How to Avoid Plagiarism - Essay Example

Academic Integrity Introduction I had my first encounter with academic integrity when I was in my first year at high school. Today, I am happy to state that the experience, which I can term as a tough one for me, helped me to be a better student. I do not blame myself for having experienced the bad side of academic integrity because I did it out of not knowing. We had been introduced to academic integrity by our instructors, but it seems I had not gripped the concepts correctly. I remember my instructor saying that academic integrity is following several acceptable ethical policies and moral codes in the field of academics. Following these codes means no cheating, such as copying other people’s work, adhering to academic standards, and for the case that I was a victim of; avoiding plagiarism. This is what I will be discussing in this study. In high school, our assignments and studies improved as compared to elementary school because we used the internet more for our studies plus we did research for our assignments. One time when we had a history assignment, my instructor told us that we could use the internet to research on the questions before we were introduced to the topic. I was excited to be able to use the internet in my studies, and so I began my assignment immediately. I was further excited because when I copied the questions into Google and searched; I found the exact questions together with their answers on a single page! To me, this meant I would always be good in my assignments. So I copied the answers and pasted them into my answer sheet. In a rather short time than I had expected, my assignment was complete and I was ready to present answers which I knew were all correct. A week later, our marked assignments were returned and to my biggest disappointment, I had no points at all. In short, my work had been rejected and I had a zero. I did not understand the reason why, but as I sat there engrossed in deep thoughts, I heard the instructor say that most of us had their assignments cancelled. I was comforted to some extent because I realized this was not my problem alone. The instructor dedicated that lesson to teach us on academic integrity and that is when I learnt about plagiarism. Generally, plagiarism is the unauthorized use of another person’s work without giving credit to them (Colin, 2010). I immediately realized that in copying and pasting answers from the internet directly into my assignment without citing the owner could put me in trouble. Again, it was an unacceptable code of conduct in terms of academic integrity policies. In as much as our instructor said that he understood our violation of academic integrity policy since we were new to using the internet as a research tool, I could not help feeling guilty and to some extent ignorant. Our instructor perceived of it as understandable negligence, but made it clear that from that day henceforth, any form of violation on the same would be termed as dishonesty and strict punishments would be inflicted. Personally, I felt guilty and ignorant because I had always stuck to the fact that we should always put efforts in our studies, and that copying work from our friends is naïve and unacceptable. How then could I not realize that I was doing the same as I copied work directly from the internet? The work on the internet is created by people just like my friends, and I should compile my own work if I have to stick to the rules of academic integrity. I promised myself to never repeat it. The following library session saw me read widely on academic integrity and particularly plagiarism. I had to make sure I knew the rules of plagiarism since we would be using the internet a lot. I learnt that people who repeatedly plagiarize assignments, or any other work are termed lazy and in most cases, especially at the college level, they are awarded “fail” grades or are suspended from learning. I found myself lucky to have learnt this early in advance. I was also happy to have realized how my professor learnt that we had plagiarized our work. According to a website I visited, there are programs that are used by instructors and professors to screen students’ work and find out whether their work is original or copied from the internet. In addition, the programs tell them the specific website where you copied the work from! Plagiarism is restricted because as our instructor says, it may have very negative effects on our education and future. First, copying and pasting means that one is lazy and cannot conduct good research for their work. Again, it means that when there are no direct answers on the internet or in books, then one cannot do anything and that means being poor in education. At higher levels, one may be rewarded poorly or discontinued from college if they continually plagiarize their work. This would mean poor education or dropping out of school. In the long run, a person who cannot conduct correct research ends up not being independent, they cannot use sources correctly and worse still; they may end up in court. Authors of books and websites may sue people who use their works without permission or without crediting them. Avoiding plagiarism, which is a form of violating academic integrity policies is very simple. One way of avoiding it is by conducting pure research without consulting any existing sources such as books or websites. However, since this will not always be possible, several ways of avoiding it exist. One way is to properly cite any work that one uses which belongs to another author. Second, one may be required to quote any work which they derive from another person’s work. Quoting may be limited by the number of words that can be directly copied. At the end of the quote, the owner is credited. The final and most used way of avoiding plagiarism is by referencing. In referencing, a separate page is included after any work at the end. In it, the works of others used are placed here. This includes the author(s) name, title of their works, date of publication, the date they were used, the page numbers and sources they were derived from (Colin, 2010). In this way, one not only finds it possible to find and use information from other authors in an acceptable manner, but they also adhere to the set policies of academic integrity. Conclusion From that experience, I learnt to be an independent thinker capable of delivering high quality work without worrying about cancellation or any form of punishment. I therefore became careful and very confident. However, I still see some friends of mine who are always being punished for plagiarizing their work yet we were in the same class on that day. I find this type of conduct shameful and risky too. They may end up not being able to deliver what is required of them with regards to academic integrity, and worse still, they may end up in trouble with authors. They should realize that this type of honesty applies in school environments and beyond and should therefore consider learning to be within the regulations. In my case, I feel contented with my research skills and confident too in that I no longer have cancelled assignments. In fact, I now enjoy reading other people’s work because I know what is required of me. More importantly, I would like people to quote me correctly when I start publishing my own works in future. I think it feels good. References Colin, N. (2010). The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism.UK: McGraw-Hill Education. Read More