Enhancing Educational Outreach: development of an online plagiarism tutorial

In August 2012 I was appointed lead on our Plagiarism, Referencing and Citation education programme in University College Dublin Library. By May 2013, as part of UCD Library's strategic plan, an e-Learning development group was established. This presented an exciting opportunity for me to develop a pedagogically sound plagiarism tutorial using innovative technology. The technology available to the group was Articulate Storyline and Captivate. I choose Articulate Storyline. After some basic training, this proved easy to use for a novice user. I was able to produce an interactive e-Learning object with graphical, text, and audio content. There was a relatively gentle learning curve involved. The final product Plagiarism – Avoid it at all costs! is available from our website via desktop and mobile devices. It can be embedded in our VLE, Blackboard. A key aim was to re-use any suitable Open Education Resources and then share the end result. The How to Avoid Plagiarism tutorial produced by IT Tallaght proved the perfect template for adaption. I re-modelled their tutorial by changing content, branding, assessment and adding interactivity. To improve accessibility I recorded audio narration. Once launched to our academic community, I requested to provide the tutorial in the Irish Language. The technology easily enabled this. Bord na Gaeilge, UCD collaborated to produce Bradaíl Seachain í thar aon rud eile. Rather than being either disruptive or reductive, the technology has broadened the educational reach of the UCD Library on Plagiarism. We can access more students via our current IT structures than would have been possible with our current compliment of staff. The tutorial can be incorporated into any institution's distance learning courses or MOOCs because a Creative Commons license has been applied. The tutorial, along with others, has been made available on the open access platform JORUM.