The availability of textual material in electronic format has made plagiarism easier than ever. Copying and pasting of paragraphs or even entire essays now can be performed with just a few mouse clicks. The strategies discussed here can be used to combat what some believe is an increasing amount of plagiarism on research papers and other student writing. By employing these strategies, you can help encourage students to value the assignment and to do their own work.
Strategies of Awareness
1. Understand why students cheat. By understanding some of the reasons students are tempted to cheat on papers, you can take steps to prevent cheating by attacking the causes. Some of the major reasons include these:
Many students simply do not know
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Some have a personal belief that "information wants to be free," and that copying from others is merely an acceptable practice of recycling, a sort of ecological practice. Then, too, some faculty actually encourage copying from sources with a few words of one's own because that is "patch writing," a normal way to write. So the plagiarizer you catch might not be the defiant, lazy cheater you assume, but a practical, "community of words" compiler of essays using fellow writers' verbal structures.
Students are natural economizers. Many students are interested in the shortest route possible through a course. That's why they ask questions such as, "Will this be on the test?" Copying a paper sometimes looks like a shortcut through an assignment, especially when the student feels overloaded with work already. To combat this cause, assign your paper to be due well before the end-of-term pressures. Remind students that the purpose of the course is not just to "get through" or to "crank out a bunch of assignments and get them out of the way," but to learn and develop skills. Writing a research paper helps to develop the skills of researching (hunting for something in the information universe), problem solving (the principal work of most people), critical thinking (a lifelong skill if ever there was one), writing (language is the most
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Fear of a bad grade and inability to perform cause some students to look for a superior product they can submit as their own. This is sometimes called "cheat to compete." Sadly, these students are among those least able to judge a good paper and are often likely to turn in a very poor copied one. Some help for these students may come from demonstrating how poor many of the online papers are and by emphasizing the value of the learning process (more on this below). Reassuring students of the help available to them (your personal attention, a writing center, teaching assistants, online writing lab sites, etc.) may give them the courage to
One reason is laziness; a student may decide to plagiarize an author’s work due to the fact that they are lazy and do not feel like using their brain to put it in their own words. Another reason a student may decide to plagiarize is because of time; a student make have a very right schedule due to work, other classes, etc. So in this case, they feel like they do not have enough time to put a lot of effort and thinking into a paper, so they choose to copy the author’s ideas. A final reason may include depression and stress; one student may have a difficult life due to excessive amounts of depression or family issues everyday outside of school. Therefore, the student feels the need to plagiarize because they feel that they are not well enough to put an author’s ideas in their own words; if it is family related then may feel like their family is not being supportive and feel that they may never make it through
Dudley offered about students unwilling to engage in the writing process. He states, “... it was students who intentionally copied ― knowing it was wrong ― who were “unwilling to engage the writing process.” I agree with this because more often than not, when students are not excited to write, they would plagiarize to get by. They would aim for the bare minimum to pass and never over because they are not interested in what they are being taught. In addition, they don’t understand the purpose of what they are doing and when that happens, they don’t put the effort into what they are doing. They just know that they have to do it for a grade, but a grade does not mean anything if it wasn’t done by the student. For example, in my middle school, where many students are concerned about just passing rather than actually doing the work to get there, they would plagiarize. These are the same students “unwilling to engage in the writing process.” Students would share their work through google docs to other students in the hope that they can get ideas. But rather than using one student’s work for ideas, the other student would copy and paste it to their own until the teacher catches them.
When times get rough and tough it seems like most students do turn to the internet for a little extra "help". In Cybercheats it clearly shows how students use certain websites to get free or even pay for important papers and essays. As technology gets more advanced it appears that some people actually get lazier. Plagiarism plays a very important and major part in this article. It is clear that if caught plagiarizing you can be suspended, expelled, and/or receive an F on your assignment. For most students though it is worth the risk. Plagiarism is an act of cheating. Plagiarism is cheating.
College students face a variety of pressures and have a variety of motives that lead to intentional Plagiarism and unknowing or unintentional acts of Plagiarism. Most students plagiarize because they are overwhelmed. Writing assignments require a lot of time and a long thought process which may be a reason students feel overwhelmed at times.
So, to help students across the country cheat better, saving themselves both from easy detection and from incurring the wrath of insulted faculty, and leading to a much more harmonious school environment, I offer the following tips, based on recent experience:
Academic knowledge is the basis on which future prosperity, and financial security has been determined. As a consequence, students feel inclined to perform above average in school. Now, as students perform less and less, they sink to obtain good grades by cheating. This method to acquire the desired grades will only harm the student, instead of the imagined result. Prompted by a child’s inability to perform basic tasks throughout his education , academic cheating spawns numerous negative consequences.
Plagiarism, or the unaccredited use of another's work or ideas, has become more and more of a problem in recent times than it was in the past. According to statistics found in a survey conducted by the Free Press, 58% of high school students let someone copy their work in 1969, but by 1989 this number had risen to 97%. The expansion of the World Wide Web and the number of people accessing the Web on a regular basis has caused an epidemic of plagiarism in this country, especially among students. This is a serious problem that must be addressed because many students feel that if they are not getting in trouble for cheating, than it is okay.
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 on academic work is a serious issue that most students admit to doing at some point in their academic career. Elite students are surprisingly the culprits of cheating, but hide it well. (Romm, para 5) Cheating is such a large issue that “70% of students from a sample of 1,800 from nine campuses said they had cheated at least once during their college careers.” (Schneider, para 9) Students cheat on academic work because of different, ongoing pressures in their lives. Understanding the student’s motives and pressures are essential to preventing cheating from occurring in the future. Students cheat for different reasons specific to them regarding their priorities, pressures and because of how easy it has become. Even though eliminating cheating will not happen, there are actions that educational professionals can and should take to prevent most of it from happening so often. Therefor cheating problems are minimized and have a positive impact on the student’s education and understanding of concepts.
"Fools make researches and wise men exploit them." Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines the word plagiarize as to pass off as one's own the ideas or words of another. Every student knows that plagiarism is dishonest and wrong. Why do so many students do it? Students themselves may not believe that they are plagiarizing. Many students plagiarize because of the diverse types of plagiarism which are often unknown to students. The three major types of plagiarism are shameless, haphazard and self-plagiarism. Self-plagiarism is a relatively new concept that has not gained much attention in the student world.
Modern students face many pressures for academic success. They are often unwilling to disappoint their parents or spouses. Some fear that not cheating will weaken a student’s ability to compete with their peers. They rationalize their unethical behavior, unwilling to accept a poor grade, consequently justifying cheating as the only means to that end.
This form of cheating occurs more often than it should because students may not feel confident in their own work; they are constantly being reminded by society that they must do their best and receive the highest academic achievements. So why has society shamed students for taking such actions when society is partly to blame for the situation. But society is not to blame alone; students themselves are also held at fault, because it is their self-doubt and lack of time management that result in them plagiarizing. If students had the experience of submitting actual personal work, they would understand that being praised by their peers is more appreciable and could add to their overall self-worth. Students would also be proud of the grade they receive because it is one they truly deserve for their hard work and not for the work what someone else has already done. Students do not see how easy they could commit plagiarism without knowing they are plagiarizing. It is as simple as using a quote and not giving credit to those who deserves it. Students also do not seem to know that there are different forms of plagiarism, that there is not just one, but five types of
Students that copy other student's work are hurting themselves in the long run. Their creativity level drops every time they copy or have someone else do their work. After a while of copying and forging, the student's ability to think creatively and successfully becomes next to nothing. "Educators must continue to socialize students of all ages about the importance of maintaining high ethical standards," (Glazer 222). The educational system is where students learn these tricks and proceed to carry them on into there professional careers. Corners are too easy to cut these days, and in order for people to keep their minds as functional as possible, they need to do their own work. It is too easy for students to buy a students paper that had the same class the quarter before, reword it a little, and turn it in as their own. Students are no longer able to write a fictional story by themselves because the computer or someone else can do it for them.
There are many reasons why students choose to plagiarize. These students in general are students that seem to procrastinate or do the easiest thing possible which is to just copy something from someone who has already done their research on the subject.
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.