Learning How to Avoid Plagiarism: A New Approach in Information Literacy Sessions for Computer Science and Engineering Students

Plagiarism is one of the main issues information literacy had to address in higher education in the last two decades. In addition to deterrent practices, there is a need to develop instructional concepts that address the problem of poor skills in the correct use of sources that often lead to unintentional plagiarism. In this paper we describe a new approach we implemented in information literacy sessions for computer science and engineering students in order to provide them with a better understanding of the different functions sources can have in scholarly literature. As a novelty in the courses for technical studies we adapted Joseph Bizup's rhetorical framework for research-based writing in the humanities to a German-speaking setting. According to a literature review and our experience we argue that a broader understanding of the sources as rhetorical components of scientific argumentation strongly improves technical degrees students' ability to avoid unintentional plagiarism.