Why we plagiarize

Many students deceptively think that scholarly publications are reliable sources of information they can consult the same way as dictionaries to check the definitions and spelling of words. Accordingly, they believe it is not obligatory to cite authors when borrowing their ideas and arguments, as well as we do not cite dictionaries when we look up the words.

Also, they tend to believe that writing a research paper involves gathering ideas, quotes, and proof from experts. Afterwards, to display their acquired knowledge, they will reproduce it by means of quotations, summaries, and paraphrases, perhaps combining those pieces with some short transitions. That is no wonder that after explaining to them the plagiarism policy, they are astonished that every borrowed idea or thought must be cited.

Some people are confident in their experience to back up their statements. Others think that gathering sources is additional work. Indeed, they consider themselves know-it-alls and citing sources for them is something too fussy and additional to the process of learning. Certainly, you heard this phrase a million of times.

Still, do not plagiarize! Definitely, it may seem to you that this is a solution to all the problems and an opportunity to showcase your knowledge. However, plagiarism is an impediment to your academic career. Additionally, it can cost you a degree. That is why honesty is the best policy you should stick to when writing all sorts of works.

They are bone idles Writing an ingenious literary work requires working long hours. There are many reasons students choose to plagiarize or cheat.

Reasons range from the more genuine lack of knowledge to outright dishonorable intentions. Collectively, the most frequently stated reasons students choose to plagiarize or cheat include:. 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.

According to the findings, students preferred lenient punishments and objected to those punishments that jeopardised their academic progression. In more specific terms, 47 This study has found that students have a conceptual understanding of what constitutes plagiarism, in terms of its definition and forms. According to the study, all students regard plagiarism as a very serious academic offence.

However, the study found that students admitted to have intentionally or unintentionally committed plagiarism. According to the study, the common forms of plagiarism reported to have been committed by students included: summarising and paraphrasing without properly acknowledging the source, and using direct quotation without including quotation marks.

Students unintentionally committed these forms of plagiarism because they lacked skills in summarizing, paraphrasing and referencing properly. The study also found that students plagiarised intentionally because of laziness and poor time management.

The study established that failure by academics to detect and punish plagiarism, due to workload, may have encouraged students to commit plagiarism. One of the more significant findings that emerged from this study is that students committed less serious cases of plagiarism and consequently, students received lenient forms of punishments including warnings and rewriting the plagiarised work.

According to the findings, students were more willing to be punished through warning and rewriting their plagiarised assignment because these forms of sanctions did not jeopardise their academic career. Based on the findings we recommend the following to Mzuzu University:. Introduce advanced training of information literacy to postgraduate students that teach advanced academic writing such as summarising, synthesising and, referencing;.

Make use of text-matching software which should be made compulsory for academics and postgraduate students. Carry out awareness campaigns about the negative effects of plagiarism to postgraduate students and academics; and. Encourage academic staff to report cases of plagiarism to the university so that they can be dealt with holistically at institutional level. Are we there yet? ESL postgraduates writing in an English medium. Afr Res Rev 3 4. Bailey S Academic writing: a handbook for international students.

Accessed 12 Nov Bandura A A social cognitive theory of personality. In: L. John Ed. New York: Guilford Publications. Reprinted in D.

Shoda [Eds. New York: Guildford Press. Accessed 20 Jun Batane T Turning to Turnitin to fight plagiarism among university students. Educ Technol Soc 13 2 :1— Google Scholar. Chang E n. Accessed 23 Apr Stud High Educ 35 5 — Article Google Scholar. Devlin M Policy, preparation, and prevention: proactive minimization of student plagiarism. J High Educ Policy Manag 28 1 — Ellery K An investigation into electronic-source plagiarism in a first-year essay assignment.

Ellis C, Zucker IM, Randall D The infernal business of contract cheating: understanding the business processes and models of academic custom writing sites.

Int J Educ Integr 14 1 King LA Experience psychology, 2nd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York. Klein D Why learners choose plagiarism: a review of literature. Campus-Wide Information Systems 27 5 — Leask B Plagiarism, cultural diversity and metaphor—implications for academic staff development. I gave him a mini-lesson on summarizing, and he practiced it right on the spot. We discussed attribution, and brainstormed attributive tags. He offered to rewrite the summary.

Understanding attribution and citation is an important skill for avoiding plagiarism. A colleague asked students to draw a map for the setting in To Kill a Mockingbird. A student painstakingly redrew one she found on Google, not understanding that she was to devise the map from textual evidence in the book. Thomas writes that helping students understand plagiarism requires outlining a framework for defining terms, developing guidelines, and establishing consequences.

No two plagiarism episodes are alike, but all offer learning opportunities for both the student and the teacher.