The logical
correlation between the aggrandizing problem of the manifestation of plagiarism
in student submissions and student proficiency with the internet has become
blatantly conspicuous. An article I read
recently in Education World stated that, “According to Plagiarism.org, studies
indicate that approximately 74 percent of students admit plagiarizing at least
once during the past school year” (http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr390.shtml). Unfortunately this stat represents a serious
lack of due diligence on the part of educators, when explaining or expressing
the seriousness of plagiarism in the academic field. As
educators the responsibility falls on our shoulders first, and we must not be
found lacking in our approach to the subject of plagiarism as it relates to our
classrooms.
The first
step to combating plagiarism is to educate ourselves in the multitude of ways
that students purposely cheat.
Contemporary methods include purchasing papers from essays mills, copy
and paste from web articles, finding and submitting archived essays, and even
fabricating citation sources. Should you
discover such an attempt, every good detective knows that the answers we seek
can always be found at the scene of the crime.
If your google search yields negative results, a list of paper mills can
be found at http://www.coastal.edu/library/presentations/mills2.html or you could even employ a specific
plagiarism detector like those found at (http://plagiarism.bloomfieldmedia.com/z-wordpress/). Armed with this information an educator can
then discuss plagiarism with their students from an informed position.
It should
never be assumed that students know what plagiarism is, and an approach from
this viewpoint will ensure a comprehensive lesson that will help to remove the
excuse of accidental plagiarism from their repertoire. Prevention is key, and if your students are
made aware of the distinct types of plagiarism and also of your capability and
willingness to search out plagiarized papers, I believe the number of students
cheating will become infinitesimal. When
the chance of success is severely limited by teacher initiative, the stated
consequences will far outweigh the reward because the risk will have become too
high. I am a realist however and do
understand that there will always be a student who for a plethora of different
reasons will find a reason to plagiarize, and for those teachers unable to
invest the time online to search I recommend reading an article written by
Robert Harris called Anti-Plagiarism Strategies For Research Papers, and I hope
it will assist you in the same wonderful way it has helped me.
Good luck
and may all your student’s papers be genuine and informative.
