Exploring intentional use of a technological proxy, Turnitin, to enhance student academic literacy practices

Abstract

Current pedagogical practices have seen the rapid spread of technological tools that carry out tasks on behalf of the learner; we use the term technological proxy to refer to these tools. A popular technological proxy used by students worldwide is a text-matching software called Turnitin. Turnitin alerts users to sections of an assignment that appear to match materials that exist in some other published or previously submitted form. This paper reports on a small case study that examined how university students use Turnitin and the implications its use has on their academic literacy practices. Drawing on theories of intentional learning, achievement goal orientation theory, and self-efficacy theory, we applied think-aloud protocols and focus groups to elicit data on students' interpretation and use of Turnitin feedback. Results show that the majority of students used the proxy with a performance goal orientation that focused on achieving a low similarity index. This dominating goal orientation is attributed to students' low self-efficacy for using the program, and the university's positioning of the program as a plagiarism tool. Hands-on experience with Turnitin contributed to a shift in using the program with intentionality.

Adolescent students’ digital engagement and achievement goal orientation profiles

“…Previous studies have indicated that higher academic motivation may enhance the use of digital media for learning (Chang et al, 2019). Achievement goal orientations could also be related to how students utilize learning possibilities provided by digital media and tools (Orlando et al, 2018). For example, mastery-oriented students might be more engaged in learning new skills and gaining knowledge with the help of digital tools; performanceoriented students, in contrast, might merely aim to complete the task at hand (Orlando et al, 2018).…”

“…Achievement goal orientations could also be related to how students utilize learning possibilities provided by digital media and tools (Orlando et al, 2018). For example, mastery-oriented students might be more engaged in learning new skills and gaining knowledge with the help of digital tools; performanceoriented students, in contrast, might merely aim to complete the task at hand (Orlando et al, 2018). Digital tools can also support students' need for autonomy and competence (i.e., connected learning; Barron, 2006;Ito et al, 2013;Kumpulainen & Sefton-Green, 2014), which becomes increasingly important during adolescence (Eccles et al, 1993).…”

A Scoping Review of Text-Matching Software Used for Student Academic Integrity in Higher Education

“…Another factor we considered was the sample size of the population under study. We noted that some studies that focused on using text-matching software as an educational intervention included author-identified limitations that included a small sample size [42,54,64,75,102,119,142]. e nature of the studies involving teaching and learning interventions varied in their scope and approach, and we found no evidence of educational intervention studies that had replicated previous studies, further limiting our ability to definitively determine the effectiveness of TMS as an educational intervention.…”

The case for academic plagiarism education: A PESA Executive collective writing project

“…With applications such as Turnitin TM , plagiarism is narrowly conceived as something that can detected through patterns of text matching. It is argued that such software can be used as a pedagogical tool to improve students' writing (Halgamuge, 2017;Orlando et al, 2018); however, in such a context scholarly writing is rendered an exercise in paraphrasing to beat the machine. Citation and paraphrasing become a fig leaf covering the naked cobbling together of sources in aid of providing a passable imitation of academic writing.…”