Plagiarism is academic dishonesty - Essay Example

5 May, Plagiarism is Academic Dishonesty Introduction Plagiarism is one of the academic dishonesties found in many institutions of learning. It is an offence that is committed both intentionally and unintentionally by the students and other academicians. The reasons for committing plagiarism vary among students and they include reasons such as an easy way to finish work given by the academic instructor. Plagiarism is indeed, the biggest concern in the writing world in the contemporary age. With the immense and speedy growth of literature since the past few years, academic scholars and educationalists have become too possessive about the credibility of information as well as the ownership of literature.

Writing is the fundamental source of knowledge which is vital for progress and development in all areas. Therefore, writing has to be original and the ownership must be declared. Avoiding plagiarism is also necessary in order to improve the validity of information. When an individual owns a piece of writing, he/she essentially becomes responsible for the credibility of information given therein. This paper tends to explore what plagiarism and academic dishonesty are and the factors that influence academic dishonesty.

Literature Review Plagiarism Plagiarism can be defined as the act of taking and using an individual’s thoughts, inventions, or writings and presenting them as your own in your paper. It is an honesty concern and it entails attempting to persuade someone like a college professor that the piece of writing or the idea is your original work, when you are aware that someone else exactly used the thought you did (Cruey 1). In other words, plagiarism is a literary theft. It is the stealth of ideas as well as words.

Plagiarized work creates confusions about the original ownership of the data. Lack of information of the data’s ownership may create many problems, and may even render the information unusable. “When students demonstrate their knowledge on a subject, often in the form of written papers, they are expected to show, by giving credit, how these experts have informed their understanding and interpretation” (Thompson and Olivas). When they do not do this, they essentially plagiarize. Some students don’t mean to plagiarize, yet they end up doing it.

It may so happen when a student forgets to cite a source in the bibliography despite having used the in-text citation properly. No matter what the case, when rules are not followed, plagiarism may show up in the paper. Categories of Plagiarism The act of plagiarism can be categorized into four types. The first category is work that has been unacknowledged and/or unauthorized. Such a work has no authorship. The second category is the attempt to own work, any part of work or a whole work that belongs to another group, person, or institution (Jones 7).

In this category, work is plagiarized in parts. The third category is the utilization of improperly paraphrased text regardless of the amount of text used (Jones 10). Improperly phrased text leaves traces of the original writing, which are fairly detectable by the plagiarism detecting softwares. The fourth and the last category is the utilization of text that has been properly paraphrased and it has not been cited or it is improperly cited; it is considered plagiarism regardless of the amount of text used (Jones 14).

This type of plagiarism is too hard to detect. The individual who plagiarizes plays with words and their synonyms. He/she shifts the sequence of words in the original text in such a way that plagiarism becomes very hard to detect. Academic Dishonesty Academic dishonesty involves fraud, plagiarism, and cheating, the stealing of ideas and other types of intellectual property whether they have been published or not (Jones 4). It can also be defined as the types of plagiarism and cheating that entails the students getting credit for work that does not belong to them, or receiving or giving unauthorized help in an academic exercise (Ercegovac and Richardson 304).

Factors Influencing Academic Dishonesty When academic dishonesty is mentioned, the main focus is put on the instances of intentional dishonesty. The student understands the behavior is forbidden but goes on and does it. However, this is far from the case for all learners. Some may unintentionally get involved in what the academic members regard to be academic dishonesty. This is due to two reasons: (a) they are unaware that the behavior is forbidden as it is found in most cases of plagiarism; (b) they understand that the behavior is forbidden but they do not have the necessary skills or capacity to avoid it (Keith-Spiegel and Whitley 26).

Most people resort to plagiarism when they have got to write more in less time. As an individual runs short of time, he/she tends to use plagiarism as a tool. As it requires him/her to just copy-paste from the original source, or else, change the sequence of words, plagiarism saves time, and the person is able to finish the work in time. Sometimes, if an assignment gets late than the due date for submission, it loses its worth. The teachers do not accept the late assignments and students end up losing 100 per cent marks.

Therefore, in order to keep that from happening, most students would rather plagiarize than get their assignment cross the deadline because tutors generally have a policy to cut a certain percentage of marks if plagiarism is detected in the paper. By plagiarizing, students are able to get some marks which they consider better than getting none at all. However, some tutors do have very strict policies regarding plagiarism, and may cancel the assignment altogether along with punishing the student if plagiarism is detected, though the policies vary from school to school.

Method Questionnaires were used to find out if plagiarism was an academic dishonesty. A sample size of 10 people was interviewed and the questionnaire had five questions. The five questions asked were based on the student’s knowledge of academic dishonesty and plagiarism. The five questions included: a. Do you understand the terms academic dishonesty and plagiarism? b. What constitutes an academic work to be described as plagiarized? c. Do you think students commit academic dishonesty intentionally or unintentionally? d. Do you assert that academic instructors contribute to academic dishonesty? e. How can you avoid plagiarism and other academic dishonesty activities?

The 10 students were picked at random and were required to fill in the questionnaire; the data was analyzed and the entered in tables. Analysis and Discussion 3 out of the 10 students interviewed were aware of the meaning of plagiarism and academic dishonesty. 1 out of the 10 students knew what constituted an academic work to be regarded as plagiarized. From the third question, only 7 out of the 10 students believed that academic dishonesty and specifically plagiarism was committed unintentionally.

4 students asserted that academic instructors were responsible for majority of the academic dishonesty activities. Only 1 student had an idea of how to avoid plagiarism. The results are shown in the table 1 below. Table 1: Results Question The Number of Students Who Responded Positively to the Question A 3 B 1 C 7 D 4 E 1 From the results it is imperative to note that the students who were interviewed had little knowledge about plagiarism and academic dishonesty. Only a few of them knew what plagiarism is and this can be attributed to the fact that they were either misinformed or the academic instructors did not provide adequate information on academic dishonesty.

Conclusions Academic dishonesty and specifically plagiarism can affect the integrity of the student and the academic institution. It is important for the students and the academic instructors to take measures to avoid plagiarism and other academic dishonesty activities. Each of them has a role to play in ensuring that academic integrity is upheld. Recommendations a. Strict measures should be put in place to make sure that plagiarism does not find its way into the academic institutions. b. Policies concerning academic dishonesty should be enacted.

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” College & Research Libraries (2004): 301-318. Print. Jones, Lars R. Academic Integrity & Academic Dishonesty: A handbook about Cheating & Plagiarism. Melbourne, Australia: Florida Institute of Technology, 2001. Print. Keith-Spiegel, Patricia & Whitley, Bernard E. Academic Dishonesty: An Educator’s Guide. Mahwah, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2002. Print. Thompson, Sue, and Olivas, Toni. “Plagiarism Prevention for Students.” 2008. Web. 5 May. 2011. .