Helping students at all levels to understand the importance of doing their own work on projects is a topic of ongoing discussion between faculty and librarians. Attempting to stamp out plagiarism through narrowly focuses presentations has not seemed to work. In the ALA poster sessions I visited with a librarian from Miami University in Oxford Ohio who developed a tutorial to address this issue. The impetus was a faculty study of the issue of academic integrity at the University and their recommended to establish an online tutorial to reach out to first year students.
The result was the establishment of Miami eScholar whose components include:
- A series of readings divided into five modules
- Self-check exercises in each module to help students gauge comprehension
- A final quiz consisting of 19 questions
- An option to print a certificate of successful completion for students who answer at least 15 or the 18 questions successfully.
eScholar addresses all aspects of creating high-quality research and not just plagiarism. The concepts covered are:
- defining information needs
- finding, and evaluating resources
- citing and ethical use of information
Miami eScholar was implemented in two of their six academic divisions. 97% of students completing the tutorial were able to answer 15 of the 18 questions on the final quiz successfully. Over two/thirds of the students answered one to three of the questions incorrectly indicating that the content presented in eScholar is not second nature to them.
The two year pilot of eScholar had successes and challenges. Feedback from the pilot period has been integrated into revisions that will be available Fall Semester, 2009 plus a new video-based version.
For more information on this program contact Eric Resnis resnisew@muohio.edu, Kwabena Sekyere sekyerk@muohio.edu, or Rob Withers witherre@muohio.edu.
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