Design and usability testing of a learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system for paraphrasing and citing in English: A case study

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the design and efficacy of DWright regarding plagiarism prevention and improvement of English writing. A questionnaire and semi-structured interview were administrated to participants to test DWright and its technology acceptance model (TAM) to identify the effect of perceived usefulness, usability and user attitudes of DWright. Results show that users of DWright were in high agreement regarding the content effectiveness of all DWright-based tasks, indicating the reading activities, multiple-choice exercises and paraphrasing practices were effective to help users enhance writing knowledge and skills to avoid plagiarism. Furthermore, perceived usefulness and system usability affected DWright user attitudes significantly and positively, which mirrors their attitudes toward continued use of DWright. In this study, DWright met its users' needs by extending their knowledge to avoid plagiarism while simultaneously enhancing their paraphrasing and writing skills. The conclusion suggests that tutorial designers, content experts and subject teachers should support effective communication to improve content usefulness, so as to help users achieve their writing goals with a research proven learning and plagiarism avoidance tutorial system.