The influence of online learning environment, lecturers’ assessment practice, and students’ writing skills on students’ plagiarism practices

Abstract

Higher education in Indonesia encourages university students to publish their work as part of lecturers’ assessments to inculcate an academic writing culture. Lack of students’ knowledge about plagiarism indicates a need for more studies on the effect of plagiarism on Online Learning Environment (OLE), Lecturers’ Assessment Practice (LAP), and Students’ Writing Skills (SWS). Lack of plagiarism awareness and prevention measures as well as lecturers’ feedback on student writing seems to exacerbate plagiarism practice. Therefore, this study assessed the influence of OLE, LAP, and SWS on Student Plagiarism Practices (SPP). In this study, OLE refers to twelve subcontracts, including relevance, reflection, interaction, collaboration, tutor support, peer support, making sense, instructor support, authentic learning, active learning, student autonomy, computer competence, and material environment. LAP refers to language assessment and written work assessment. Meanwhile, SWS refers to sub constructs such as organization, content, grammar, punctuation, spelling, mechanics, vocabulary, referencing, citing, paraphrasing, summarizing, quotation, synthesizing, and novelty. Finally, SPP refers to attitudes toward plagiarism and norms toward plagiarism. A multi-stage clustered sampling technique was used to select 155 lecturers teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) on Sulawesi Island as respondents. This study used a concurrent mixed method research design. A set of questionnaires was used to measure lecturers’ perceptions on OLE, LAP, SWS, and SPP. An interview protocol was used to reveal EFL lecturers’ perceptions on student learning experiences for OLE, LAP, SWS, and SPP. The mean difference in lecturers’ perception on OLE, LAP, SWS, and SPP based on gender and academic qualification was also examined. The relationship between OLE and SPP; LAP and SPP; and SWS and SPP were investigated using simple linear regression. The influence of OLE, LAP, and SWS on SPP was measured using multiple regression. This study showed that EFL lecturers’ perceptions on OLE were mostly at the expected level, whereas LAP and SPP were at the expected level while SWS mostly showed the difficult level. The results of the t-test showed that there was no significant mean difference in lecturers’ perception on OLE, LAP, and SWS based on gender and academic qualification. Simple linear regression showed that there was a significant relationship between OLE and SPP; and between LAP and SPP. Multiple regression results indicated that LAP had the most influence on SPP. Students’ learning experiences as reported by EFL lecturers in the interview results showed that reflection was dominant in OLE, and language assessment was dominant for LAP influence on SPP, especially for norms towards plagiarism. This study revealed that LAP has important implications for increasing students’ awareness on the importance of avoiding plagiarism, besides supporting the Ministry of Research and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia’s policy to prevent plagiarism.