Plagiarism in philosophy: prevention better than cure

[Introduction] Plagiarism more common than thought in student essays’ would make a good headline. Recent research suggests that students admit to much more plagiarism and other forms of cheating than teachers generally suspect, and it is widely believed that the problem is increasing as a result of the internet. The solution is to use a range of techniques to get the thought back into student essay writing, and to take more active steps to spot when this has not happened

Designing for learning: e-Learning@greenwich post-conference reflections and abstracts

The e-learning@greenwich/conference 2007, Designing for Learning, was the fifth conference in the series and has developed from its original focus on local institutional issues to a conference that focuses on global themes in e-learning attracting international participation. Our conferences are characterised by being practitioner focused and sector inclusive. Conference evaluations suggest that its intimate and friendly atmosphere, within the grounds of the world heritage site at Greenwich, allows practitioner-delegates to freely mix with delegates of international research repute and have an influence on practice, whether in the classroom or in educational software development. We felt it was now time to produce a series of publications to share the important work being captured and disseminated at the conferences to a wider public in the form of post-conference reflective proceedings

The influence of online learning environment, lecturers’ assessment practice, and students’ writing skills on students’ plagiarism practices

Higher education in Indonesia encourages university students to publish their work as part of lecturers’ assessments to inculcate an academic writing culture. Lack of students’ knowledge about plagiarism indicates a need for more studies on the effect of plagiarism on Online Learning Environment (OLE), Lecturers’ Assessment Practice (LAP), and Students’ Writing Skills (SWS). Lack of plagiarism awareness and prevention measures as well as lecturers’ feedback on student writing seems to exacerbate plagiarism practice. Therefore, this study assessed the influence of OLE, LAP, and SWS on Student Plagiarism Practices (SPP). In this study, OLE refers to twelve subcontracts, including relevance, reflection, interaction, collaboration, tutor support, peer support, making sense, instructor support, authentic learning, active learning, student autonomy, computer competence, and material environment. LAP refers to language assessment and written work assessment. Meanwhile, SWS refers to sub constructs such as organization, content, grammar, punctuation, spelling, mechanics, vocabulary, referencing, citing, paraphrasing, summarizing, quotation, synthesizing, and novelty. Finally, SPP refers to attitudes toward plagiarism and norms toward plagiarism. A multi-stage clustered sampling technique was used to select 155 lecturers teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) on Sulawesi Island as respondents. This study used a concurrent mixed method research design. A set of questionnaires was used to measure lecturers’ perceptions on OLE, LAP, SWS, and SPP. An interview protocol was used to reveal EFL lecturers’ perceptions on student learning experiences for OLE, LAP, SWS, and SPP. The mean difference in lecturers’ perception on OLE, LAP, SWS, and SPP based on gender and academic qualification was also examined. The relationship between OLE and SPP; LAP and SPP; and SWS and SPP were investigated using simple linear regression. The influence of OLE, LAP, and SWS on SPP was measured using multiple regression. This study showed that EFL lecturers’ perceptions on OLE were mostly at the expected level, whereas LAP and SPP were at the expected level while SWS mostly showed the difficult level. The results of the t-test showed that there was no significant mean difference in lecturers’ perception on OLE, LAP, and SWS based on gender and academic qualification. Simple linear regression showed that there was a significant relationship between OLE and SPP; and between LAP and SPP. Multiple regression results indicated that LAP had the most influence on SPP. Students’ learning experiences as reported by EFL lecturers in the interview results showed that reflection was dominant in OLE, and language assessment was dominant for LAP influence on SPP, especially for norms towards plagiarism. This study revealed that LAP has important implications for increasing students’ awareness on the importance of avoiding plagiarism, besides supporting the Ministry of Research and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia’s policy to prevent plagiarism

Teaching​ Information Literacy and Writing Studies: Volume 2, Upper-Level and Graduate Courses

This volume, edited by Grace Veach, explores leading approaches to teaching information literacy and writing studies in upper-level and graduate courses. Contributors describe cross-disciplinary and collaborative efforts underway across higher education, during a time when fact or truth is less important than fitting a predetermined message. Topics include: working with varied student populations, teaching information literacy and writing in upper-level general education and disciplinary courses, specialized approaches for graduate courses, and preparing graduate assistants to teach information literacy.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/pilh/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of Guided Practice in Argument Analysis and Composition via Computer-Assisted Argument Mapping Software on Students’ Ability to Analyze and Compose Evidence-Based Arguments

The purpose of this quantitative action research study was to document the impact of the use of computer-assisted argument mapping (CAAM) upon high school students’ ability to analyze and compose evidence-based arguments. The study used a one-group pretest posttest design with a convenience sample of the participant researcher’s seventy-one high school sophomores. During the six-week study, each participant generated four sets of artifacts, each consisting of two argument analysis maps from provided source arguments and one argument composition map representing the participant’s position on the given topic. Artifacts were generated at four separate benchmarks, the pretest, week four, week five, and the posttest. Between the pretest and week four, students completed a self-paced computerized tutorial on critical thinking (CT) that emphasized argumentation skills, such as grouping ideas, the parts of an argument, locating arguments in a text, evaluating arguments for errors in logic and credibility, and creating argument maps. In weeks four and five of the study, students applied the skills learned in the tutorial to full-length argumentative articles provided by the participant researcher. Benchmarks for weeks four, five, and the posttest consisted of the same task as the pretest, two analysis maps reconstructing the authors’ arguments and one argument composition map representing the participant’s position on the given topic. Composite scores were analyzed to determine an overall effect, while each component score, analysis and composition, provided an indication of reading comprehension ability and argument construction ability, respectively. The use of CAAM as a means of fostering the CT skills necessary for the comprehension and composition of arguments (analysis, synthesis, and organization) proved beneficial, with the results of the study showing both significance (t=7.7077, crit. t=1.67, ∝= 05, 95% confidence level) and an appreciable effect size (d = .9147)

ALT-C 2011 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2011 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 1 September, with a "topped and tailed" made live on 2 September

Hans Eysenck, education and the experimental approach: A meta-analysis of academic capabilities in university students

Hans Eysenck had a long-established interest in the influence of individual differences on educational attainment, noting that typically personality traits and cognitive abilities are ignored in debates regarding educational policy and practice. Eysenck's general scientific approach emphasized the importance of applying an experimental approach to answering social questions. Inspired by this perspective, in this article, we conducted a meta-analysis of the literature on (largely quasi) experimental intervention studies (N = 47, with 49 independent samples) aimed at enhancing mainly self-efficacy and self-confidence in order to influence a range of academic outcomes in university students (N = 5771). Results revealed small-to-moderate, but statistically significant, positive effects across all the outcome domains examined. There was little evidence for moderation of these effects, with quality of the study intervention the only one statistically significant (lower quality studies showing the largest effect sizes). Although our analysis shows the paucity of purely experimental studies in higher education research, the results are sufficiently clear to suggest that the study of individual differences variables are relevant in educational design and instruction. This is something Hans Eysenck told us to expect

“Difference in/at the center a transnational approach for mobilizing international multilingual graduate writers\u27 writing assets during writing instruction.

This research project presents an empirical exploration of how the writing assets possessed by international multilingual graduate writers impact the theory and pedagogical practices in writing studies, especially regarding the approaches to teaching writing. Extant scholarship in writing studies, especially on second language research/teaching, translingual writing practices, and asset-based writing pedagogy has engaged issues of difference in language, race, culture, as well as funds of knowledge, highlighting the impacts of these differences on the academic success of non-native English speakers in US schools and colleges. My dissertation builds on these trends and highlights the narratives, perceptions, and experiences of international multilingual graduate writers and writing consultants at the University of Louisville’s Writing Center to contribute a new, reflexive way of viewing writing differences in our work with students who are from countries other than the US. I employed a qualitative study that is informed by in-depth interviews with five international multilingual graduate writers and two focus group discussions with five writing consultants. I subjected the data I collected from my participants to analytical interpretations using the theoretical lens of the transnational writing framework as well as rhetorical empathy. The alignment of both frameworks is evident in how rhetorical empathy becomes a heuristic tool that writing instructors can use to successfully navigate the contexts of their teaching, either writing centers or writing classrooms––which I argue have increasingly become transnational in nature. Through analysis of international multilingual graduate writers’ interviews and review of their observation data, I show that they are aware of the difference between their prior writing orientation and their current writing situation in the US. Regardless, they possess some knowledge of how writing works, influenced by their linguistic, cultural, and rhetorical competencies. These competencies are leveraged as assets that they possess and would reveal to their writing consultants as long as an atmosphere that welcomes a discussion of their writing assets and tends to allow them to guide us on what we can do with these assets is cultivated. Likewise, I submit that writing professionals (instructors and consultants) need to start to reimagine every encounter of writing instruction the transnational engagement that ties people and places together across borders and adopt a rhetorical empathy stance to create opportunities for changing the Subject and the Other in terms of the knowledge of academic writing. Finally, I offer implications to this research and concluded by offering rhetorical empathy’s applications in writing studies, especially in writing classroom contexts with a suggestion for a move away from having different sections of college writing class and toward making all college writing courses multilingual sections

Sydney College of the Arts handbook

2004 handbook for Sydney College of the Art