Skills training to avoid inadvertent plagiarism: results from a randomised control study

Abstract

Plagiarism continues to be a concern within academic institutions. The current study utilised a randomised control trial of 137 new entry tertiary students to assess the efficacy of a scalable short training session on paraphrasing, patch writing and plagiarism. The results indicate that the training significantly enhanced students' overall knowledge about in-text referencing protocols. Importantly, this knowledge was found to translate into applied skills, with the intervention group performing significantly better in a practical skills application task. Moreover, the findings suggest that it is confidence in writing in English, not language background per se, which plays a significant role in students' practical skills in referencing and their confidence in performing assignment preparation tasks that can help them avoid claims of inadvertent plagiarism.

Keywords:

• intervention
• non-English-speaking background
• paraphrasing
• patch writing
• plagiarism
• student learning

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by a Monash University orientation special project grant. We also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the learning skills staff at Monash University for their feedback with respect to the intervention materials.