Internet is no less than a blessing, a great learning resource, as it contains the information of anything as tiny as the Quark and as gigantic as the Milky Way.
Having said that, what if this very platform is being used for the lowliest act of plagiarism?
Imagine it on a macro level. It will maraud the whole learning process of a society.
Giving students the due credit of assignments and researches is becoming more and more difficult. Given the extensive use of the internet for plagiarizing, institutions have found no reason but to penalize their students.
In this article, we will go through the reasons why students indulge in cheating and how plagiarism is affecting learning?
What is plagiarism in the academic setting?
In general terms, plagiarism is copying the verbatim of someone else and adding it into your text to pass the test, solve the assignments, or write a research paper.
It is like stealing someone’s content because the plagiarizer copies the ideas without telling the real author.
How can you know whether your research is plagiarized?
The Internet has become the victim of getting information to plagiarize. To make it scalable you can find anything on the internet. This quality becomes the biggest utility for a plagiarizer who simply copies content.
However, due to excessive plagiarism from the internet and other sources, it becomes difficult to detect it.
But there exist some tools which you can use to find if your research or assignment is plagiarism-free.
Employing these tools you can check plagiarism free from your own text or someone else’s assignments.
That’s the reason why you see so many cases of plagiarism every now and then. It is because the teachers or employers use them to check their subordinates’ work.
Reasons why students indulge in Plagiarism?
There are a handful of studies discussing the reasons for plagiarism in academics, but we will discuss the most common of them.
Lack of interest in the subject:
It is a fact that not every course gives goosebumps to the students. They take some courses just to meet the credit hours requirement of their semester.
Laziness appears partly because the assignments or even the lectures they get do not invoke curiosity or interest in them.
That’s why they tend to plagiarize their assignments for the sake of passing the course.
Pressure to get high grades:
Interestingly, most students plagiarize not because they do not have the bare minimum knowledge. But actually, they desire to get the max marks out of it.
Failing to reach the epitome honestly, they tend to get good grades by hook or by crook. A study shows that 86.7% of the students resort to such practices because of good grades.
They use the internet to get the already written information and create plagiarized assignments and case studies.
Unaware of the rules:
Plagiarism is, however, a notorious term and every student is perhaps aware of it. Yet, in academic writing, students commit these mistakes because they either do not know the consequences or the true nature of it.
Lack of awareness plays a major role in cheating and the plagiarizers do it confidently. Giving them the proper knowledge can be very beneficial for their learning process.
Five effects of plagiarism in learning:
As plagiarism is not less than a crime in academics, it has dreadful consequences for the plagiarizer, the institutions, and even the whole society.
Destroying academic career:
Being a researcher you need to make the whole research process transparent and honest. Unfortunately, there are dozens of cases depicting plagiarized researches around the world.
If the plagiarizer is associated with a university as a research assistant or a professor, he may lose his job of committing this act.
To add insult to injury, he can even get another job because of his tarnished reputation. That’s why you must avoid plagiarism at all costs.
Legal consequences:
Copyright laws are real, thus you should abide by them while writing anything, let alone academic content.
An author who writes a book has the privilege to sue you if he finds that you have copied his content without referencing it.
Thus, you must take utmost effort to avoid duplicating someone’s text, otherwise, you may get copyright strikes, which may even lead to jail or heavy financial fines.
Effects on society:
Since a research paper is meant to bring new innovation in technology, health, any kind of field affecting your society.
Suppose you have researched on medicine but forged facts and copied from someone. Now if your research is taken for real, it may affect society or even life loss for that matter.
Expulsion from the institution:
Some universities have very strict laws regarding plagiarism. If your plagiarized article gets caught by your teacher, you are in shallow waters.
Because they may fine you or expel you from your college. In return, you may lose money and resources.
Time is the most precious thing and expulsion from college in the middle of studies may give you a setback of time.
Destroy professional career:
Apart from an academic setting, there also exists plagiarism in other professional careers. Since almost all professions have something to do with writing, writing copied content may deeply affect your career.
For instance, you work in the corporate sector and copy ideas for marketing campaigns. You will seriously damage your field.
You may lose your job and would not find another one soon due to job scarcity. Thus, you may also cause serious damages to your career.
Wrapping up:
There are extensive influences of plagiarism in learning as well as in other professions. You must aware of all.
To become successful in your career and to avoid any misfortune you should apply the above principles to find the best solutions.
However, to mitigate the effects of plagiarism you have to deal with the root cause and that is writing the assignment, thesis, or research paper of your own.
