Study support provider (and CMM advertiser) Studiosity is piloting a service to help students in the 90 per cent of cases where they don’t mean to cheat

It’s called Citation Assist and it is designed to assist students who are yet to get the rules of original academic writing.

The way it works is designed to point out the pitfalls to people before they break the rules. Students at participating institutions submit a draft to Studiosity’s writing feedback service, where it is scanned, using the university/college’s preferred programme. A Studiosity staffer then goes back to the student with feedback on any originality issues.

Which are few – only 5 per cent of work assessed has “large sections” of text that matches an on-line source and 3 per cent do not identify direct quotes.

Small per centages but big problems avoided – if students take-on the advice that’s academic integrity charges that are never laid.

The biggest issues in the 492 000 referencing errors identified in the pilot to date are inconsistent in-text citations and referencing.

The exercise identifies science students as most in need of help in learning how to reference.

The pilot is underway at 21 Australian universities, plus another 70 or so institutions, including trainers, pathway providers and UK and NZ unis. It runs to year-end.