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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A study by Donald McCabe confirms the fact that the Internet is indeed playing a part. Another article written by a George Hesselberg is referenced as well. He poses the idea that students could possibly avoid the need for cheating if they paid attention. In other words, pay attention in class and you could avoid paying a writer to script their work for them. Many other articles are referenced as well. However, the two I mentioned above I believe are primary to this article. This article is well written and very informative.
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.
Simply defined, the word plagiarism means "the unauthorized use of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own" ("Plagiarism"). While many students understand and comprehend the first clause of this definition, many encounter problems with the second part - the thoughts part. Many students in today's educational system are frequently unable to develop their own thoughts, opinions, and ideas relating to the subject matter that they are studying. However, when people at a university are educated according to the ways set forth by John Henry Newman in "The Idea of a University," their ability to create original concepts would be cultivated to the point, where they do not feel the need to plagiarize and cheat. Newman also states that in the end, the university will produce citizens that can give back to society (48). Jeffrey Hart makes a similar point in "How to Get a College Education." Therefore, according to both Newman and Hart, an honest person will be fashioned by the university. Since honesty does not breed cheating, should not cheating then be minimized? Plagiarism and its sister cheating are plagues on society that only serve to corrupt it. Nevertheless, the education given by a university can diminish and, perhaps, even eradicate the disease by instilling in students, a sense of honor, and implementing harsh penalties on those caught cheating or plagiarizing.
Without the proper use of digital technology, students are prone to commit plagiarism that can detrimental to their future. I say, there are many positives to the digital age and that if the conversation of plagiarism started
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.
In this final chapter, Christian Miller speaks about cheating. There is a cheating behavior that many people do for various reasons. This assumes that the cheater might not be the one who is advantaged. Most humans today cheat when the opportunities arise. In studies, it is clear that many students cheat while in college. Of the many students who cheat, only a small fraction of them get caught. In a very large group of people, it was seen that only 3 people stated that they have never cheated while in school. In one case, a student found an exam on the printer and mass distributed it to the class and the class finished the exam quickly and scored higher. This made the teacher skeptical and a retake was made. It is clear that cheating is very prominent on college campuses. In an experiment, participants were told that they could only take 5 minutes on a
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.”
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.
Many students are using technology to cheat because they are able to find answers quickly online by just searching for them. Cheating is increasing in the United States at higher rates because many of the students in high school or in college have to deal with different responsibilities, pressure, and loads of different types of work. Richard Perez Peña states in “Studies Find More Students Cheating,” “Internet access has made cheating easier, enabling students to connect instantly with answers, friends to consult and works to plagiarize.” Plagiarism, which means using a work of someone else as if it were yours, is the most common form of cheating in high school and in college. Plagiarism occurs by not citing a source correctly or by not putting the proper quotation marks on a quote that you borrow to state your point. Some students don’t even know what plagiarism is, and they do it using the technology that we have today. Therefore, Julie Rasicot states, “High schools and teachers should make clear what constitutes plagiarism, how to avoid it and what the consequences will be if students are caught.” If students are not informed about plagiarism, then they tend to use technology as an easy way to do an assignment, which prevents them from learning. On the other hand, many professors have argued that the technology is developing
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 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.
Every day throughout the world, teachers strive to attain the most from their students in every aspect of life, from effective communication and language skills, to the development of individualism and the concept of being the best that you could be. With the use of exams, class discussions, and written assignments, educators subconsciously reinforce the idea that success can only be achieved from within, with personal expression and dedication to each and every task faced in modern existence. The world, as we see it today, has not evolved by people copying one another’s ideas. It has evolved from the willingness of individuals to step up and make their intentions known, to bring about new ideas and concepts to forever change the environment in which we live. All too often, though, due to stress, insufficient time allowance, or just plain laziness, people take the quickest and most unproblematic approach to getting work done, in turn, failing to play their part in society’s evolution by retaining individual ideas and viewpoints.
Over the past decade or so, we have seen a huge increase in cheating in our schools. The introduction of the Internet into most homes and schools and other technological advances are some of the main causes. Students are misusing the new technologies to find new and more high tech ways to cheat. During testing students are receiving answers via text messaging devices, they are downloading notes to iPods and graphing calculators, they are picture messaging exams with their mobile phones, and they are even hiring look-alike experts to take the exams for them. They can use the internet to easily plagiarize a paper; they can pay a company to write the paper for them, they can even pay to use a prewritten paper from a database. The internet and technology are making it easier and easier for students to cheat, and as technology continues to advance, we will continue to see a rapid rise in cheating.
The first reason to support that mobile phones should be banned in schools is that devices can be used to cheating for instance, text friends about answers during a test, take picture of test questions with mobile phones to send to friends, search the internet to answers during a test, and store information on mobile phones to look at during a test. It is suggested by Benenson Strategy Group (2008) indicated that 65 per c...