Teaching Development Grants
Completed TDG Projects

Assessment and Feedback

Plagiarism: Awareness, Avoidance and Assurance


Abstract

The intention of this project has been to find ways to raise students’ awareness of plagiarism and related issues; through that enhanced awareness to enable students’ avoidance of plagiarism; and thus to provide a vehicle for the assurance of plagiarism-free writing at HKU. The approach to this has been to construct an online tutorial to explain plagiarism with reference to authentic examples of writing; and then to provide an online test through which students can demonstrate their understanding. Student data relating to their pre- and post-understanding of plagiarism, as well as their feedback on the usability of the tools has all contributed to the fine-tuning of the tools. The final version of the tutorial allows multiple attempts with no record kept because this is the awareness raising phase. The final version of the test provides the user with a record of achievement and maintains a permanent record of the outcome which could be captured for a university record. If the test is failed the user is required to retake after a recommended period of review.

Principal Investigator

Dr. D.P. Gardner, Centre for Applied English Studies, Faculty of Arts

Project level

University-level project

Project Completion

September 2016

Deliverables

  1. Too1 1: An awareness raising online tutorial
  2. Tool 2: An online test of understanding of plagiarism-free writing
  3. Report on approaches to plagiarism in other universities Download
  4. Presentation of “Perceptions of Plagiarism: Tertiary students and teachers in Hong Kong” accepted for the Faces of English Conference Download