As university writing instructors, we regularly encounter students whose understanding of source use and documentation is still developing and who benefit from repeated exposure to academic integrity principles and practices in the classroom, presented distinctly each time (see also McNeill, 2022, pp. 496-497). In such circumstances, instructors might give learners opportunities to brainstorm reasons for source acknowledgement and what it can help them achieve; identify the occasions when quotations, paraphrases, and summaries are most appropriate; practice source integration techniques; and build citations and references. Pedagogical materials developers who package the same instructional content in different formats for reinforcement refer to the technique as varied repetition (Timmis, 2016, p. 152; Timmis, 2022, pp. 42-43), and it is an approach that we design into our lesson plans and open textbooks.
Open textbooks are free learning and teaching resources, and their copyright permissions oftentimes mean that they can be adapted and customized to address students’ needs and align with particular course outcomes. In our open textbook projects (Atkinson & Corbitt, 2021, 2022a, 2024), we have used academic integrity as a centering construct when building out content and have taken intentional steps to underscore its importance through varied repetition (Atkinson & Corbitt, 2022b, paras. 3-4; see also Atkinson & Corbitt, 2023, “Modular Textbook Construction”). To illustrate, in Atkinson and Corbitt (2024), we:
• Discussed multiple style guides used for documentation, presented reference models to juxtapose style guidelines, and provided exercises so that students could practice integrating and documenting source material by applying style guide conventions.
• Covered signal phrases and reporting verbs used to introduce source information, asked students to analyze texts and discern why these particular tools are employed in certain situations, and offered chances for students to utilize signal phrases and reporting verbs in written assignments.
• Distinguished between what it means to demonstrate the values of academic integrity (ICAI, 2021, p. 4) versus contravene them through plagiarism, contract cheating, and unauthorized collaboration; invited students to research their institutions’ academic integrity policies and identify how actions described in a case study violate them; and prompted learners to conduct research into academic integrity topics and present their findings to the class.
• Asked students to read articles about generative artificial intelligence (AI), editing, and writing; confer with teammates to pinpoint salient points in the texts and communicate how the readings expanded their thoughts about editing practices; share their ideas with peers during whole-class plenary; and write emails to their instructors in which they explain what they learned from the readings, team exercise, and plenary session.
These are but some of the ways varied repetition can be realized in pedagogical materials.
In regard to the final point listed above, generative AI is a topic that has received considerable attention in journal and media publications, and we are aware that educators have very different opinions about AI’s harms and benefits, particularly with respect to how writing skills are built. Our own view is that the fervor to adopt generative AI as a writing tool (for brainstorming, summarizing, synthesizing, and so forth) without knowledge of its effects on adult literacy opens up numerous possibilities for critical thinking work and experiential learning in the forms of research projects, class discussions, team presentations, reading responses, and the like. Furthermore, by harnessing the momentum of the generative AI topic, educators might encourage students to grapple with the intricacies of its application in writing and other assignments through varied repetition. To demonstrate how the technique can be employed, Atkinson (2024, pp. 1394-1401) included a succession of activities that asked students to (1) read about notetaking techniques; (2) use various procedures to take notes and then determine which methods appeal to them or how they might customize ones for different situations; (3) consider how ideas mentioned in articles about generative AI, thinking, and writing connect to or diverge from one another via use of a notetaking graphic organizer (a synthesis matrix); (4) and then use their reading notes to devise discussion points and questions for a whole-class seminar on an associated AI article. Afterwards, the students are asked to write a letter to a peer in which they share their insights about the topics and activities built into the scaffolded task sequence. University students may struggle with identifying and using effective notetaking approaches (Atkinson & Risser, 2023), and this sequence of varied repetition tasks combines skill-building work in notetaking with opportunities for critical thinking and discussion around notetaking and generative AI, and it ultimately culminates in a writing assignment in which students must synthesize information and document sources.
Applying what is akin to multiple rounds of differentiated instruction when designing lessons and pedagogical materials means that instructors can explore academic integrity iteratively and provide activities that appeal to students with a variety of learning preferences and levels of knowledge. This flexibility speaks to the pragmatic value of varied repetition, and we hope the examples shared here encourage other educators to adopt the technique as a way to underscore academic integrity principles and practices.
References
Atkinson, D. (2024). Participating in seminars. In D. Atkinson & S. Corbitt, Advanced-level writing in the university classroom and beyond: Mindful practices for technical, business, and scientific communication (pp. 1377-1410). Montana Technological University. Retrieved August 4, 2024, from https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/advanced-level-writing-in-the-university-classroom-and-beyond-mindful-practices-for-technical-business-and-scientific-communication
Atkinson, D., & Corbitt, S. (2021). Mindful technical writing: An introduction to the fundamentals. Treasure State Academic Information and Library Services. Retrieved August 4, 2024, from https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/824
Atkinson, D., & Corbitt, S. (2022a). Intermediate college writing: Building and practicing mindful writing skills. Montana Technological University. Retrieved August 4, 2024, from https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/1193
Atkinson, D., & Corbitt, S. (2022b, July 12). Promoting the importance of academic integrity through thoughtful pedagogic materials design. International Center for Academic Integrity. https://academicintegrity.org/resources/blog/101-2022/july-2022/376-promoting-the-importance-of-academic-integrity-through-thoughtful-pedagogic-materials-design
Atkinson, D., & Corbitt, S. (2023). Exploring the principles applied during the production of an open writing textbook. RELC Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882231183462
Atkinson, D., & Corbitt, S. (2024). Advanced-level writing in the university classroom and beyond: Mindful practices for technical, business, and scientific communication. Montana Technological University. Retrieved August 4, 2024, from https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/advanced-level-writing-in-the-university-classroom-and-beyond-mindful-practices-for-technical-business-and-scientific-communication
Atkinson, D., & Risser, H.S. (2023). Exploring students’ responses to reading assignments in first-year university mathematics courses. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 53(1), 38-57. https://doi.org/10.1080/10790195.2022.2126415
International Center for Academic Integrity [ICAI]. (2021). The fundamental values of academic integrity (3rd ed.). https://academicintegrity.org/images/pdfs/20019_ICAI-Fundamental-Values_R12.pdf
McNeill, L. (2022). Changing “hearts” and minds: Pedagogical and institutional practices to foster academic integrity. In S. E. Eaton & J. C. Hughes (Eds.), Academic integrity in Canada: An enduring and essential challenge. Ethics and integrity in educational contexts (Vol. 1, pp. 487-503). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83255-1_25
Timmis, I. (2016). Humanising coursebook dialogues. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 10(2), 144–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2015.1090998
Timmis, I. (2022). Theory and practice in materials development. In J. Norton & H Buchanan (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of materials development for language teaching (pp. 30-46). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/b22783-4
The author's views are their own.
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