Plagiarism as a Form of Academic Dishonesty - Literature review Example

Student’s Name] [Instructor’s Name] [Class] Plagiarism Plagiarism is one form of academic dishonesty; however it cannot be assumed that all plagiarism occurs merely because a student is aiming to cheat. Discuss. The statement is certainly true on both the premises of the argument of which the first is that plagiarism is only one form of academic dishonesty since there are several other manners in which an academician can be dishonest and behave in an unethical manner. However, the second part of the argument deserves a deeper examination since the primary focus of plagiarism as it is defined can certainly be taken to mean that the student is attempting to cheat. At the same time, honest mistakes are certainly possible therefore to say that all plagiarism is academic dishonesty could be a stretch. For example, there are students who may simply be unaware of what plagiarism is and how it can lead them to trouble with regard to their academic careers. In fact, some of the statistics given by Iyer and Eastman (2006) show that as many as 90% of students may engage in plagiarism or some other form of academic dishonesty making this practice a norm rather than an exception. Even as early as 1993, Maramark and Maline (1993) reported academic dishonesty and plagiarism to be a serious problem in which 60-70% of the students surveyed were involved in. When an activity such as this becomes so commonplace, students may see their classmates getting away with plagiarism, consider it to be an acceptable practice and simply carry on with their lives emulating others. In their minds, the process could be as natural as going to school itself or going to class on time. Iyer and Eastman (2006) further say that: “Thus, there is an increased need for business schools to address academic dishonesty because what students learn as acceptable behavior in the classroom impacts their expectations of what is acceptable professionally. Furthermore, the costs for not addressing this issue are enormous (Iyer and Eastman, 2006, Pg. 102)”. Under this situation, the student may simply be following the norms of what s/he sees at the campus and the intent of the student may not be to cheat at all. What the teachers may consider as cheating i.e. presenting someone else’s work as your own, the student may simply consider this to be the way things are done. More importantly, while Iyer and Eastman (2006) define plagiarism as “stealing, buying, copying, or using material from another source and passing it off as one's own work as well as paraphrasing material without appropriate documentation (Iyer and Eastman, 2006, Pg. 102)”, they also not that plagiarism may not be intentional as in the case where citations are used improperly. Despite the idea that a student simply made a mistake or forgot to include the source used for the creation of a document. There are cases when plagiarism has no other reason than cheating. This sort of plagiarism has several influencing factors such as membership in the Greek system and peer approval of academic dishonesty both of which are likely to increase the chances of a student trying to cheat the system. On the other hand, peer disapproval of such activities reduced the chances of engaging in academic dishonesty (Iyer and Eastman, 2006). Therefore, a student may only be trying to gain acceptability and peer approval for beating the system by committing plagiarism which s/he sees as the right thing to do within his/her social order. Peer pressure is noted by Bricault (2007) as well as Iyer and Eastman (2006) as being a significant that leads a student to cheat or to prevent him/her for cheating. Of course this does not come as an excuse for plagiarism neither does it allow the student a way out if s/he is caught engaged in such activities but it does give a psychological explanation of why a student would engage in plagiarism other than having the sole aim of cheating to get better grades. It also has to be understood that some students in American colleges comes from very diverse cultures many of which have absolutely no idea about copyrights, intellectual property and how the words of others have to be used by them. As noted by Born (2003, Pg. 224), “It would be naive to assume that every student knows what plagiarism is given the fact that they are from diverse cultures some of which do not recognize copying intellectual properties without the author's permission as wrong doing”. In such situations, the student may be completely surprised when s/he is called to the dean’s office on charges of academic dishonesty since the student may not even know what academic dishonesty means. In fact, the psychological reasons and the opportunities that students have with regard to plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty are so extensive that some researchers feel that the exact reason for why students engage in academic dishonesty should be ignored altogether. Discussing the issue of plagiarism, Born (2003) states that: “While there is no simple solution to this problem, an instructor should focus on "how to reduce and discourage cheating activities" rather than "why students cheat and how they did it." A proactive approach rather than a reactive approach needs to be used to reduce academic misconduct (Born, 2003, Pg. 223)”. In this instance, analysts such as Born (2003) and Embleton et. al. (2007) may chose to entirely ignore the reasons and social pressures behind plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty and instead focus solely on the idea of the student intending to cheat. Bricault (2007) shows that there could be a more balanced approach as the legal requirements of due process should be followed whenever there is an accusation of plagiarism and every attempt must be made to find out if the plagiarism was intentional or was it by mistake. However, as discussed by Guiliano (2000) and Renard (2000), the age of the internet has made cheating so easy that it is often assumed that the intent of the student was to engage in plagiarism as academic dishonesty. In essence, there are two approaches to plagiarism of which the first considers the student to be guilty of plagiarism regardless of how it was conducted and why it was conducted. On the other hand, there is an approach which seeks to find out why it happened and to also see if the student actually meant to cheat or if the plagiarism happened by mistake. From the view point of the academic system, the first approach is easier to follow since it only requires the teachers to engage in the process of detection and not correction. However, from the view point of the students and for the educational system as a whole, the second standpoint could be much better since in such situations the students would be educated about plagiarism and be given life lessons which could help them in becoming better professionals. In the 60s, Bowers (1964) wrote that some colleges were failing to control academic dishonesty and in the 90s, Aaron (1992) noted that the situation had not improved by much. It is easy to see that the solution has to come from educating the students as described by Landau et. al. (2002). This includes making them aware of what plagiarism is, how it can be avoided and what would happen if the students are found guilty of engaging in plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty. Such education would not only help the students in their college lives, but also in their professional lives where ethics are critically important. Works Cited Aaron, R. 1992, ‘Student academic dishonesty: Are collegiate institutions addressing the issue?’, NASPA Journal, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 107-113. Born, A. 2003, ‘How to reduce plagiarism’, Journal of Information Systems, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 223-224. Bowers, W. 1964, Student dishonesty and its control in college. Columbia University Press. Bricault, D. 2007, ‘Legal Bases for Dealing with Academic Dishonesty’, College and University, vol. 82, no. 4, pp. 15-17. Embleton, K. et. al. 2007, ‘The Plague of Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty’, Searcher, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 23-26. Guiliano, E. 2000, ‘Deterring plagiarism in the age of the internet’, Inquiry, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 22-31. Iyer, R. and Eastman, J. 2006, ‘Academic Dishonesty: Are Business Students Different From Other College Students?’, Journal of Education for Business, vol. 82, no. 2, pp. 101-110. Landau, J. et. al. 2002, ‘Methods for helping students avoid plagiarism’, Teaching of Psychology, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 112- 115. Maramark, S. and Maline, M. 1993, Academic Dishonesty among College Students, Office of Education Research and Improvement. Renard, L. 2000, Cut-and-paste 101: Plagiarism and the Net, Educational Leadership, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 38-42. Read More