Conference theme: Transition and Adjustment

Title: In your ‘own’ words: Learning advisers on student difficulties with avoiding plagiarism during the transition to university

Paul Parker

Abstract

In a preliminary qualitative study, learning advisers from the University of Western Sydney were interviewed for their professional perspectives on the issue of plagiarism in student writing at university. This paper reports findings that suggest learning to avoid plagiarism continues to be an anxious and uncertain part of new students’ adjustment to the academic literacy demands of university assignment work. Factors such as educational background, discipline variation in lecturer emphasis and enforcement, overwhelming assessment workloads and changing student priorities are seen to complicate the capacity and sometimes willingness of new university students to understand plagiarism and avoid it in their writing. Many of the findings suggest that the issue risks being treated as a simple question of students’ acquisition of mechanical skills in referencing and paraphrasing. A number of pedagogical and systemic recommendations are made with the aim of shifting the focus in students’ first year onto the application of these skills as part of an apprenticeship to the scholarly roles and contexts of university study.

Full paper