Further, there are ample websites I will not supply their URLs here, natch where lazy students can download ready-made papers and turn them in for their classes. However, as a writing tutor for 20 years I discussed this issue almost daily with students, and I am convinced that many students plagiarize "accidentally"—that is, they fail to cite information they took from a source because they quickly, if tentatively, assess that the information they chose resides in a "gray area," and thus it might not need to be cited.
The quality and context of your sources matter just as much as their content, and you are obliged always to assess that quality and consider whether and how best to establish that context. Your readers—especially your professors—will naturally be assessing quality and context in the act of reading, and they will expect you to have done the same. Collectively, the most frequently stated reasons students choose to plagiarize or cheat include: Desire to get a good grade Fear of failing Procrastination or poor time management Disinterest in the assignment Belief they will not get caught Confusion about what constitutes plagiarism or current university policies None of these instances are acceptable reasons to plagiarize, cheat, or commit other acts of academic dishonesty.
Why Do Students Commit Plagiarism? Bailey, J. Find out what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it. The rules are easy to understand and follow. If there is any question about missing attribution, try using an online plagiarism checker or plagiarism detection software to check your writing for plagiarism before turning it in. Laziness or dishonesty can lead to a ruined reputation, the loss of a career, and legal problems.
Login Buy Credits. Consequences of plagiarism include: Destroyed Student Reputation Plagiarism allegations can cause a student to be suspended or expelled. Destroyed Professional Reputation A professional business person, politician, or public figure may find that the damage from plagiarism follows them for their entire career.
Destroyed Academic Reputation The consequences of plagiarism have been widely reported in the world of academia. Legal Repercussions The legal repercussions of plagiarism can be quite serious. Monetary Repercussions Many recent news reports and articles have exposed plagiarism by journalists, authors, public figures, and researchers. Plagiarized Research Plagiarized research is an especially egregious form of plagiarism.
No Reputation is Immune to Plagiarism. Qualitative data were analysed thematically. The strength of this study is the use of a mixed methods approach which allowed the researchers to triangulate the results.
In this context, data collected using questionnaires from students and academic staff were used to confirm each other, and we drew the conclusions of the study based on the findings that were supported most by data sources.
To ensure that the questionnaire was free from errors, its content was subjected to pretesting in two ways. First, we asked experts in research in higher education to comment on the questionnaire focusing on clarity, question wording, validity and order of the questions.
Second, we piloted the questionnaire with 10 postgraduate students and 2 lecturers at Kamuzu College of Nursing which is a constituent college of the University of Malawi. Postgraduate students and lecturers at Kamuzu College of Nursing were used in the pilot study because they were similar to the target population of our study.
Feedback from education experts and the pilot study was used to make corrections on the questionnaire. Ethical issues were addressed in two ways in this study. Second, before taking part in the study, participants were informed through a consent letter that they were taking part in the study voluntarily. The consent letter further informed participants that even if they had accepted to participate in the study, they were at liberty to withdraw at any stage of the study without giving reasons.
The participants signed the consent letter to show that they had read the content and that they were taking part in the study voluntarily. In this section we present, analyse and discuss the findings of the study in line with the research questions guiding the study as follows:.
Out of 53 students, 52 Follow up interviews were conducted with two academics, an assistant registrar responsible for academics and assistant librarian responsible for readers services. Follow-up interviews with an assistant registrar revealed than Mzuzu University is just beginning to introduce PhD studies and this explains the reason why the study registered only one PhD student against 52 masters students. Since the literature showed that there is no universal definition of plagiarism, we presented students with a list of statements from which they were asked to indicate which statements best describe what they think plagiarism is and is not.
Findings revealed that 45 In fact, Leask established that lack of understanding of plagiarism concepts increases the chances of students plagiarising.
It is worrisome though that in this study some students regard paraphrasing, summarising and acknowledging sources as a form of plagiarism. Another section required students to rate themselves on their ability to paraphrase, summarise, and cite and reference information sources based on their departmental adopted referencing style. Findings presented in Fig. However, it was reported from the interviews with academic staff and the assistant librarian that students were not good at paraphrasing, summarising and citing as evidenced by many errors in their academic assessments and theses available in the library.
The study also revealed that the majority of students were not good at citing or referencing using software such as Mendeley and Zotero, as students Findings from follow-up interviews corroborated the findings from students because the assistant librarian and academic staff confirmed that students are not taught how to cite or reference using software. For example, the assistant librarian commented that. But yea [yes], as librarians we are supposed to take that lead to teach postgraduate students how to cite using different softwares like Zotero.
As the figure shows, very good and good, has a higher percentage than on the 4 items except the first item which has good, average, poor meaning that students were not that confident of their ability to cite using software. The study established that many students plagiarised because they lacked academic writing skills as reported by students and academics, and by analysing reported common forms of plagiarism presented below which emanate from lack of writing skills and from follow up interviews.
These results give credence to those reported by Scouller et al. Like this study, Scouller et al. In this study, it was observed through follow-up interviews with an assistant librarian and academic staff that students lack good academic writing skills because they were not taught these skills because of a belief that they mastered these skills when they were doing their first degrees. The problem is that MZUNI recruits postgraduate students with diverse backgrounds, that is, from universities that may not have exposed students to good academic writing skills with perhaps a different referencing style from that in a particular department or faculty at MZUNI.
In addition, the level and depth of academic writing at postgraduate level is quite different from that required at undergraduate level. Training is important because according to social cognitive learning theory which is informing this study, its element of modeling emphasises the need for guidance which helps transmit language, mores, social practices, and adaptive competencies.
Modeling focuses on how well new behaviour is learned when the more experienced demonstrates the activity first then allows the learner to practise Bandura In this context, students need to be taught good academic writing skills by academics or librarians because currently, their writing is based on trial-and-error experiences, which according to Bandura is very costly and unacceptable. Modeling can also be used to make an argument that students will easily learn to use citation software such as Zotero if they are trained or taught by academic staff and librarians.
The study also sought to understand the prevalence of plagiarism by establishing common forms of plagiarism reported to be committed by students at MZUNI. Data collected using a questionnaire administered to students and academics are presented in Table 1 where it is clear that indeed, students admitted to have committed some forms of plagiarism which were also encountered by academic staff.
The study established that prevalent forms of plagiarism reported to be committed by students included: lack of proper acknowledgement after paraphrasing These findings mirror what has been reported in other countries by prior studies Leask ; Trost ; Agu and Olibie ; Vasconcelos et al. As reported in the previous section, students at MZUNI are reported to have committed various forms of plagiarism.
The study established that students plagiarised even though they were aware that plagiarism is a very serious offence in the academic domain. Other studies have established that the more students see plagiarism as a serious offence the less likely they can commit plagiarism.
For example, Zafarghandi et al. The literature section informed this study that students will commit various forms of plagiarism because of various reasons which include laziness, poor time management, lack of good academic writing skills, lack of knowledge of plagiarism, and pressure to score good grades Idiegbeyan-Ose et al.
Similarly, in this study, findings from students and academic staff established that 32 From these findings, we conclude that students commit plagiarism intentionally and unintentionally. A study by De Jager and Brown categorised students copying from each other as intentional plagiarism whereas copying without citing sources was categorised as unintentional because students plagiarised due to ignorance or incompetence.
Likewise, in this study, we conclude that students who plagiarised because of pressure to beat assignment deadlines, laziness and poor time management did it intentionally whereas those who plagiarised due to lack of good academic writing skills did it unintentionally. This study established, during follow up interviews with academic staff, that lecturers fail to detect every case of plagiarism due to workload because most lecturers handle very big classes within a semester.
Ryan et al. Similar findings were reported at the University of Botswana where Batane found that students plagiarised after seeing that their friends were not caught and hence concluded that academic staff do not take issues of plagiarism seriously. This supports environmental and social factors of social cognitive learning theory which states that punishment reduces undesirable behaviour while unpunished behaviour is reinforced Bandura Similarly, Batane found that there was a 4.
According to the findings of the present study, follow-up interviews with academic staff revealed that MZUNI has very few academic staff who use Turnitin due to lack of awareness.
Of course other studies such as that of McCabe found that lecturers occasionally ignored incidents of plagiarism in North American Universities. Another notable reason students resort to plagiarising at MZUNI is the way assignments are designed, that is, assignments are sometimes too easy to plagiarise. According to the findings, some students indicated that they committed plagiarism because of pressure from work and family pressures.
This can be well explained using reciprocal causality as presented in Fig. Although the study established that 48 Instead, most academic staff were of the view that most students plagiarised because of poor time management and laziness. Elsewhere, Ramzan et al. The findings are presented in Table 2 where it is also clear that nine As already noted, most students committed plagiarism due to lack of academic writing skills and this made lecturers to be lenient to the plagiarists.
Similarly, Kwong et al. During follow-up interviews, some lecturers argued that students may commit serious cases of plagiarism but it is possible that academics fail to detect plagiarism due to workload. In that regard, most academics recommended the use of text-matching software, which in addition to detecting plagiarised academic work, these text-matching software also help students to improve their work before finally submitting to the lecturers. This is an important aspect because according to the Social Cognitive Learning Theory, through the aspect of self-regulated learning, students can develop their own appropriate behaviour through self-management processes of self-observation and judgmental process against performance standards Woolfolk The findings are presented in Table 2.
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