شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

With the emergence of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 and the subsequent lockdown and forced quarantine almost everywhere on the planet, screen time has turned into a lifeline and a connection to the outer world. As a result, dependency on and addiction to the internet has noticeably risen, especially for students at the university level who have their faces glued to their mobile screens several hours a day. Infinite temptations and overwhelming information, readily available at the click of a button (Mukherjee, 2018), distract them from achieving their pedagogical goals, one of which is properly citing their sources in their research papers. Plagiarism has become a major issue that most universities struggle with; it is considered research misconduct that has serious academic consequences (Anderson & Steneck, 2011). Students display a tendency to freely employ words or ideas from a source and fail to acknowledge it, simply out of laziness or ignorance. Therefore, it has become inevitable that higher education institutions integrate innovative online citation tools that students can benefit from. Based on that, teaching students how to cite by providing training and extra practice when needed on many readily available citation tools is integral to the learning process, especially in English writing courses. Ultimately, these tools not only aid students in writing but in their research and general education as well. This paper shall highlight the main citation tools used in Lebanese universities, in addition to some others that are recommended for first-time EFL/ESL writing students, and compare citation methods between two such universities. (Published abstract)