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This paper presents an empirical study of digital plagiarism. Under two experimental conditions, undergraduate writers were guided by different achievement goals to write an essay with or without the copy-and-paste function on a website. The study focused on two possible influences on digital plagiarism, a) instructional goals for writing, and b) the affordances of digital learning environments specifically the availability of a copy-paste function. A 2 × 2 factorial design was used to analyze the effects of these contextual variables on digital plagiarism. Results indicated that overall 79.5% of the writers engaged in digital plagiarism. There was a significant interaction in which instructional performance goals lead to more plagiarism when copy-paste is available. Findings highlight individual-environment interactions, including a writer's adopted goals for writing as set by writing prompt instructions (learning goals vs. performance goals) and the affordances of the writing environment including the ease of copy-paste or precautions taken to protect text (such as using jpegs of text). Rather than being principally directed by student's beliefs prior to, or when they begin a writing task, the on-the-fly interactions they have during the writing task may best explain their tendency toward plagiarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In large measure the authors agree with Tobias and Fletcher’s (2012) comments stating that clearer operational definitions of game features are needed to enable research on games and learning. The authors cannot accept that games are a subset of simulations, preferring to identify instances when games and simulations overlap and when they do not. The authors caution that research focused solely on cognitive processes risks missing fundamental environmental dynamics and their rich interactions with the intentional dynamics of situated cognition. The authors point out that their specific review of games and academic achievement is complemented by the broader survey of dependent variables reviewed by Tobias and Fletcher. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]