Investigative Report Writing Support System for Effective Knowledge Construction from the Web

Abstract

Investigative reports plagiarized from the web should be eliminated because such reports result in ineffective knowledge construction. In this study, we developed an investigative report writing support system for effective knowledge construction from the web. The proposed system attempts to prevent plagiarism by restricting copying and pasting information from web pages. With this system, students can verify information through web browsing, externalize their constructed knowledge as notes for report materials, write reports using these notes, and remove inadequacies in the report by reflection. A comparative experiment showed that the proposed system can potentially prevent web page plagiarism and make knowledge construction from the web more effective compared to a conventional report writing environment.