During this experiment, we will be testing if children, grades 6th and 8th will be more tempted to cheat on a test if there is some type of reward involved for doing well. During this experiment we will be using candy as a reward if the participate gets a 80% or higher average.
What exactly is ‘Cheating’? Well plagiarism, or cheating, is defined, by dictionary, “As an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not crediting”. This is becoming an epidemic in both colleges as well as high schools across the United States. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, 55% of college presidents stated there was a noticeable increase of students getting caught for plagiarism, while 89% of that group think technology is to blame. So what are your thoughts? New internet sites make it pretty easy to just ‘buy and essay’, although essay writers of these sites, guarantee these essays are not plagiarized, but yet a student is turning in a essay or report that is not there own work, therefore it is plagiarism. In a survey done by Donald McCabe, Rutgers University, 3% of college students have used one of these ‘Term paper mills’. (Plagerism.org)
This is not just an issue in colleges, high schools are facing this problem as well. In 2010, 59% of high school students admitted to cheating on a test in the past year, while 34% admitted to committing this crime more that twice. While 95% of students admitted to some form of cheating, whether it was cheating on a test, or just copying homework from another student. (Plagiarism.org, 2010)
The first issue of plagiarism was recorded in 1732, when Benjamin Frank...
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...ize they are doing any wrong, as it is a norm in most high schools. While some students may think its is like a competition to ‘outdo’ a classmate, and enjoy the thrill of it, and can't overcome the temptation. (Cheating Upwards, 2012)Others cheat just because they simply don't understand the material, and don't want to draw attention to themselves because they don't understand the material. Nowadays, students are involved in many different extracurricular activity, where its not uncommon for some to be three sport athletes, and this cuts into their ‘study time’ immensely.Its quicker, and easier to simply copy the homework from friends, instead of doing it yourself. Just like many other things, students are obligated to fall for peer pressure, and just like other things, plagiarism is not exempt from this. (Kids and Cheating - The Reasons Behind the Behavior, 2013).
Participants completed 20 trials of the coin-flipping task; the instructions led them to expect that there are 10 trials total, 20 trials total, or that the number of trials are randomly determined. The cheat-at-the-end effect predicts more cheating on Trial 10 because the contestants would think they have only 10 chances to flip the coin.
Almost every student has cheated at one point or another for some reason they use to justify it and they could be any one of these forms of cheaters. Although all these types of cheaters will attempt to rationalize their cheating with various excuses and reasons there is no real justification. They all know it is the wrong thing to do, but will cheat anyways as they can get away with it and it will create the illusion of greater intelligence for themselves and that is a problem for the youth of America. It will make students learn to cheat better instead of actually learning the material assigned to them, resulting in a less intelligent generation.
These student were placed into four groups. In each group, they were asked to fill out what their impressions and feelings were of the experimenter and to answer eight questions. The subject had a choice to answer the questions while being interviewed by the experimenter. Each group had the same task, however in group one, the subject was the control who had to answer the questions. In group two, the subject would answer the question and the experimenter would touch the subjects back. The third group had to answer the questions, but the experimenter would reveal information about himself and self-disclose before the subject would answer the questions. On the fourth group, the experimenter would self-disclose and proceed with the same procedures as group three, but for this group, the experimenter would touch the subject in the back. After the experiment, the subjects were asked to fill out their impressions and feelings. The independent variable for experiment two was the touching and the self-disclosure of the experimenter. The dependent variable was the time spent and duration of the subject’s self-disclosure.
The article Cybercheats clearly shows the cause/use of plagiarism. Students of all ethnic backgrounds use plagiarism. However it also shows how most schools are trying to crack down. Two employees from National Institutes of Health actually have a program that can decode essays that may have some sort of plagiarism. It is clearly obvious that the students who do indeed use this from of cheating have no real values. As Michael Miller, a teacher at Georgetown University, says, "It's really up to the individual reader to do with the information what they will, good or evil. I belong to a school that says teach people to do the right thing and then turn'em loose." It seems that if you are adult enough to actually attend collage then you are adult enough to handle the pressures and responsibilities that come along with it. For most cases the use of plagiarism is clearly used by students who don't know the value/capabilities of there own. They also aren't usually aware of the consequences.
What is cheating? Cheating is the dishonesty of an individual for their personal advantage. Base on various studies conducted cheating is getting worse among students. Students are cheating to get higher grades so that they look smart. Students are even cheating their way into colleges and universities. This is becoming a major problem and it does not only affect students but school administrators, employers and even generations to come. Don McCabe (2010) conducted a survey among 24,000 high school students at 70 high schools in the United States. 64% Of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58% admitted to plagiarism and 95% participated in some form of cheating. For college students, 70% of students, report to some form of cheating.
Plagiarism is a severe problem because it has since become an epidemic and is being practiced at an alarmingly increasing rate. It has become widely accepted among students at many colleges and universities across the United States. It has gotten to the point that many students don’t even consider it cheating. This fact alone makes it even more serious and harder to control. It is now common practice to obtain someone else’s writing and turn it in as an original work. It is not difficult to purchase a pre-written paper or hire another individual to write a paper. Students are willing to pay whatever the cost so that they don’t have to do the work themselves. In fact, paper-selling services such as this have become quite a lucrative business. With the age of technology quickly advancing it has become all the more easily to plagiarize.
How bad has cheating become over the years, the numbers in some cases are mind-boggling. In today’s day and age the amount of college students cheating is numbered to have maintain a steady figure of about 75 percent. (Lang, 2013) Cheating has been around since the beginning of time, some of the reasons behind most of the prolific cheaters are centered on what seems to be three main issues plaguing our society. Cheaters be it young or old, all seem to have what I call the “Big Three” in common. In my research on cheating, there were three things that continued to stick out, such as; procrastinating, the pressure to make the grade and it is easier to cheat rather then to do your own work. To the answer the question why college students cheat, we must first understand why, in order to find a solution on how to help avoid this continuing going forward. After reading this paper you will see that cheating has become prevalent in college, caused by a need to get better grades with less original work being done eventually the ends don't justify the means.
43% total graduate students, admited they have cheated on either written assignments or tests. 68% of undergraduate students admited that they have cheated on either written assignments or tests. “70,000 high school students at over 24 high schools in the United States demonstrated that 64 percent of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58 percent admitted to plagiarism and 95 percent said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism or copying homework (ICAI).”
Many students are using technology to cheat because they are able to find answers quickly online by just searching for them. Cheating is increasing in the United States at higher rates because many of the students in high school or in college have to deal with different responsibilities, pressure, and loads of different types of work. Richard Perez Peña states in “Studies Find More Students Cheating,” “Internet access has made cheating easier, enabling students to connect instantly with answers, friends to consult and works to plagiarize.” Plagiarism, which means using a work of someone else as if it were yours, is the most common form of cheating in high school and in college. Plagiarism occurs by not citing a source correctly or by not putting the proper quotation marks on a quote that you borrow to state your point. Some students don’t even know what plagiarism is, and they do it using the technology that we have today. Therefore, Julie Rasicot states, “High schools and teachers should make clear what constitutes plagiarism, how to avoid it and what the consequences will be if students are caught.” If students are not informed about plagiarism, then they tend to use technology as an easy way to do an assignment, which prevents them from learning. On the other hand, many professors have argued that the technology is developing
Children are taught to use computers at incredibly young ages, and according to Ann Lanthrop plagiarism has become a problem even in the lowest levels of elementary education. It has become so easy for students to access information for their homework and papers on the Internet that some students feel they should not have to work even a little to receive the grades that they desire. High school students get out of reading novels for their English classes by reading "book notes" online. While in the past students had access to these materials, websites such as Spark Notes, Monkey Notes, and a number of other websites have made access to these "study guides" free to students, causing the temptation to cheat to be even harder to ignore. The Web also offers many ways for students to obtain term papers or essays at a low cost. In many cases, these students do not even bother to change any piece of the paper! The simplicity of the Internet has made cheating on assignments much more effortless than in the past, even if students are not directly copying and pasting from Websites, they can also email homework problems and essay questions to every member of the class. Plagiarism is a severe issue that needs to be addressed by both teachers and parents with children while they are still young enough to fear the consequences of their actions.
The first cause as to why students cheat is because they are lazy. It happens all the time, where students go home from school, have a snack, watch television, take a nap, play some video games, and just keep saying that they will do their homework later. The next thing they know it eleven o’clock at night and time to go to bed, but no homework was accomplished. The student keeps pushing back the assignment until the last minute and the last minute is not enough time. This is also known as procrastination. The student does not want to fail, but they were too lazy to do their own work, so they ask to copy the work from a friend that did the work. I once said something to a guy about how this was cheating and he told me that he was, “using his resources wisely”. Another time I asked a student next to me to stop copying my answers in class and he told, “Then you shouldn’t let me see your answers”, he blamed his cheating on me. One time when I was in seventh grade in my ecology class we had to put together a presentation with a partner. My partner was a close friend at the time, and our topic was solar power. I ended up doing all of the research and put together the presentation a...
Cheating in the classroom has been happening since the first schoolhouse was built; however, it has more than doubled in the last decade due to the emergence of new technologies that give students high tech alternatives to looking at their classmate's paper. "A 2002 survey by the Josephson Institute of Ethics of 12,000 high-school students found that 74 % of students had cheated on an exam at least once in the previous year. According to Donald McCabe, who conducted the Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, study, the Internet is partly to blame. The Internet makes plagiarism very simple. In-class cheating has also gone high technology. Experts say students who cheat are not just scribbling tiny crib sheets anymore. They are using their cell phones to instant message questions and answers or storing notes on their graphing calculators." ("Eye on Cheaters," 2004)
There is no specific reason as to why every student cheats; every students situation is different, which leads to different motives. Some students cheat because of pressure their parents put on them along with their parent’s high expectations they are expected to fulfill. The student cheats as a result of their fear of not being able to fulfill their parent’s expectations and in their eyes see no other option, other than to cheat because of their low self confidence that they cannot do well on their own. According to Tom Keana of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, parents affect the children by constantly badgering and questioning about how well they are doing. Tom says:
The justifications behind cheating range from laziness to an unwillingness to put forth the effort to learn the expected material. Some students blame a lack of self-confidence in one’s ability to learn or lack of interest in the subject. Many modern students lack time to devote to academics, because of hectic schedules. Some students blame instructors for not providing clear expectations or practical applications of academic topics, encouraging a student to devote the necessary time to the material.
Plagiarism is a serious offense and a growing trend in our society today. Some may associate plagiarism with the idea of taking someone else’s writing and making it their own. In fact plagiarism involves anything that is copied or taken and said to be of your own work. Dictionary.com defines plagiarism as “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work, as by not crediting the author”. In fact this definition covers all types of cheating and misrepresentation of ones own work. There are many numbers and statistics that can be found on the amount of individuals that have admitted to cheating. Perhaps the most astounding number is one that was reported by Moeck in 2002 aloft of 40% of higher education students commit academic dishonesty. This number I’m sure has grown since this report and will continue to grow with the development of the Internet. There are a number of ideas and strategies that can be employed in order to stop this ever-growing phenomenon. As teachers and adults, we are responsible for stopping this trend and educating students about the consequences and dangers of plagiarism. I believe there are a variety of reasons individuals plagiarize. First, students are insecure with their own ability; they don’t believe they can do the work therefore they take others. Second, students believe they can get away with the act because they know others who have plagiarized, and there were not any consequences. Lastly, students are uneducated on what plagiarism is and do not know the consequences of their actions if they commit an act. These ideas will be the focus of the position taken on plagiarism in today’s academic society.