Research Information System
7th European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL), ELECTR NETWORK, 20 - 23 September 2021, pp.543-557, (Full Text)
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.