Tools Necessary To Prevent The Act Of Plagiarism

The problem has become such a major issue in colleges and universities, most, if not all of the schools have provided teachers and students the tools necessary to ensure the act of plagiarism is not occurring during the assignment process. In the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, plagiarism is a noun and is defined as “The act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person” (“Plagiarism”). Simply put, plagiarism is theft. It causes issues in schools because on a basic level when students commit plagiarism, they have neglected the most important part of the assignment. The research and learning phase of every assignment that is critical for the learning experience. This is one of the reasons why schools see plagiarism as a negative for the students.
Academic Integrity is the want and power to uphold honest and moral behavior in an academic environment.

This is important because a high standard needs to be kept for the integrity of the school or setting to have a good reputation. In the code student conduct provided by the ODU, it has the following type of violation: cheating, plagiarism, fabrication, and facilitation. Cheating is using unauthorized materials or persons on assignments, papers, tests, or quizzes. Plagiarism is using someone’s knowledge or word with taking full credit as your own work. Fabrication is the faking or altering information on any academic assignment. Facilitation is helping or not reporting academic violations. Not only does the learning experience diminish, but it also lowers the value of the assignment, the school, and the instructor teaching the course. To add to the issues, students caught committing plagiarism can be seen as stealing the time of the school officials including the instructor his/herself.

The instructor will have to take the time and the additional effort to research and dig to determine where he student plagiarized the assignment or source of information, meeting with the student to discuss the issue and act so forth. This additional time spent could have been utilized in other areas that could have improved the instructor’s classes as a whole. This takes away from the students who were trying to understand the material and needing additional guidance from the instructor, he or she may not be present due to the investigation of the plagiarism incident. Plagiarism is a serious issue for schools in means of reputation. If a school acts too weak on the topic, its reputation could diminish in value and drive enrollment numbers down due to companies will see less value in the school and students will make this discovery and no longer be interested in attending the school. This will cause harm to the school in a long-term environment and it is one that the school may never recover from.

Accepting plagiarism from a student standpoint could create added stress and could set a lifelong philosophy that deception is a way to get by without conducting the hard work on their efforts to accomplish the tasks. Students will see those other students who commit plagiarism and get away while the student themselves will struggle to use time management and tirelessly work towards completing the assignment. This will create another environment where a school’s own reputation could be put at risk and the student may decide to seek another school to attend. Is theft no matter how a person looks at it. It steals credit from those who put forth the time and effort to create the original document, it steals resources from students who want or may need to learn in a different manner and cannot because schools are combating by utilizing those resources to combat plagiarism.