Throughout the years, there always tends to be an issue with academic dishonesty, plagiarism, cheating, whatever you want to call it. In every syllabus, the professor places their blanket statement for academic misconduct and that it is not tolerated. Period. However, it seems that in today’s society, where the internet is being carried around with you all the time, by the means of phones, electronic tablets, computers, etc., this is definitely a growing issue in higher education. Chand (2007) reports that in recent years plagiarism and cheating have become more and more acceptable and one possible reason for this is that there has been a significant drop in morals in today’s society.
One example of academic dishonesty is the student response, or more commonly “clicker”system. These handheld gadgets are used in large auditorium classrooms for students to respond to in-class questions. Zou (2011) reported that many students were bringing multiple clickers to class and answering for their absent friends. When a sophomore at the University of Florida was interviewed about this common method for student participation, he commented: “It happens in every class” (Zou, 2011).
Solution
One solution that enables professors to check plagiarism is turnitin.com. This website allows professors to utilize the current technological advances to check a student’s honesty. This website gives a percentage of how much of the work the student contributed and how much is actually copied from other sources. This is definitely a good method of keeping students honest.
Resources
Chand, A. (2007, November 11). Academic dishonesty [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://socyberty.com/education/academic-dishonesty/
Zou, J. J. (2011, September 4). With cheating only a click away, professors reduce the incentive. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Cheating-Is-Now-Only-a-Click/128879/
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ReplyDeleteIndeed, academic dishonesty is a major problem. I agree that professors can use turnitin programs, but still there are problems. An example is from my own family. One of my sons made it through high school by copying and pasting others' works. Money invested in higher education must be legitimate; and, as you stated I think it must be true work, not just copying. A degree with no real substance costs all of society.