Plagiarism is unethical for three reasons: Firstly, it is unethical because it is a form of theft. By taking the ideas and words of others and pretending they are your own, you are stealing someone else’s intellectual property. Secondly, it is unethical because the Aug 08, · Why Plagiarism and Cheating are Wrong. Penn State is an institution of both learning and research. When you cheat and commit plagiarism, you hurt yourself and the community in the following ways (see reference 1). You deny yourself the opportunity to learn and practice skills that may be needed in your future blogger.com also deny yourself the opportunity to receive honest feedback Understanding why students commit acts of cheating or plagiarism contributes to efforts for deterring these incidences. Students may intentionally or unintentionally cheat or plagiarize. While many dismiss the act of academic dishonesty with a simplistic: “Students cheat because they are lazy” or “Cheating is easier than working hard to
Reasons Students Plagiarize or Cheat | Academic Integrity | RIT
International Journal for Educational Integrity volume 14Article number: 7 Cite this article. Metrics details. The study adopted a mixed methods approach.
The quantitative data were collected by distributing questionnaires to postgraduate students and academic staff whereas qualitative data were collected by conducting follow-up interviews with some academics, an assistant registrar and assistant librarian.
The study found that despite students reporting that they had a conceptual understanding of plagiarism, the majority of them reported that they had intentionally and unintentionally committed plagiarism, mainly due to pressure for good grades The study also established that prevalent forms of plagiarism admitted by students and reported by academic why do students commit plagiarism to have been committed included lack of proper acknowledgement after paraphrasing The study further found that the common sanctions applied by academics include giving a warning and asking the student to re-write the plagiarised work.
The study recommends that Mzuzu University should carry out awareness campaigns about the negative effects of plagiarism, targeting postgraduate students; and should introduce advanced academic writing skills training for postgraduate students.
One of the long-standing challenges faced by higher learning institutions is the issue of plagiarism among students. Its origins are said to be traced to as far as writing has existed Park Despite the lack of a universally accepted definition of the word plagiarism, most of the definitions agree that plagiarism is premissed on the wrong use of the words and ideas of others.
This paper adopted a definition by Ellis et al. Plagiarism can be categorised as intentional or unintentional. Intentional plagiarism entails committing plagiarism with full knowledge of what constitutes plagiarism and how it can be prevented whereas unintentional plagiarism is committed inadvertently due to lack of knowledge and skills to avoid it Mahmood et al.
The forms mentioned may either be intentionally or unintentionally committed. For quite a long time, several studies have reported the existence of plagiarism in institutions of higher learning in Anglo-phone countries such as UK, USA and Australia, and there is a growing number of the same from Non-Native English speaking countries such as South American and Asian countries. In Africa, why do students commit plagiarism, there are also a number of studies that have reported on the existence of plagiarism in institutions of higher learning.
For instance, in South Africa De Jager and Brown ; Elleryin Nigeria Nordling why do students commit plagiarism Agu and Olibieand in Botswana Batane From the reasons mentioned, it is clear that some students commit plagiarism intentionally while others do so intentionally. Therefore, caution needs to be exercised when devising strategies to curb plagiarism among students in higher education.
Some strategies that institutions of higher learning employ in dealing with plagiarism include: raising awareness about the dangers of plagiarism, taking disciplinary actions against plagiarists, why do students commit plagiarism, and conducting or teaching students about integrity and what constitutes ethical academic writing Ellis et al. Mzuzu University MZUNI strongly discourages any form of plagiarism as stipulated in the MZUNI Students Handbook where it warns that students committing such malpractice will face disciplinary action Mzuzu University According to Section 2.
Further, the MZUNI Students Handbook stipulates a step-by-step procedure for handling plagiarism cases. The research problem in this study stems from four key factors. Third, literature shows that students cannot be completely blamed for committing plagiarism because some may commit this academic offence unintentionally Batane ; Mahmood et al.
Finally, our thorough search in major library databases reveals that no research has been why do students commit plagiarism in relation to plagiarism in higher education in Malawi. In light of the research gap identified, we formulated four research questions to help answer the research problem as follows:. What are the common forms of plagiarism reported to be committed by postgraduate students at MZUNI?
In order to understand plagiarism, there is a need to understand some rules and standards of academic writing because the literature shows that students commit plagiarism because of their failure to adhere to rules and standards of why do students commit plagiarism writing. Summarizing entails shortening the length of text while retaining the main and important points Bailey Whenever an author is paraphrasing, quoting or summarising, the source needs to be acknowledged and failure to properly cite or acknowledge the original source is considered plagiarism.
A study by Scouller et al. The study revealed that although the majority of students rated themselves to be good at referencing and citation, an analysis of their written papers showed failure to cite in-text and write a reference list properly. The study concluded that students overestimated their level of ethical and legal academic writing abilities. The danger with students overrating their academic writing is that they may not appreciate deficiencies in their academic writing abilities, and consequently, why do students commit plagiarism, they may continue to commit plagiarism unintentionally.
Poor understanding of plagiarism on the part of students put them at a higher risk of plagiarising Leask ; Mahmood et al. Similar findings are reported by other studies which also established poor understanding of plagiarism among students.
For instance, a study by Ramzan et al. These results suggest that students plagiarised unintentionally due to a lack of knowledge of what constitutes plagiarism. In view of the several research findings mentioned earlier, it is plausible to accept that plagiarism does exist in higher education but what differs is the level and depth of prevalence. Ellery and De Jager and Brown have reported a low prevalence of plagiarism in South African universities.
However, why do students commit plagiarism, De Jager and Brown argue that the low prevalence of plagiarism in South Africa was attributed to under-reporting of plagiarism cases to authorities as established by their study, implying that measuring plagiarism in terms of numbers may sometimes give a false picture.
Park observed that determining a true picture of the rate of plagiarism poses two challenges: cases of plagiarism are rarely detected and reported; and methods for studying plagiarism might be faulty. Several other authors have measured plagiarism using different methods to determine rates of plagiarism such as subjecting written work to text-matching software Why do students commit plagiarism and Rísquez ; Sheridan et al. The present study used a similar approach to that of McCabe who collected data from both postgraduate students and academics, but the present study went further and collected additional data by conducting follow-up interviews with academics.
In Iran, Zafarghandi et al. Zafarghandi et al. Similar forms of plagiarism have also been reported in other studies De Jager and Brown ; Leask ; Agu and Olibie ; Ryan et al. The study by Zafaghandi et al. Some studies have dwelled why do students commit plagiarism investigating the reasons students commit plagiarism.
For instance, a study by Zafaghandi et al. Some of the ways suggested by Devlin to curb plagiarism include: the need by universities to set clear definitions of what constitutes plagiarism and the corresponding penalties applied to each plagiarism offence, and putting in place a formal policy on how plagiarism should be handled by all university stakeholders including lecturers, students and administrators.
Nonetheless, having the policy and publicising plagiarism through university websites and the students' handbook is not a guarantee that students understand and avoid committing it Ryan et al. There is also a need to have dedicated classes aimed at teaching students rules and standards of academic writing. A consensus has been reached in the literature that educating students on good academic writing skills and raising awareness on the negative effects of plagiarism are the best strategies to deal with plagiarism Leask ; Macdonald and Carroll ; Pecorari ; Walker Some studies have shown that students continue to commit plagiarism after undergoing such training or classes.
For instance, Batane found that students continued to plagiarise even after being taught about plagiarism and good academic writing. According to Batanestudents admitted to have intentionally plagiarised.
Macdonald and Carroll suggest the need for a university to consistently define what constitutes plagiarism and to articulate how each form is handled in terms of the depth and the corresponding sanction. Use of text-matching software such as Turnitin is also proving to be helpful in detecting academic work suspected to have been plagiarised.
The social cognitive learning theory developed by Albert Bandura in underpins this study. The theory explains how behaviour is learned, unlearned and regulated through the interaction of cognitive and environmental or social factors. In the cognitive learning theory, cognitive factors are reciprocal causation, modelling, self-efficacy and self-regulation Ormrod Reciprocal causation explains how three variables interact with each other to influence human learning and long-term development Ormrod Environmental or social factors of the cognitive learning theory include reinforcement and punishment Ormrod Self-regulation explains how learners develop a sense of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour through direct and vicarious reinforcement and punishments, why do students commit plagiarism.
Punishment is used to weaken undesirable behaviour Bandurawhich may also be viewed as the opposite of reinforcement. The summary of reciprocal influences, emphasized by Bandura in his theory, which include the personal factors, environmental factors and behavioral factors, is shown in Fig.
Source: Adapted from King : Bandura views these three factors influencing and affecting each other as shown in the figure by the bi-directional arrows. Data why do students commit plagiarism this research were collected from postgraduate students and academics at MZUNI, why do students commit plagiarism. Purposive sampling technique was used which allowed the researchers to collect data from key informants.
A mixed methods approach was adopted in this study. A questionnaire with predominantly closed ended questions was used to collect quantitative data. In total, we self-administered a questionnaire to 87 postgraduate students and 30 academic staff. Qualitative data were collected by conducting follow-up interviews with why do students commit plagiarism academic staff, the assistant registrar and an assistant librarian.
The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SPSS was used to analyse quantitative data from both students and academics. Some frequencies and percentages generated using SPSS were exported to MS Excel to produce charts and MS Word to produce tables. Interviews were recorded using recording applications on HTC One M7 and Iphone 5 smartphones.
The recorded interviews were then transcribed using the Trancribe© software into MS word. Qualitative data were analysed thematically. The strength of this study is the use of a mixed methods approach which allowed the researchers to triangulate the results. In this context, data collected using questionnaires from students and academic staff were used to confirm each other, why do students commit plagiarism, and we drew the conclusions of the study based on the findings that were supported most by data sources.
To ensure that the questionnaire was free from errors, its content was subjected to pretesting in two ways. First, we asked experts in research in higher education to comment on the questionnaire focusing on clarity, question wording, validity and order of the questions. Second, we piloted the questionnaire with 10 postgraduate students and 2 lecturers at Kamuzu College of Nursing which is a constituent college of the University of Malawi.
Postgraduate students and lecturers at Kamuzu College of Nursing were used in the pilot study because they were similar to the target population of our study. Feedback from education experts and the pilot study was used to make corrections on the questionnaire. Ethical issues were addressed in two ways in this study.
First, we sought and were granted permission by the Director of Research at MZUNI to conduct the study why do students commit plagiarism MZUNI. We sought permission to conduct this study in Malawi from the National Commission for Science and Technology through its National Committee on Research in Social Sciences and Humanities NCRSH.
Second, before taking part in the study, participants were informed through a consent letter that they were taking part in the study voluntarily. The consent letter further informed participants that even if they had accepted to participate in the study, they were at liberty to withdraw at any stage of the study without giving reasons, why do students commit plagiarism.
The participants signed the consent letter to show that they had read the content and that they were taking part in the study voluntarily. In this section we present, analyse and discuss the findings of the study in line with the research questions guiding the study as follows:.
We sent a questionnaire to 87 postgraduate students at MZUNI, of which 53 Out of 53 students, 52 Follow up interviews were conducted with two academics, an assistant registrar responsible for academics and assistant librarian responsible for readers services.
Four Reasons of Plagiarism - Students - Find out Why - Plagiarism Checker X
, time: 3:45Plagiarism and Cheating
According to the literature, students commit plagiarism because of various reasons including pressure to meet deadlines; lack of knowledge among students of what constitutes plagiarism; lack of good academic writing skills; convenience (Internet makes “copy and paste” easy); the high cost of studying; pressure from family; too much academic work; pressure to score high grades; Estimated Reading Time: 16 mins Score marks for originality with an assignment and thesis plagiarism checker for students ����. Confirm originality with accurate, shareable results! Understanding why students commit acts of cheating or plagiarism contributes to efforts for deterring these incidences. Students may intentionally or unintentionally cheat or plagiarize. While many dismiss the act of academic dishonesty with a simplistic: “Students cheat because they are lazy” or “Cheating is easier than working hard to
No comments:
Post a Comment