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Plagiarism
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by Chris Werner
Friday, September 5, 2003
Checking e-mail, chatting with buddies and downloading music are only a few Internet luxuries that college students have come to enjoy on a regular basis. A recent study found that the number of students using the Internet for plagiarism purposes has risen dramatically over the last few years.
Donald L. McCabe, a management professor at Rutgers University, surveyed more than 18,000 students on 23 campuses nationwide, finding that 38 percent admitted to partaking in one or more instances of Internet plagiarism.
The study defined plagiarism as copying or paraphrasing from websites without proper citation or taking information from sources and pasting it into student work.
This number marks a 28 percent increase in Internet plagiarism incidents from three years ago, when a similar study found only 10 percent of students participated in such acts.
The problem is one that has two fronts, McCabe says. The first lies in the mentality of cheating, because many students are not clear as to what constitutes plagiarism. The second front is on a more general scale. McCabe says the business and political world in which students are growing up contributes to a lack of understanding or empathy for cheating.
“Students seem to be taking cues from the general society,” McCabe said.
McCabe added that students indeed appear to be adopting carefree attitudes. Of the respondents that admitted to plagiarism, nearly half saw such actions as either trivial or not cheating at all.
In addition to Internet plagiarism, 22 percent of the undergraduates cheated in “serious” ways within the past year, either by using unauthorized notes or by copying someone else’s test.
“I think the big risk is that once you start down the slippery slope it becomes easier to justify your behavior,” McCabe said.
With such figures becoming a likely problem for colleges nationwide, many have adopted new preventative measures in hopes of thinning out the numbers.
“They are brushing off the dust on academic policies, making more of a living document than they’ve been in the past,” McCabe said.
In addition, 20 percent of the 2,600 surveyed are using technological services, like www.turnitin.com, to scan for plagiarized material.
Such moves reflect problems that have been facing faculty members for many years, McCabe said.
“Individual faculty members are getting more and more frustrated and taking matters into their own hands,” he said.
Jack Mitchell, University of Wisconsin professor of journalism and mass communications, employed a similar service for his Introduction to Journalism and Mass Communications class over the past several semesters.
Mitchell began implementing this program when several incidents of plagiarism popped up in his class. Although it was a low number, Mitchell said it was important to prevent such actions from occurring in the future.
“We heard of how often this happens, so we decided to use the system,” Mitchell said, adding that after employing the electrical system, no cases of cheating were found.
Although things currently seem under control in Mitchell’s class, he predicts that the constant pressures of college life and the easily accessible Internet may spur further incidents of plagiarism.
“Students are under a lot of pressure, more than they used to be. There’s more of a concentration on getting good grades,” Mitchell said.
