Abstract:

Achieving a university qualification entails mastering academic writing skills, including the development of Bachelor's and Master's Theses. This process requires specific competencies, such as proper referencing and citation practices, such as APA style, integrating literature-based arguments, avoiding plagiarism, and interpreting research findings. A key difficulty faced by students during this process is the correct application of the APA citation format, which often leads to delays and increased academic stress. This paper presents a novel, group-oriented educational strategy implemented via Instagram to support students in improving their use of APA style and preventing plagiarism. To this end, the Instagram profile @apa_rte was created, and currently amasses almost 1000 followers, predominantly from Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.

A quasi-experimental approach was adopted to evaluate the intervention's effectiveness, using pre- and post-test designs. The experimental group consisted of 200 students who engaged with the Instagram-based initiative, while the control group included 260 students who did not participate. All students were enrolled in undergraduate or master's programs requiring the use of APA style, with 55.1% studying Psychology and 41.7% Education, across three Spanish universities. Prior to the intervention, participants completed surveys assessing their APA knowledge, self-efficacy in academic writing, anxiety regarding academic tasks, and attitudes toward using Instagram for learning. The intervention lasted 20 weeks. During this period, students accessed APA-related content and participated in interactive activities via Instagram. Upon completion, both groups repeated the same assessments, and students in the experimental group also reported their reasons for engaging in the activity.

Findings demonstrated that the Instagram-based strategy significantly enhanced students’ knowledge of APA guidelines (p < .001) and improved their confidence in applying APA in academic texts (p < .001), while also reducing extrinsic motivation to participate (p = .002). However, anxiety levels and perceptions of Instagram’s educational value remained stable throughout the intervention. In contrast, the control group did not show significant gains in APA knowledge, while experiencing increases in anxiety (p < .001) and self-efficacy (p = .002) as the weeks went by. Overall, the results highlight the attractiveness of Instagram as an educational tool, evidenced by its wide reach, and support the effectiveness of this social media-based intervention in fostering essential academic writing competencies among university students.

Acknowledgement:
This research received support from the Universidad de Zaragoza PIIDUZ_3 de referencia.

Keywords:

Academic referring, citation practices, university-level education, social media platform.