Research on plagiarism
Literature review
Many of the literature I have come across indicate that the reason that cheating in academics has increased due to the increase in the usage of the internet. According to Jones (2011:142) internet usage has increased to 151.6% from the year 2000. However according to Mcdowell and Brown (2002:1) cheating has never been a well-documented phenomenon until recently so they believe that we cannot be sure whether cheating has increased or not. One has to disagree with Mcdowell and Brown as the internet has made it easier for students to cheat in their work as they can just copy and paste the material they get from the internet (Scanlon & Neumann 2002:347). Scanlon & Neumann (2002:347) point to the fact that one can see the how concern for plagiarism has increased due to the development of plagiarism-detection software.
Due to the fact that cheating is an ambiguous term, students find it hard to distinguish between what is acceptable and what is outright cheating. Jones (2011:144) gave students scenarios where students were asked to identify what is cheating. The majority of students did not consider taking media such as videos and music from the as cheating nor did students believe that handing in an assignment that was previously handed in for another class to be cheating (Jones 2011:144). Jones’ research also showed that most students questioned in her research did not see using information that they consider to be common knowledge without properly citing the work as cheating. The internet makes makes it very easy for students to cheat as they can just cut and paste the relevant work they find on the internet.
The most common form of cheating that students engage is called plagiarism. According to Mcdowell and Brown (2002:3), plagiarism is the act of “passing of someone else’s work or writing as your own.” So if for an example a student were to take a large chunk of work from a published source and use it in their essay without acknowledging the
Many of the literature I have come across indicate that the reason that cheating in academics has increased due to the increase in the usage of the internet. According to Jones (2011:142) internet usage has increased to 151.6% from the year 2000. However according to Mcdowell and Brown (2002:1) cheating has never been a well-documented phenomenon until recently so they believe that we cannot be sure whether cheating has increased or not. One has to disagree with Mcdowell and Brown as the internet has made it easier for students to cheat in their work as they can just copy and paste the material they get from the internet (Scanlon & Neumann 2002:347). Scanlon & Neumann (2002:347) point to the fact that one can see the how concern for plagiarism has increased due to the development of plagiarism-detection software.
Due to the fact that cheating is an ambiguous term, students find it hard to distinguish between what is acceptable and what is outright cheating. Jones (2011:144) gave students scenarios where students were asked to identify what is cheating. The majority of students did not consider taking media such as videos and music from the as cheating nor did students believe that handing in an assignment that was previously handed in for another class to be cheating (Jones 2011:144). Jones’ research also showed that most students questioned in her research did not see using information that they consider to be common knowledge without properly citing the work as cheating. The internet makes makes it very easy for students to cheat as they can just cut and paste the relevant work they find on the internet.
The most common form of cheating that students engage is called plagiarism. According to Mcdowell and Brown (2002:3), plagiarism is the act of “passing of someone else’s work or writing as your own.” So if for an example a student were to take a large chunk of work from a published source and use it in their essay without acknowledging the