- For Anna, 22, a final year student in south-east England,
internet plagiarism is a natural part of undergraduate life.
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- For the past three years, she says, she has been submitting
essays bought and copied from the internet and passing them off as her
own.
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- She is currently working on her final-year project and
most of the materials in the dissertation are coming off the net.
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- Anna (not her real name) says she cheats because it is
easy to get away with it.
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- "It is easier, because sometimes when you go to
the library you can't find the necessary books or you have too much to
read," she says.
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- "But I'm always careful. The best way is to combine
library materials with essays bought from the internet."
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- Essays for sale
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- Anna is not alone. Cheating, especially internet cheating,
is increasingly becoming the way of the academic world.
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- There are several websites offering well-written essays
for token fees, and business is booming.
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- Other internet operations will not only sell students
essays and term papers but also remove them from cyberspace altogether
so that nobody can trace the source.
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- Universities cite "laziness", "lack of
appropriate preparation for assessment", "peer pressure and pressure
to pass modules and gain good grades" as some of the reasons students
have given for cheating.
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- The woman leading the campaign to flush out cheats says
UK universities have only just begun to get to grip with the enormity of
the situation.
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- Prof Susan Bassnett, a pro vice-chancellor at Warwick
University, believes plagiarism is a spreading plague in higher education
with more and more cases coming to light every year.
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- "Across UK universities we now have a cut and paste
culture which is becoming difficult to detect," she says.
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- "There seem to be higher cases in arts subjects
than in sciences or lab-based courses where course works are more practical
based."
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- 'Mass education'
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- Prof Bassnett says students get away with internet plagiarism
because of lack of resources to monitor cheating, coupled with the increasing
workload faced by lecturers and examination markers.
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- "Even though some universities now have software
in place to monitor plagiarism, most markings are done anonymously and
therefore you don't get to know the students' individual writing styles."
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- She believes the trend is a result of the mass higher
education embarked upon by the government.
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- "When you have mass education you no longer have
expectation of excellence.
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- "Students nowadays want to push the boundaries.
Universities are becoming degree-producing factories."
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- Cultural attitude
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- Dr Charles Juwah, a senior education development officer
at the Aberdeen-based Robert Gordon University, says recent cases of plagiarism
there suggest that students previously educated in a rote learning culture,
such as in South Asia, have some difficulty in appreciating values and
policies regarding plagiarism.
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- "This difficulty is often exacerbated by English
language difficulties," he says.
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- "Regardless of culture, however, it is becoming
increasingly common for students to resort to web-based sources for submitted
assessments, and this is also associated with poor referencing practices."
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- Robert Gordon University now holds regular awareness
sessions at which students are informed of their responsibilities in upholding
good academic practice with regard referencing academic work appropriately.
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- "We've also produced a video on what is plagiarism
and how to avoid it," says Dr Juwah.
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- "Although the university proscribes plagiarism and
cheating, it also places emphasis on educating students about best practice
in scholarly referencing and the acknowledgement of sources of information."
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- But Prof Bassnett says universities have to take tougher
measures, including "sending down" - expelling people.
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- "Universities have to be more rigorous in their
monitoring.
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- "Students need to be motivated through quality of
teaching resources and coherent monitoring and penalty of expulsion.
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- "When a student is sent down, the rest take notice,"
she said.
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- © BBC MMIII
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- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3265143.stm
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