Pages

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Student’s Plagiarism In Writing

I/ Introduction 

During the last fifteen years, there has been a steady change in emphasis from examination-based assessment to the continuous assessment of coursework. One of the prime reasons for this shift of emphasis has been the need to assess both subject-specific and generic skills in order to ensure fulfillment of learning outcomes, and the recognition that examinations often assess only a limited range of skills. Thus, an undergraduate program in many universities involves a variety of assessments such as essays, laboratory reports, posters, problem-based learning, projects and dissertations in addition to more formal examinations. The opportunity to plagiarize from books and journals in written coursework has always existed but the extensive development and use of the Internet as a source of learning materials has enabled students to download and plagiarize information much more easily (Park, 2003). Many universities and university departments take investment in electronic detection of plagiarism and in the design of assessments that offer less chance for plagiarism. However, it is possible that there is a disparity between the views of the students, the tutors and the University on what constitutes plagiarism, and that there is a consequent need, and indeed a requirement to inform students of the precise range of activities covered by the term. The student population in the Vietnam is becoming increasingly diverse. This diversity embraces academic background, age, social class, ethnicity and nationality, mode of study. As a result of this, academics must become aware of the range of pre-university student experience and how this may impact on the students’ awareness of plagiarism. The aims of this study were to determine what students believe constitutes plagiarism, and to produce guidelines for students on what plagiarism actually means and how to reduce plagiarism.

II/ Materials and methods 

In order to gather data for our research, a questionnaire was chosen and most of them are multiple-choice questions because its format is similar to almost students. Moreover, we can survey on a large scale in a short time and do not need to use any special equipment and machine to get the information. The questionnaire was created including nine questions. The first three questions probe the popularity of plagiarism in students. The forth question was to find the reason why students tend to plagiarize. The third three questions were to identify the effects of plagiarism in students. The last two questions were to give suggestions to reduce the rate of student plagiarizing.

Second-year English Department students at Hanoi University were the subjects of our research. 50 students were chosen randomly from different classes. Most of them are female at the age of 20 on average.

Before doing the survey officially, we had a pilot survey in our class for one week to see whether our questionnaires have problems or not. The result was that there was not any problem in our questionnaire. Therefore, we decided to do our survey officially.

The survey was administered at Hanoi University in March, 2010. 50 questionnaires were delivered to 50 students. They were given one hour to complete the questionnaires individually during a classroom session. Before they answered the questions, all the queries were responded and participants then progressed to finish the questionnaires. All the handouts were collected after 35 minutes.

III/ Results and discussion 

1. The frequency of student’s plagiarism in writing

The investigation into the frequency of plagiarism in writing as displayed in this chart showed that most of the students who are asked get involved in the dishonesty activity in different frequency. More than 60% of students admitted that they usually plagiarize in written coursework. It made up the highest percentage of students. Following was 14 students (28%) who sometimes plagiarize. It is surprising that only 1 respondent (2%) does not have the habit of plagiarism, 3 students rarely did this. The result showed that student plagiarism is becoming more common and more widespread in academic field. It is clear that plagiarism now becomes popular study skill of many students. As Wendy Sutherland-Smith (2008) reported in his study, all teachers in his study realized that “plagiarism is a phenomenon and they witness it in classroom practices” (p. 122).

2. Causes of students’ plagiarism 

It is undeniable that there are many reasons which lead to the high percentage of students who plagiarize. These reasons may come from students themselves or from their friends, teachers... Therefore, we asked students to find out the most popular reason.

As shown in this chart, laziness was the reason given by the largest number of students. It made up more than 40%. It means that laziness is the most popular reason for the plagiarism of most students. It is double than the rate of students who agreed that they plagiarize because they had poor time management. These students reported that sometimes deadlines come around more quickly than expected; sometimes assignments feel overwhelming, sometimes they have a lot of homework; sometimes they are busy with family lives and social works. Therefore, they chose plagiarism because they did not have enough time to do all. This result shares the same idea with. Wendy Sutherland-Smith (2008). She also found that “many young students, even very bright students, have admitted to plagiarism because they simply run out of time to complete set work” (p. 183). Nearly 30% of students supposed that one of the factors that made them plagiarize is their lack of awareness of plagiarism. Most of them did plagiarize by mistake or by chance. They showed that they did not know what plagiarism exactly mean, so they did not know they were plagiarizing when they did it. Today students learn quickly that finding and manipulating data on internet is a valuable skill. Therefore, the abuse of internet to find out information and studying may lead high rate of plagiarism in students. According to Wendy Sutherland-Smith (2008) “the Internet is often touted as the source and reason for perceived increased in plagiarism” (p. 101). However, as shown in this pie chart, there are only 5 students (10%) who declared that internet is reason which made them plagiarize.

3. Effects of plagiarism in students 

The effects of plagiarism in colleges extend beyond the class and negative affects the learning process of college students. This research was carried out to investigate the negative effects which plagiarism may bring about.

21 participants thought that if they plagiarism for a long time they may lack of confidence in writing. Students who plagiarize are hurting themselves in the long run because after along while of plagiarism they will doubt their writing skill and do not have opportunity to learn how to write. 18 participants showed that one of the effects that plagiarism may cause is the lack of critical and creative thinking. When students present other works as their own, they will fail to develop and use critical thinking skill which is necessary for their learning and success in life. Moreover, their creative level also drops. After plagiarizing for a long time the students’ ability to think creatively and successfully will reduce a lot.

8 in 50 students supposed that plagiarism will cause damaged relationships. Plagiarism poisons the relationship between students and teachers by undermining the mutual trust that is an important element of the learning process. For instance, when students take work from the internet and present it as their own, it will force the teachers to search for wrongdoing. The students will become suspect in such environment and learning becomes impossible. The suspicion and mistrust between the teachers and students will replace the trust. Plagiarism also damages the relationship between students who plagiarize and those ones who learn honesty.

Some participants declared that students who commit plagiarism face the loss of their degrees or their jobs in future. Lathrop and Foss (2000) also supposed that plagiarism “could damage their ability to achieve career goals” (p. 85). Some others showed that plagiarism also negative affects academic environments because it encourages cheating.

In short, engaging in plagiarism has deleterious effects on students not only on their learning but also on their relationships and on their future careers.

4. The solutions to reduce plagiarism in students

In our investigation, we only focus on some suggestions for teachers because the instructors can motivate the students to come up with their innovative ideas and they can also keep an eye on the students while doing their research papers, projects and other assignments. As illustrated in this table, 21 participants had strong agreement that the teachers were now being encouraged to take positive action to prevent plagiarism by requiring process steps for the paper. There are various steps of research paper such as topic, research materials, first draft, and final draft and so on. This requirement will discourage students from turning in papers that they borrowed or purchased from many websites on Internet. Educating students about plagiarism is the second major contributory factor to decrease plagiarism. 9 students recommended that the teachers should make assignment clear and coherent. Only 5 respondent agreed that the teachers had better create clear penalties which would be incurred if students were caught plagiarizing. These consequences go in line with Born (2003). She gave some suggestions to reduce and discourage plagiarism. She reported that “a paper needs to be treated as a process requires continuous supervising and progress monitoring. Instructor’s involvement minimizes a chance of quick fix (e.g., buying or coping paper) since students need to demonstrate progress on an on-going basis” (pp. 223-224). She also gave another solution that the instructors should raise students’ awareness by educating and communicating with students about plagiarism. Teachers might educate students what was acceptable and unacceptable, and discussed consequences that plagiarism might bring about.

IV/ Conclusion

In conclusion, this small-scale investigation shows that plagiarism by students is common and getting more so (particularly with increased access to digital sources including the Internet) that there are multiple reasons why students plagiarize and that some solutions to reduce plagiarism. Whether or not the problem has reached epidemic proportions, as some observers insist, it is clearly a major problem, and one that appears to be on the increase. The practice of plagiarism is a major challenge to institutional aspirations of academic integrity and a major threat to institutional quality assurance and enhancement, and it needs to be taken into account when developing and implementing institutional learning, teaching and assessment strategies. There is growing need for Vietnam institutions to develop cohesive frameworks for dealing with student plagiarism that are based on prevention supported by robust detection and penalty systems that are transparent and applied consistently .

0 comments:

Post a Comment