This article showcases an instructor-librarian collaborative model for teaching critical information literacy (CIL) skills in a higher education course by incorporating interactive workshops into a sequence of required course assignments. Using an asset-focused design, this assignment sequence allows students to first demonstrate their existing…

This paper assesses and compares the prevalence of plagiarism across different student and assignment characteristics at a university in Vietnam, using the similarity index reported by the text-matching software Turnitin as a proxy measure of plagiarism on a sample of 681 student papers. The findings present a level of match higher than reported…

Purpose: Imagination in critical literacy research is usually referred to as a taken for granted concept that is seldom theorised, leaving the assumptions unchecked that everyone has a shared understanding of imagination. This paper aims to challenge critical literacy researchers to rethink the relationship between criticality and imagination and…

Students in upper-level courses are expected to observe disciplinary conventions in writing assignments. Common recommendations for teaching conventions require substantial time for instructor feedback and in-class instruction. As an alternative, we tested the effectiveness of a checklist in improving students' performance of these conventions.…

Reference lists from two assignments of psychology students in university-level online distance learning (ODL) were analyzed for number and type of sources and mark achieved. Most referenced were resources relevant to the assignment and provided by instructors. Use changed across assignments: Instructor sources were used more on the first…

This exploratory study was designed to assess the experience of preservice teachers when integrating written language technology and their likelihood of applying that technology in their future classrooms. Results suggest that after experiencing technology integration, preservice teachers are more likely to use it in their future teaching.

This paper describes utilizing wiki technology, small group workshops, and reflective writing assignments to "flip" a community engagement/service-learning course for college undergraduates who are tutoring culturally and linguistically diverse students in K-12 schools. Flipped classrooms are gaining popularity in the teaching of…

The authors describe their attempt to develop students' critical perspectives on the content and assumptions in the 2008 Florida Principal Leadership Standards (FPLS) through a reflective essay assignment in a class titled Ethics, Equity, and Leadership in Education. The authors conducted textual analysis of 92 student essays (a total of 922…

In this article, I describe my reflections on developing student authors through a class research project. I review the assignment origins and description and my role in the students' developmental journey from transforming a class assignment to a publishable work. (Contains 1 figure.)

This article describes a study of how students use first person pronouns in papers written for undergraduate courses in multiple disciplines. If prompted, students imitate some of the ways experts use first person to establish their authority; but just as often students use first person pronouns to express uncertainty or to reveal that they have…

The ability to think critically is an important trait of all members of society. With today's multinational, multicultural, complex issues, citizens must be able to sift through large amounts of various data to make intelligent decisions. Thinking critically must be a focus of higher education in order to provide the intellectual training for its…

This article describes the assignments the author created to engage preservice teachers in designing instructional materials that befit today's students to help them overcome hurdles sometimes present when learning classic literature. Secondary and middle school English teachers may find these assignments useful as well so their students, too,…

This study examines the writing of 30 engineering students, faculty response, students' reading of the response, subsequent revision, and faculty evaluation to ask what factors contribute to constructive conversation about writing. It affirms previous research that suggests engineering faculty do not provide the facilitative commentary widely…

Robert Cohen, Assistant Professor English at Fairbanks University, has just completed a contentious meeting of his First Year Composition class, which had discussed a paper written by one of the students. Joe Anderson's paper contained statements that have been historically used as anti-Semitic slogans. Cohen attempted to avoid embarrassing…

Teachers' feedback on students' written work is an important aspect of pedagogy. However, theoretical views differ on what constitutes "good" feedback, both among applied linguists and academics in other disciplines. In-depth research needs to be carried out into the contextual difficulties of evaluating and assessing academic…