Improving mainland Chinese undergraduates' plagiarism-free Chinese academic writing through a UUPC pedagogy

Abstract

In response to increasing plagiarism in higher education, 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 source use and plagiarism, but plagiarism has not been effectively controlled. One major reason was that students’ understandings of plagiarism and source use were neglected, and few empirical studies have explored how to orchestrate instructional activities to facilitate students’ proper understandings. Furthermore, the engagement of disciplinary course teachers in plagiarism-free academic writing instruction as well as the potential of ICT for plagiarism instruction instead of plagiarism detection were seldom discussed in literature. Also, compared with the ever growing plagiarism 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 rarer.

To address these research gaps, this study developed and introduced a new pedagogy with a customized ICT tool (i.e., an online writing system) in subject courses to facilitate plagiarism-free academic writing among undergraduate students in Mainland China. Using a design-based research methodology, the new pedagogy together with the ICT tool was refined through two phases of interventional instruction, and the third phase was conducted with a quasi-experimental design to validate the new pedagogy’s effects on students’ understandings of plagiarism and sources use. One class of juniors and two classes of freshmen from two public universities in Mainland China together with their instructors were enrolled in the study. The students’ perceptions of plagiarism and writing performance as well as both the students’ and the instructors’ responses to the new pedagogy and the ICT tool were examined by analyzing data from various sources, including surveys on students’ perceptions of plagiarism, feedback questionnaires, writing assignments, and interviews.

This study contributes to a better understanding and improvement of instructional approaches to address plagiarism issues in a Chinese higher education context. Findings essentially confirmed that students’ understanding of plagiarism and source use could be significantly improved by engaging in academic writing with the new pedagogy. Both students’ learning experiences and instructors’ teaching experiences with the new pedagogy unfolded in the study encourage the diffusion of innovative pedagogy in different instructional settings. Moreover, this study promotes the discussion on how subject instructors could conduct plagiarism instruction with the help of ICT to support students to be free from plagiarism. The theoretical contributions lie in the design principles for plagiarism instruction. This study also brings insights into the relationship among plagiarism, pedagogy, and technology. Moreover, it contributes to plagiarism instruction research with original insights about how Chinese undergraduates and their instructors view plagiarism and cope with plagiarism in disciplines, which may advance discussions about the influences of language culture and disciplinary diversity on students’ plagiarism in academic writing.