Criminal intent or cognitive dissonance: how does student self plagiarism fit into academic integrity?

The discourse of plagiarism is speckled with punitive terms not out of place in a police officer's notes: detection, prevention, misconduct, rules, regulations, conventions, transgression, consequences, deter, trap, etc. This crime and punishment paradigm tends to be the norm in academic settings. The learning and teaching paradigm assumes that students are not filled with criminal intent, but rather are confused by the novel academic culture and its values. The discourse of learning and teaching includes: development, guidance, acknowledge, scholarly practice, communicate, familiarity, culture. Depending on the paradigm adopted, universities, teachers, and students will either focus on policies, punishments, and ways to cheat the system or on program design, assessments, and assimilating the values of academia. Self plagiarism is a pivotal issue that polarises these two paradigms. Viewed from a crime and punishment paradigm, self plagiarism is an intentional act of evading the required workload for a course by re-using previous work. Within a learning and teaching paradigm, self plagiarism is an oxymoron. We would like to explore the differences between these two paradigms by using self plagiarism as a focal point

Building pathways to academic success: a practice report

Students attending university for the first time come with a range of expectations, experiences and skills. For many these prior experiences are less than optimal for achieving academic success. This paper evaluates the academic outcomes across three cohorts of a five day enabling program offered to commencing students in the week prior to their formal university orientation program. The demographics of this sample (n=965) are such that over 50% come from low socio-economic backgrounds, about 50% are first in family to attend university, 50% are mature age students and over 50% have university entrance scores in the lower ranges of academic ability. Those who entered university with an OP1 score of 15 or less and completed the program were less likely to fail and achieved higher GPAs at the end of their first semester of studies than those who did not complete the enabling program

Exploring evidence of higher order thinking skills in the writing of first year undergraduates

Research indicates that concern is often expressed about the language and discourse skills new students bring with them when they first enrol at university, which leads to assumptions being made about their academic abilities. In this paper, an argument is developed through detailed analysis of student writing, that many new first year students have nascent Higher Order Thinking Skills and the potential to be successful in their studies. The work of Robert Marzano and his associates (Marzano, 2001; Marzano & Kendall, 2007, 2008) is applied to student writing

Editorial: Focus on Peer Leaders and Peer Learning in Different National and Disciplinary Contexts

Welcome to Volume 15 of the Journal of Peer Learning

Editorial: Evaluation as the “Eternal” Challenge: Opportunities and Innovations in Demonstrating Value in Ever-Changing Peer Learning Environments

Welcome to Volume 14 of the Journal of Peer Learning

Voices on the margins: the role of New Zealand cinema in the construction of national and cultural identity

This thesis is based on the proposition that the New Zealand feature film Broken English (1996, Gregor Nicholas) constitutes a ‘break’ in New Zealand cinema on the level of its subject matter. Where feature films before ‘imagined’ New Zealand overwhelmingly in either mono-cultural or bi-cultural terms, Broken English quite specifically provides a multi-cultural perspective. What makes it particularly problematic however is that its creative personnel consists mostly of Pakeha New Zealanders, while the film features virtually no Pakeha characters. The expectation from the outset then is that this film can tell us much not only about the workings of the film industry in New Zealand, but also about national identity in general, and how this gets defined in particular contexts. As a result, it can also tell us much about the relations of power involved in this process. Overall then, this thesis is an attempt to work through issues of national identity, in relation to concepts of ethnicity, race and diaspora. It takes Broken English as its main focus to explore where policy makers, film makers and viewers from a variety of ethnic backgrounds situate themselves and others within the nation. By extension it investigates how they see the role of cinema in relation to national and cultural identity, and what kind of discourses they draw on in doing so. Although there is a lot of research which deals with different aspects of these discourses, there is little research which combines them and shows how they relate to each other and how they inform both media texts and engagement with those texts. This thesis is an attempt to close those gaps to some extent. In terms of methodology, this thesis follows a tripartite structure (production-text-reception), linked by a discourse analytic framework. This methodology allows for an exploration of the process of making meaning, and identifies the gaps and fissures between these different realms. In conclusion, this thesis argues that Broken English can be seen on one level as an important attempt to bring different minority groups into the mainstream, and thus represents an inclusive version of the nation. However, the problematic ways in which it does so illustrates the complexities involved in such a project in a contemporary New Zealand context

Whither the LMS: Is the LMS Still Fit for Purpose?

Learning management systems (LMSs) have long been adopted by tertiary education providers to be the conduit through which courses are delivered. However, debates about the capacity of the LMS to meet all the required current and future needs of both students and educators have become more pronounced over the past few years, particularly given the rapid shift to online learning during Covid-19. This qualitative study aimed to examine practitioners’ current experiences in using the LMS for formal teaching and learning in tertiary environments. To discern the possibilities and issues, a focus group was held with fourteen practitioners from Australasia (Australia and Singapore), Canada, and the UK (England and Scotland) attending virtually. Adopting a novel and recognised approach to thematic analysis, a Delphi process was adopted on the de-identified webinar and chat transcripts. Analysis revealed several key themes ranging across pedagogical, technological, and managerial issues with the LMS. The findings in this paper have become even more pertinent as a result of Covid-19 with institutions urgently reviewing standards for teaching in the LMS whilst also reviewing their overall technology ecosystems to ensure a suite of complementary teaching and learning tools to enable best teaching and learning practices. It appears the LMS still has a key role to play in contemporary learning ecosystems

Goldilocks and Journal Publication: Finding a Fit That\u27s Just Right

Getting your work published in journals in ways that will help to advance your scholarly record is a complex and multifaceted process. This article is written for early career researchers and graduate and postgraduate students, providing practical advice about what to consider when developing a research and publication profile and establishing yourself within a research community. It explains a range of criteria that are useful to consider when choosing the best journal “fit” for each publication and for your academic trajectory. We hope that considering the elements identified and explained in this article will help you to find a fit that is “just right” for each of your future publications

Using graduate attributes to link academic learning with the world of work (case study vignette)

Our undergraduate curriculum at Leeds Beckett University was reviewed three years ago. One of the review’s main tranches of work was to embed three graduate attributes (GAs) in every undergraduate course. This vignette explores the activities initiated by the Centre for Learning and Teaching with all staff and students both within their courses and at University level to make this happen

21st century skills, problem based learning and the university of the future

In this paper we focus on the ‘university of the future’, and in particular we aim to explore what the role and relevance of PBL might be in this imagined university of the future. We explore the potential of PBL in the development of 21st century skills in a higher education environment that is on the brink of profound changes, and that consequently requires a continuously adaptive approach to education renewal at all levels. Of course many of these changes are already underway. We appear to be in the midst of profound disruptions to higher education, not in the least due to fast changing technologies and the possibilities they afford. The internet and the World Wide Web have had huge impacts, which in turn have influenced the social fabric of our lives through the growing ubiquity of social media and mobile media tools. In education in general, and in higher education in particular, these changes have ushered in an age characterised by a rapidly increasing evolution of online learning with integration of online, hybrid, and collaborative learning, and most recently, phenomena such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), the rise of big data analytics driving learning, and personalised learning. Each of these developments have the potential to cause major disruptions in the way we operate in higher education. It is important to recognise and respect that these changes are here to stay, some evolutionary, some revolutionary. So we need to respond in adaptive and agile ways, and importantly, with imagination and creativity. In this paper, we explore the potential of PBL to address some of the unknown and uncertain challenges of the 21st century