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International Student's Authorship

In order to improve information literacy, reduce plagiarism and develop pride in authorship of written work amongst international students a research study was undertaken at the University of Hertfordshire within the Business School, trialling a holistic approach to dealing with these issues. The key objectives of the project were to raise awareness of the issue of plagiarism amongst students, develop understanding of academic integrity and authorship, encourage the use of ‘quality’ information and correct referencing, improve academic writing skills and inform educational policy within the Business School and the wider University. The project was carried out with thirty-four international students studying a Business Strategy module in the Business School. The project was directly linked to a Business Strategy assignment through a sequence of re-usable blended learning workshops, with input from an Academic Skills tutor and the use of i-Spy, the university’s online information skills tutorials. In addition, students used the plagiarism detection software ‘Turnitin’ as an educational tool for formative feedback to develop their authorship skills. The success of the project was evaluated against the student success in course assessments, together with feedback obtained from students via reflective logs, a focus group and a questionnaire. Feedback was also obtained from tutors and external examiner via interviews. The workshops were found to have improved the skills of the sample cohort. Students used a wider range of sources, referenced them correctly and, according to the module leader, did not plagiarise. It is recommended that benefits may be derived from adopting a holistic approach towards dealing with the issues of authorship and plagiarism. Background