Plagiarism, Cheating and the Internet
Cyber cheating is defined as “the use of technology tools in inappropriate ways for academic work.”(Conradson & Hernandez- Ramos, 2004, p1) Although technology has dramatically advanced our society in many positive ways, one negative aspect of technology is its effects on student cheating. Many believe that the internet is the “number one sociable force which leads students to plagiarize.” (Mayfield, 2001, p1) There is an increasing number of online cheating websites which students use. Along with these sites come programs which help teachers and professors detect student plagiarism. Besides the internet students have found ways to use watches, cell phones, calculators, and PDA’s to help them cheat on tests or other assignments. Of the students who do cheat the majority of them believe that what they are doing is not wrong and they feel that copying answers is not even considered cheating.
In many ways the internet is one of the easiest ways for children to cheat through school. With the click of a mouse students can access websites where they can easily purchase term papers and essays on hundreds of topics. “Search engines such as Google can find over a million resources for students trying to buy term papers, some of which sell for more than ten dollars a page.” (Toosi, 2004, p1) There are three main types of websites students use to cheat; lecture note sites, term paper and essay sites and editorial services sites. The first two types of websites offer some free services and others can charge anywhere from five to five hundred dollars. Websites such as Academictermpapers.com and Cheaters.com offer a variety of papers including book reports, file p...
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... Plagiarism in the Internet Era: a wake up call. Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited.
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I was really looking forward to reading this book because since high school, when reading novels were mandatory assignments, I hadn’t really sat down and read a book, let along an academic book. I was looking forward to learning and possibly using this book in a future interview. The book starts off by David Callahan addressing the national problem that we have with cheating. To discuss the cheating culture, the author brings in research findings from many disciplines such as: economics, political scienc...
Clayton, Mark. "A Whole Lot of Cheatin'Going On." The Presence of Others. 3rd ed. Ed. Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. 185 - 190.
New York Times journalist, Trip Gabriel, puts into perspective students ability to use their creativity throughout their academic career in “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age.” This article discusses issues of plagiarism in the digital age, especially through college students. There are different perspectives from various people either attending college or professors that argue why plagiarism occurs. Whether it’s because of laziness, unpreparedness going into college, originality, or authorship not taken into consideration. Overall, this article infers the different standpoints of plagiarism, demonstrating the ease the digital age gives students to plagiarize, and the importance
That stomach churning feeling of guilt for many seems to appear as a small price to pay when completing an act of academic dishonesty. Colleen Wenke wrote an essay on cheating eighteen years ago called “Too Much Pressure”. In the past fifty years, the number of students who admit to cheating has increased fifty to seventy percent(Gaffe). Many people wonder what leads the students to make this unjust decision. Today, the reason for a rise in cheaters is because of how easy it has become, leading many students to the false conclusion that they aren’t breaking any rules; It is simply viewed as a shortcut to success in the classroom and beyond.
Why do so many people use 123HelpMe.com simply to plagiarize other people's writing? Is it even possible that someone cannot write their own essay, or that someone cannot read a book of any length? If you plagiarize, aren't you sentencing yourself to failure? And if you cannot gather information, aren't you opening yourself to attacks from the System?
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:
Strom, P., & Strom, R. (2007). Cheating in middle school and high school. Educational …..Forum,71(2), 104-116. doi:10.1080/00131720708984924
Pressures from society to obtain a successful career require achieving an education in most cases. In today's economy having a thriving career could depend on our educational background as part of the ingredient to fuel our lifestyles. Students attending high school or college can relate to the pressures of sustaining adequate grades. Students who are overwhelmed with trying to maintain higher GPA standards push the academic barriers using technology to cheat. Our society is more advanced with technology such as computers, cell phones, text message systems, as well as various other electronic devices that could provide the avenue for a desperate student seeking a way to cheat in order to receive a higher GPA score. According to Ad Council (1999),"Grades, rather than education, have become the major focus of many students" (Ad Council, 1999). For those students in high school maintaining high GPA's could equal college scholarship programs needed to attend college. Students with peer pressures as well as pressures from parents to achieve higher grades could thrust students who are not motivated to study, to resort to cheating as an easy solution to an unethical problem. This research paper will discuss ways in which students are using technology to cheat. Other aspects of this paper will include statistics on academic cheating as well as ways instructors are catching students cheating. The pros and cons after using cheating detection programs as well as statistics that show significant changes after using the detection programs will also be discussed.
There is an ever broadening problem spreading throughout colleges all across America: cheating. Is it a serious offence or just a harmless crime? Cheating is on the rise, but schools and colleges are not far behind with ways of dealing with it. Mark Clayton deals with this issue in his essay entitled “A Whole Lot of Cheatin’ Going On.”
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.
Cheating is a big issue that has reached the most competitive campuses around the United States. It is increasing more and more with the new technology that we have in the 21st century because students have easy access to many sources of information. Cheating is something all students have done at some point in their lives, but as they reach a higher academic level, they are faced with more rigorous consequences that can affect their futures in many different ways. Cheating might be seen as an easy way to obtain a good grade, get into a good college, or maintain scholarships or financial aid, but the consequences could affect the life and the future of the student.
Academic dishonesty has been a big issue that many faculties have to deal with all the time in classrooms in today’s academic environment. In a report founded by Thomas & O’Reilly (2002), “74 percent of American students admit to cheating on an exam. So imagine how many really are. Forty percent of adolescents say they have stolen from a store and a whopping 93 percent say they lie.” With such a huge percentage of students cheating with the use of technology, it has become an epidemic that is spreading like wild fire. Since technology was introduced in the class environment, it has become the number one concern to some instructors because many students are not using it too learn, but instead students are using technology to cheat in assignments and other work that may involve school work.
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.
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.
Academic dishonesty, specifically cheating and plagiarism, recently has increased in popularity. Students often justify unethical academic behavior. Technological innovations, like the cellular telephone, have provided students with new methods of cheating. Plagiarism has also been influenced through technologies, specifically internet companies have emerged that provide unethical solutions to academic assignments.