Addressing plagiarism in online programmes at a health sciences university: a case study

Plagiarism continues to be a concern for all educational institutions. To build a solid foundation for high academic standards and best practices at a graduate university, aspects of plagiarism were reviewed to develop better management processes for reducing plagiarism. Specifically, the prevalence of plagiarism and software programmes for detecting plagiarism was investigated. From that information, best practices for responding to plagiarism were developed and a process to enhance academic integrity was instituted. The results were impressive, the incidence of plagiarism offences reduced by half in three years, and by 75% among the English as a second-language student population.     

Piloting a Mathematics‐Writing Intervention with Late Elementary Students At‐Risk for Learning Difficulties

High‐stakes mathematics assessments require students to write about mathematics, although research suggests students exhibit limited proficiency on such assessments. Students with LD may have difficulties with writing, mathematics, or both. Researchers employed an intervention for teaching students how to organize mathematics writing (MW). Researchers randomly assigned participants (n = 61) in grades 3–5 to receive instruction in MW or information writing. Students receiving MW outperformed control students on a researcher‐developed measure of MW (d = 1.05). Component assessment revealed MW students improved in writing organization (d = 1.49) but not in mathematics content (d = 0.11 ns). Results also indicated MW students outperformed control on percentage of correct MW sequences (d = 0.82). Future directions for MW intervention development are discussed.     

Examining the impacts of the structures writing intervention for teaching fourth-grade students to write informational text

Reading and Writing - Expository writing may be especially difficult for elementary grade students due to lack of background knowledge and unfamiliar text structures. A text structure writing...