Abstract

In this paper we report our experience of substantially reducing the extent of assignment plagiarism during the COVID-19 affected period. We did this by decomposing the authentic assignment into five formative milestones emphasizing higher order thinking. Students had to submit five three-minute videos demonstrating how each milestone was reached, why the particular strategy was adapted and what could have been done better. We evaluated the effectiveness of our approach by comparing the assignment plagiarism pattern with the previous COVID-19 affected semester and by correlating the performance in formative tasks with performance in the final randomized test. Our results suggest formative video submissions can substantially reduce plagiarism in project-based courses and can reduce the reliance on the final test for measuring the learning outcomes. The survey on student perceptions reveals use of video milestone submissions helped to improve motivation, self-efficacy and learning outcomes.

Recommended Citation

Ribaux, J., Thevathayan, C., & Hamilton, M. (2021). Improving Industry Relevance and Reducing Plagiarism using Milestones and Video Reflections. In E. Insfran, F. González, S. Abrahão, M. Fernández, C. Barry, H. Linger, M. Lang, & C. Schneider (Eds.), Information Systems Development: Crossing Boundaries between Development and Operations (DevOps) in Information Systems (ISD2021 Proceedings). Valencia, Spain: Universitat Politècnica de València.

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Improving Industry Relevance and Reducing Plagiarism using Milestones and Video Reflections

In this paper we report our experience of substantially reducing the extent of assignment plagiarism during the COVID-19 affected period. We did this by decomposing the authentic assignment into five formative milestones emphasizing higher order thinking. Students had to submit five three-minute videos demonstrating how each milestone was reached, why the particular strategy was adapted and what could have been done better. We evaluated the effectiveness of our approach by comparing the assignment plagiarism pattern with the previous COVID-19 affected semester and by correlating the performance in formative tasks with performance in the final randomized test. Our results suggest formative video submissions can substantially reduce plagiarism in project-based courses and can reduce the reliance on the final test for measuring the learning outcomes. The survey on student perceptions reveals use of video milestone submissions helped to improve motivation, self-efficacy and learning outcomes.