Too often, the Internet is abused or abused by students and faculty, with the legal and ethical implications that come with it. Plagiarism has reached epidemic proportions. Whether a person cuts and pastes uploaded articles or does not cite sources correctly, the result is a form of plagiarism. Less recognized is the fact that plagiarism can also involve copyright or trademark infringement. Issues of plagiarism and violations raise legal and ethical concerns, which are discussed in this paper. These problems need to be more widely recognized and addressed, preferably through increased awareness and improved pedagogical treatment. Wu, H. C., Chou, C., Ke, H. R., & Wang, M.
H. (2010). Student misconceptions about copyright laws for digital library resources. The Electronic Library, 30(2), 197-209. doi: 10.1108/02640471011033576 There are a number of strategies for modifying assessments to try to be fair while recognizing how busy teachers generally are. One is to supplement conventional assignments or tests with portfolios, which are collections of a student`s work that demonstrate a student`s development over time and typically include some sort of reflective or evaluative commentary from the student, teacher, or both (Carothers & Taylor, 2003; Wesson and King, 1996). Another is to develop a system whereby the student can record observations regularly, albeit briefly, and informally, for subsequent examination and evaluation. A third strategy is to recruit help from educational assistants, who are sometimes there to help a student with a disability. An assistant can often take a short test or activity with the student and later report the results and discuss them with you. Keep in mind that a score doesn`t always mean a test.
Projects and observations can also be meaningful and effective evaluations. “Common core standards” are an attempt to create a “level playing field”. The process began in 2009 with a group of principals and school officials. The idea was to create real and relevant learning objectives that can be adopted by states and get our students to learn the same things at the same time. With this idea, the same student from Tennessee would work to the same standards as the student from Virginia. However, the CCS was neither commissioned by the federal government nor created by the federal government, and it is important to know that. It was a government initiative and states had the right to adopt or not adopt the standards. Not all States have adopted CEB, and some have adopted the standards and then repealed them. For more information about Common Core Standards, see Common Core State Standards Initiative. The problem has become so pervasive that a number of universities have websites dedicated to the topic [3] and several organizations have been founded with the intention of tackling the issue. [4] The University of Alberta publishes an online pedagogical guide on e-plagiarism.
[5] This site offers ideas on why students plagiarize and suggestions for detecting plagiarism. It also contains a number of ideas on how to prevent such behavior. The website includes data from a 1999 survey conducted by Duke University`s Center of Academic Integrity. This survey of 2100 U.S. students reported that 68% of students surveyed admitted to committing at least one academic offense, including plagiarism. [Owings, A31] In addition, the results of the 2003 National Student Engagement Survey (NSS) indicated as one of their “disappointing results” that “87% of all students report that their peers copy and paste at least `sometimes` information from the Web or the Internet to obtain reports or articles without citing the source.” [6] The ease of obtaining information on the Internet, the ease of manipulating this data with computers, and changing intellectual property rules have made plagiarism easy to perform and difficult to detect. In other words, you are not giving up your constitutional rights by going to school. However, the courts have recognized that the uniqueness of the school environment requires that certain freedoms be suppressed in the interest of maintaining a safe and orderly learning environment. According to the “in loco parentis” doctrine, school officials are more than government officials; They are, in the legal sense, the temporary parents of their pupils. What exactly allows them to do and say is controversial and has given rise to numerous legal challenges, many of which involve the Supreme Court. Virtually every college or university in the country requires at least one English composition course, a class where students are expected to improve their writing skills and also improve their research skills.
In addition, many lecturers assign sessional work or research papers to their students in a number of other classes. It is common for these students to use the Internet for the research portion of these assignments, and such use is quite appropriate. Many, if not most, of these students will then use the research materials and information they received in the creation of their papers. However, as Professor McCabe suggested, an appalling number of these students abuse the material and information they find on the Internet. These students will use the internet to find an article to submit rather than using it to find the information needed to start creating their own article. There are a variety of websites that provide documents for anyone who wants to buy one on any of the many topics. [2] In addition, an enterprising student who does not want to purchase work can upload one or more documents or articles on a topic and then “copy and paste” the material into an “original” document, which the student can then submit. As Professor McCabe pointed out, many students commit such “copy and paste” plagiarism, and nearly half of the students surveyed consider such behavior trivial or do not realize that it is a form of plagiarism.