In this book, data collected from current Chinese undergraduates’ perceptions of plagiarism and their behavioral responses toward plagiarism in writings help to provide robust evidence for the argument. First, most student participants could recognize explicit plagiarism problems before the intervention of the UO pedagogy, which infers that student participants could identify some plagiarism problems even though they did not have formal training on anti-plagiarism. Second, the teacher participants were shocked by the serious plagiarism revealed from the UO pedagogy intervention, and began to realize the importance of providing plagiarism instruction for their students. Third, the student participants’ universities paid much attention on issuing policies on punishment for plagiarism. In sum, Chinese students and their universities have raised more attention toward plagiarism than before, and their improvements in plagiarism prevention with the help of appropriate approaches (e.g., the UO pedagogy suggested in the book) will not only continuously change their views toward plagiarism, but also bring insights on how Chinese undergraduates deal with plagiarism effectively in the twenty-first century.

9.4 Concluding Remarks In order to find an instructional solution to the increasing plagiarism issues in higher education, this book designed a UO pedagogy to satisfy Chinese undergraduates’ learning needs toward plagiarism-free Chinese academic writing and explored its effects on students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use. This book has proved that the newly designed pedagogy can not only greatly improve students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use but also facilitate collaborative interactions among peers as well as active engagement of instructors in plagiarism instruction. To conclude, I call for the construction of a collaborative hybrid learning environment, including in-class and online learning, to encourage the engagement of different stakeholders in plagiarism-free instruction. Besides, more supports from institutions need to be encouraged to help instructors reflect on their experiences in plagiarism instruction and adopt plagiarism instruction in subject courses. It is desirable that students can receive plagiarism-free instruction as soon as they enter the university and thus have sufficient learning opportunities to develop knowledge and skills related to plagiarism avoidance.

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9 Conclusion: Future Directions for the UO Pedagogy

References Adam, L., Anderson, V., & Spronken-Smith, R. (2016). ‘It’s not fair’: Policy discourses and students’ understandings of plagiarism in a New Zealand University. Higher Education, 74(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0025-9 Bannan, B. (2009). The integrative learning design framework: An illustrated example from the domain of instructional technology. An introduction to Educational Design Research, 53–73. Bloch, J. (2012). Plagiarism, intellectual property and the teaching of L2 writing: Explorations in the detection based approach (Vol. 24). Multilingual Matters. Blum, S. D. (2011). My word!: Plagiarism and college culture. Cornell University Press. Ehrich, J., Howard, S. J., Mu, C., & Bokosmaty, S. (2016). A comparison of Chinese and Australian university students’ attitudes towards plagiarism. Studies in Higher Education, 41(2), 231–246. Eisa, T. A. E., Salim, N., & Alzahrani, S. (2015). Existing plagiarism detection techniques: A systematic mapping of the scholarly literature. Online Information Review, 39(3), 383–400. Fallon, F. (2008). Plagiarism and students from Asia studying in Australia and New Zealand. In APAIE Conference, Tokyo, Japan, Flowerdew, J. (2015). Language re-use and the notion of culture: A response to Diane Pecorari’s “Plagiarism in second language writing: Is it time to close the case?” Journal of Second Language Writing, 30, 109–110. Grant, J. (2002). Learning needs assessment: Assessing the need. BMJ, 324(7330), 156–159. Halasek, K. (2011). Theorizing plagiarism in the university. College English, 73(5), 548–568. Hirvela, A., & Du, Q. (2013). “Why am I paraphrasing?”: Undergraduate ESL writers’ engagement with source-based academic writing and reading. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(2), 87–98. Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing and Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192. Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2015). Chinese university students’ perceptions of plagiarism. Ethics & Behavior, 25(3), 233–255. Jamieson, & Howard, R. (2017). The citation project. Retrieved Jan 17, from http://www.citationp roject.net/about/ Li, Y., & Casanave, C. P. (2012). Two first-year students’ strategies for writing from sources: Patchwriting or plagiarism? Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(2), 165–180. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.03.002 Liu, Lo, & Wang. (2013). Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study. Computers & Education, 69, 1–14. Lund, J. R. (2004). Plagiarism: A cultural perspective. Journal of Religious & Theological Information, 6(3–4), 93–101. Macdonald, R., & Carroll, J. (2006). Plagiarism—A complex issue requiring a holistic institutional approach. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(2), 233–245. Murphy, G. A. (2016). Worlds apart? International students, source-based writing, and faculty development across the curriculum [Ed.D., University of California, Los Angeles]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1798494014?accountid= 14548 Oh, E. (2011). Collaborative group work in an online learning environment: A design research study. Park, C. (2004). Rebels without a clause: Towards an institutional framework for dealing with plagiarism by students. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 28(3), 291–306. Sapp, D. (2002). Towards an international and intercultural understanding of plagiarism and academic dishonesty in composition: Reflections from the People’s Republic of China. Issues in Writing, 13(1), 58. Schinkel, A. (2015). Education and ultimate meaning. Oxford Review of Education, 41(6), 711–729.

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Appendices

Appendix A: Student Background Survey Please answer the questions below as honestly as you can. All your background information and responses will be used for research purposes only. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Name: Phone No.: Email: Gender: □ Male □ Female Studying level: □ Freshman □ Sophomore □ Junior □ Senior Academic major: _______________________ Have you ever learnt about how to avoid plagiarism? (If Yes, please go to 6)□ YES □ NO Where and when did you learn about them? ______________________ Have you ever learnt about paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, or citation? (If Yes, please go to 8 and 9) □ YES □ NO Which skills, and in which language? _________________________________ __________________________________________ Where and when did you learn about it (or them)? _______________________ ____________________________________________________

Appendix B: Survey on Students’ Perceptions of Plagiarism In the Oxford English Dictionary, plagiarism is defined as an action of wrongly taking or giving ideas or works of another as one’s own (Plagiarism, 2019). There are ten statements in the survey, and each has six levels. Please circle one of the best levels for you. Thank you.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 Y. Zhang, Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-9844-9

149

150

Appendices

Statements

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Slightly Agree

Agree

Strongly agree

1

I am capable of identifying plagiarism-involving cases

1

2

3

4

5

6

2

I am capable of avoiding plagiarism

1

2

3

4

5

6

3

I have a good understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism

1

2

3

4

5

6

4

Plagiarizing is the same as cheating in an exam

1

2

3

4

5

6

5

Adding others’ writing texts to my writing assignment without acknowledging the sources is plagiarism

1

2

3

4

5

6

6

Paraphrasing others’ writing and adding it to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Adopting others’ 1 ideas, not texts, to my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

2

3

4

5

6

8

Introducing teachers’ 1 course materials in my writing assignment without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

2

3

4

5

6

9

Using my previous writing assignment for the current one without acknowledging the source is plagiarism

2

3

4

5

6

1

(continued)

Appendices

151

(continued) Statements 10

Strongly disagree

Introducing Internet 1 materials without source information in my writing assignment, and submitting it in my name is plagiarism

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Slightly Agree

Agree

Strongly agree

2

3

4

5

6

Note The questionnaire is modified based on Lee, C. W. Y., Chu, S. K. W., Cheng, J. O. Y., & Reynolds, R. (2016). Plagiarism-free inquiry project-based learning with UPCC pedagogy. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 53(1), 1–11.

Reference Plagiarism. (2019). OED Online. Available from Oxford University Press OED Online, from Oxford University Press http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/144939?redirectedFrom=plagiarism&

Appendix C: Student Feedback Questionnaire According to your writing experiences, please indicate to what extent you agree with the following statements. Please circle one of the best answers for you. Thank you. I The effectiveness of the Academic Writing (i.e., AW) project Statements

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Slightly Agree

Agree

Strongly agree

Understanding of plagiarism 1

I am more capable of 1 identifying plagiarism-involving cases after working on the AW project

2

3

4

5

6

2

I am more capable of 1 avoiding plagiarism (if any) after working on the AW project

2

3

4

5

6

(continued)

152

Appendices

(continued) Statements

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Slightly Agree

Agree

Strongly agree

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

I have a better understanding on the importance of avoiding plagiarism after working on the AW project

Source use: paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation 4

I am more capable of 1 expressing others’ ideas in my own words (i.e., paraphrasing) after working on the AW project

2

3

4

5

6

5

I am more capable of 1 presenting the main information in a concise statement (i.e., summarizing) after working on the AW project

2

3

4

5

6

6

I am more capable of 1 distinguishing paraphrasing, summarizing, and patchwriting after working on the AW project

2

3

4

5

6

7

I am more capable of 1 integrating several source materials with my own ideas (i.e., synthesizing) after working on the AW project

2

3

4

5

6

8

I am more capable of 1 producing proper citations after working on the AW project

2

3

4

5

6

(continued)

Appendices

153

(continued) Statements

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Slightly Agree

Agree

Strongly agree

Others 9

Due to a better 1 understanding of plagiarism during writing on the AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

2

3

4

5

6

10

Due to my enhanced 1 ability of using the skills of paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing during writing on the AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

2

3

4

5

6

11

Due to my enhanced 1 ability of creating proper citations during writing on the AW project, I am more capable of avoiding plagiarism (if any) in my work

2

3

4

5

6

Note Questions are adopted from Lee, C. W. Y., Chu, S. K. W., Cheng, J. O. Y., & Reynolds, R. (2016). Plagiarism-free inquiry project-based learning with UPCC pedagogy. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 53(1), 1–11

II Perceived usefulness and usability of the online writing system Statements 12

Strongly disagree

Use of the 1 online writing system helps to stimulate my interest in writing assignments

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Slightly Agree

Agree

Strongly agree

2

3

4

5

6

(continued)

154

Appendices

(continued) Statements

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Slightly Agree

Agree

Strongly agree

13

Use of the 1 online writing system enhanced my engagement in writing assignments

2

3

4

5

6

14

I would like 1 to use the online writing system in other courses

2

3

4

5

6

15

The online 1 writing system is easy to use in general

2

3

4

5

6

16

Benefits of 1 using the online writing system outweighed its technical challenges for users

2

3

4

5

6

17

The online 1 writing system aids me in fulfilling learning goals

2

3

4

5

6

18

In the online writing system, peer review is helpful to exchange peers’ views about plagiarism and source use

2

3

4

5

6

1

(continued)

Appendices

155

(continued) Statements

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Slightly Agree

Agree

Strongly agree

19

1

2

3

4

5

6

In the online writing system, peer review is effective in decreasing plagiarism in academic writing

Note Questions are adopted from Liu, G.-Z., Lo, H.-Y., & Wang, H.-C. (2013). Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study. Computers & Education, 69, 1–14

Appendix D: Guidelines for Writing Assignment Write a short essay based on two academic papers provided by the instructor. Guidelines Write your essay in six paragraphs. 1. The first two paragraphs: summarize* each academic paper in one paragraph. *Summarizing materials refers to representing the important aspects of a paragraph or more in a new and condensed way (at least half of the original texts) (Howard et al., 2010). You are suggested to answer guiding questions below during making summaries. • Have you carefully read through each academic paper and had a good understanding of it? • What is each academic paper about? What is the author’s main argument? • Have you included all the key points of each academic paper? • Have you used your own sentence structure and vocabularies to restate the main ideas of each academic paper? 2. The third to the fifth paragraphs: synthesize* two source materials into a critical analysis and discussion. *Synthesizing materials refers to bringing several summaries of sources together in different ways, e.g., making comparison and exploring causes or effects. It enables writers to consolidate support for their positions in writings (Anson et al., 2005; Maimon et al., 2012). You are suggested to answer guiding questions below during synthesizing materials.

156

• • • •

Appendices

Do you agree/disagree with the author(s)’s argument(s)? What is your position? How you explain your position? Do you make use of any evidence in the source materials to support your position? How do you arrange the sources in your synthesis?

3. The last paragraph: make a conclusion to your essay. You are suggested to answer guiding questions below during make the conclusion. • What is your main argument? • What are your suggestions or recommendations for your readers? Requirements 1. In your essay, you should include at least three paraphrasing* sentences from the original academic papers and mark them in bold black font. *Paraphrasing refers to restating a passage in a different and meaningful way than its original form (Howard et al., 2010). 2. You should correctly cite and list all references*. *Referencing refers to the practice of acknowledging others’ work which has been published or declared in the public domain (Neville, 2007). *Note: Paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, and citation are four important writing skills for academic writers. Novice writers like you are encouraged to finish the writing assignment by grasping the meaning of the four definitions mentioned above and displaying your understanding in writings. 3. The essay should be written in Chinese with 1000–1500 words. 4. The essay should be uploaded onto the online writing system (http://www.owsedu.com/moodle/)

References Anson, C. M., Schwegler, R. A., & Muth, M. F. (2005). The Longman Writer’s Companion. Longman Publishing Group. Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing and Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192. Maimon, E. P., Peritz, J., & Yancey, K. (2012). A writer’s resource: A handbook for writing and research, (spiral) (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill. Neville, C. (2007). The complete guide to referencing and avoiding plagiarism. McGraw-Hill Education.

Appendices

157

Appendix E: Student Interview Questions 1. Have you ever received instructions of plagiarism? 2. Have you gained a better understanding of plagiarism (or source use) after working on the academic writing (i.e., AW) project? 3. Please share with me what has helped you (if any) in becoming more capable of avoiding plagiarism. 4. Please share with me what has helped you (if any) in becoming more capable of paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing information? 5. Can you tell me your learning experiences with the online writing system? 6. During learning online, what difficulties have you encountered, and how do you cope with them? 7. To what extent do you think the AW project has effects on your learning about plagiarism and source use? 8. How do you think of Mainland Chinese undergraduates’ learning about plagiarism and source use? Note Questions are adapted from Lu, H.-C. (2013). Developing Taiwanese EFL undergraduate students’ knowledge of plagiarism avoidance and enhancing their English paraphrasing and citation skills by using an online writing tutorial system. (Master of Art), National Cheng Kung University.

Appendix F: Teacher Interview Questions 1. Have you ever taught academic writing? 2. Have you ever learnt about plagiarism and source use? 3. How do you think of Mainland Chinese undergraduates’ learning about plagiarism and source use? 4. Please describe your instructional experiences with the online writing system. 5. What are the problems you have encountered during instruction (online and in class), and how do you cope with them? 6. To what extent do you think the academic writing project has effects on students’ academic writing. 7. To what extent do you think the academic writing project has effects on students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use. Note Questions are adapted from Grigg, A. (2016). Chinese International Students’ and Faculty Members’ Views of Plagiarism in Higher Education. (10010905 Ed.D.), Walden University, Ann Arbor. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/ 1765463927?accountid=14548 ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I database.

158

Appendices

Appendix G: Writing Assessment Rubric (for Writing Quality Only)

Assignment response

Coherence and cohesion

Vocabulary and language use

Citation

Excellent (20–25 points)

• The writing meets all • The writer • The writer the assignment sequences paraphrases and requirements ideas in a clear summarizes texts in • The writer projects a logical way his/her own way clear stance with • The writer uses which is totally supporting ideas cohesive different from the • The summary includes devices sources all the important effectively • The writer uses a aspects of the sources • The writer uses wide range of and displays the paragraphing vocabulary writer’s full appropriately naturally understanding of the sources

The form of citations and references are accurate

Good (13–19 points)

• The writing meets all • The writer • The writer the assignment sequences paraphrases and requirements, ideas in a summarizes texts in although some general his/her own way, requirements are less progressive though sometimes covered than others way with similar phrases • The writer projects a • The writer uses from the sources stance although the cohesive • The writer uses a conclusion part is not devices to wide range of clearly stated connect vocabulary but • The summary includes sentences, but there are some some important some cohesive inaccuracies aspects of the sources devices are and displays the falsely used writer’s good • The writer uses understanding of the paragraphing sources, though some but not always aspects are not logically accurately addressed appropriate

There are citations and references, but some forms are faulty

(continued)

Appendices

159

(continued) Assignment response Average (6–12 points)

Coherence and cohesion

• The writing meets the • The writer • The paraphrase and assignment sequences summary display requirements only ideas but there few of the writer’s partially is a lack of own sentence • The writer projects a progression structures or stance but it is not • The writer uses expressions, and clearly stated some limited they contain a • The summary includes cohesive noticeable number few important aspects devices but of similar phrases of the sources and these are used from the sources displays the writer’s repeatedly or • The writer limited understanding in inaccurate repeatedly uses a of the sources ways limited range of • The writing is vocabulary not written in paragraphs

Poor (1–5 • The writing barely • The writer has points) meets the assignment very little requirements control of • The writer doesn’t organizational project a stance features • The summary doesn’t include any important aspects of the sources and displays no sign of the writer’s understanding of the sources Very poor (0 point)

Vocabulary and language use

• The paraphrase and summary display the writer’s use of source language with little modifications • The writer uses an extremely limited range of vocabulary

Citation Either the citations or the references are missing

Both the citations and the references are missing

The author has not handed in the assignment or merely copied words from the original passage

Note The rubric was modified based on Lu’s (2013) writing assignment evaluation rubric and Choi’s (2012) rubric of paraphrase

References Choi, Y. H. (2012). Paraphrase practices for using sources in L2 academic writing. English Teaching, 67(2), 51–79. Lu, H.-C. (2013). Developing Taiwanese EFL undergraduate students’ knowledge of plagiarism avoidance and enhancing their English paraphrasing and citation skills by using an online writing tutorial system. (Master of Art), National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.

160

Appendices

Appendix H: Guiding Questions in the Process of Peer Review To help students be involved in peer review and focus on possible writing issues in peer’s writing, several guiding questions were designed based on the writing assessment rubric (see Appendix G) and provided to students during the process of the peer review (see below). Assignment response

Coherence and cohesion

Vocabulary and language use

Citation

• Has the writer fully • Has the writer • Does the paraphrase • Has the writer addressed all parts arranged ideas and summary correctly cited and of the assignment? logically? display writer’s use listed all references? • Has the writer • Has the writer used of own sentence presented a cohesive devices structure or well-developed effectively and expressions, which position with managed all aspects have not been used relevant and of cohesion well? in the sources? • Has the writer used • Has the writer used supporting ideas? paragraphing • Does the summary a wide range of sufficiently and include all the vocabulary appropriately? important aspects of naturally? the source? • Does the paraphrase and summary display the writer’s clear understanding of the source texts?

Anson, C. M., Schwegler, R. A., & Muth, M. F. (2005). The Longman Writer’s Companion. Longman Publishing Group. Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 319–340. Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing and Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192. Lee, C. W. Y., Chu, S. K. W., Cheng, J. O. Y., & Reynolds, R. (2016, October 14– 18). Plagiarism-free inquiry project-based learning with UPCC pedagogy. In ASIS&T 2016 Annual Meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark. Liu, G.-Z., Lo, H.-Y., & Wang, H.-C. (2013). Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study. Computers & Education, 69, 1–14. Maimon, E. P., Peritz, J., & Yancey, K. (2012). A writer’s resource: A handbook for writing and research, (spiral) (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill. Plagiarism. (2019). OED Online. OED Online. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/ 144939?redirectedFrom=plagiarism&