What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is the method of copying or using the data from an already published author’s content and manipulating it as one’s own creation. Sometimes it is done intentionally, while other times, the act is totally unintentional.
The rate at which content is growing in today’s world does not go through lots of checks and scrutiny until done explicitly. As a result of this, people take leverage of the situation to use someone else’s work without giving them due credit. The practice is flawed and is severely discouraged in schools, colleges, universities, and even in the professional environment.
Plagiarising does not only include copying someone’s content; it also includes paraphrasing the sentence by changing one or two words so that any online tool is unable to detect it.
Educational institutes always encourage authentic and original work of the students. The studies and research conducted at the educational institutes hold no credibility if it is plagiarised. While intentional plagiarism has to be curbed and strictly not allowed for educational purposes, care must be taken so that unintentional plagiarism is minimised and avoided as much as possible. Online learning software sometimes imbibes plagiarism detection tools in the platform itself.
Why do students resort to Plagiarism?
While some may do it knowingly, many others may accidentally happen to land up using the same hypothesis or sentence that has been used by others. Students resort to plagiarism due to several factors like-
- Inaccessibility to a language: Sometimes, a student remains alien to the language of their study. While they may be versed in the basics of the language, they might not be proficient in expressing the required sentence in the language, leading them to choose someone else’s sentence for expressing their views.
- Fear of failure: Students have an inbuilt fear of failure if they are not able to perform a task. Due to this, they may end up copying tasks of someone already accomplished so that they secure good grades on the assignments.
- Lack of interest: The mere lack of interest in a particular subject may lead to the non-completion of an assignment in a non-plagiarised manner. Sometimes, the student chooses to study a subject because the job prospects it is good, thereby ending up in rot learning and no practical experience through their own work.
- Extreme competition: The peer pressure and competitive surroundings may also lead to students opting to simply copy and paste somebody else’s work. To secure more than their friends, students tend to copy the assignment using the work of a published writer.
- No proper training: Sometimes, the education or training in a particular subject might not be enough, leading to students being devoid of the content. It leads to a problem in the coming assignment, too, as students tend to repeat the same plagiarism due to a lack of the original content being imparted to them.
- Lack of time: Time may act as another constraint for students. Not every institute can afford online learning software and what happens is the notes and learning resources are not assimilated into one place. Due to last-moment panic and carelessness of the students, they end up copying someone’s work leading to plagiarism.
- Inattentiveness in class: Students may not note down the learning imparted in classrooms by the teacher due to non-attentiveness and unavailability at times. As and when the assignment is given to students, they cannot find enough resources to complete them, hence plagiarism.
Six simple and efficient ways to avoid plagiarism
- Focus on your writing skill rather than looking forward to how others write. In general, one can look for nice inspirations to complete their assignment. However, this should not result in copying someone else’s content and taking the credit for it.
- Always give credits to the author from whom you have used the quotes or research if any. This helps maintain the credibility of your own assignment as the teacher gets to know the student has not taken advantage of already published work and respects someone else’s work.
- If you have many quotes or works derived from someone else’s work, use a separate section for citations or references to avoid confusion. In this way, all the sources from which relevant materials have been used can be authenticated.
- Employ the use of plagiarism check tools that are available on the Internet. This allows you to avoid any unintentional plagiarism in the assignment submitted. Many such platforms have cropped up, which allows you to check the percentage of plagiarism and give a definite idea of what to improve.
- Keep writing, as practice makes a person perfect. With time, you develop the habit of making authentic and non-plagiarised content for the assignment. However, this requires a constant level of self-checks in the form of multiple plagiarism checking tools to avoid any mishaps in writing.
- Make the best use of quotation marks, as sometimes one forgets or misplaces the source from which a reference has been taken. In this case, simply placing the words and sentences in quotation marks will help your teacher and readers understand that the work has been derived from somewhere else.
Plagiarism should be avoided as much as possible, primarily in educational assignments where a student’s entire career depends on their labour, quality, and originality of work. What good can a student do to their future if they indulge in cheating and unfair practices like plagiarism during the initial aspect of studies? Even online learning software tools should employ the use of plagiarism check tools or resource materials that could help students save a lot of time by directly reading the authentic source.
If you are looking to employ an online learning system at your institution, please reach out to us at contact@edutinker.com for the best quality services.
