Plagiarism Instruction Online: Assessing Undergraduate Students’ Ability to Avoid Plagiarism

Abstract

This study assesses undergraduate students’ understanding of plagiarism through the use of an interactive, Web-based tutorial, Plagiarism: The Crime of Intellectual Kidnapping. The author details the instructional design process used to create this information literacy resource and integrate it into the curriculum. Data from 2,829 student quiz scores are analyzed to assess student learning. The results of this study indicate that students have difficulty grasping concepts related to paraphrasing. A comparative analysis of pre- and posttest results shows that student scores improved an average of 6 percent.