Safeguarding academic integrity in crisis induced environment: A case study of emirati engineering and it students in a private university in the uae

This paper discusses the challenges faced by Emirati students enrolled in a private university in the United Arab Emirates. In particular, the study focuses on the development of their academic writing skills. It uses data collected from composition papers written in a semester through the online platform. The data was collected from undergraduate engineering and information technology students and it reports findings of a study examining the effectiveness of promoting Arabic speakers’ development of critical and analytical thinking skills using a content with a content-based approach. The data is discussed in relation to development of academic language in an English course through application of skills in an essay format. This study attempts to highlight the value of content-based approach through instructional practices and designing of online authentic assessment tasks. Two groups of engineering and computer science students participated in three different written assessments in the study. Six essay topics were designed considering students linguistic and societal factors. Data were collected via online assessments. The findings revealed significant improvements in the students’ academic writing scores and considerable reduction in plagiarism cases was also found. The quantitative and qualitative examination show positive impact of active participation in the online learning platform. Based on these findings, instructional suggestions and caveats are provided