Report Highlighting Academic Integrity Introduction Plagiarism is a state which occurs when someone steals others’ ideas and inscribes or published as his/her own. It can be intentional or unintentional, by including it into one’s own work without complete acknowledgement (crediting the author or citing the source) (Lone, 2002). In most of the UK universities, plagiarism is considered as knowledgeable and well-informed stealing, the faculty in these universities hardly to-do and bother to govern that plagiarism content is purposeful or student just copy and paste the words like wandering in the market partaking overlooked to pay. According to Hyland(2015),in all universities of the United Kingdom, the term plagiarism is defined as “all academic work, written or otherwise, submitted by the students to their instructors or other academic supervisors, is expected to be the result of their own thoughts, research or self-expression”. Case # 1: Case of UK Nursing Students According to Stephanie Jones at Nurse News Steph (2016),thousands of nurses entangled duplicitous through academic courses in the United Kingdom. Moreover, these nurses have undertaken penalty and faced ordered action for cheating in their university educations. In last three years, the UK universities have scolded at least 1,706 nursing students for crimes for instance plagiarism, conspiracy and copying other students. It is a matter of great concern because this number can be increased as the authorities indicated that thousands other students also marketing and selling modified essays through these websites. According to Polit and Beck (2008), in the UK each year nursing academic papers “high hundreds or low thousands’ were
traded to nursing students through firms. As cited by Pearce (2016) RCN (Royal College of Nurses)professional lead education Anne Corrinn said that intentional cheating was totally intolerable, but then again, many nursing students might not be accustomed with academic resolutions. Likewise, many of the plagiarism cases were because of the lack of academic writing convents as many students were not familiar with legal plagiarism; nursing students might not know about the importance of correct referencing. Yet, the reason of this misconception was that most of the nursing students enter in this field came from a diverse circumstances and educational background, therefore, these students might not have skills and technicalities of academic writings. Furthermore, Anne said that it is essential to educate these students and improve and nurture their academic writing skills. In addition to this, Scott (2016) investigated that in Edinburgh Napier University just about 300 nursing students were involved in cheating but only five of them were stated for enquiry by qualification stage to prepare for investigation in front of the director of boards. The university privileges that it acquired majority of the nursing students than any other nursing university in the UK. As the University spokesperson told that every so often plagiarism be indebted much more to simply than dishonesty so we put our effort on the education of students and enforce them to pay full attention on upright training in their onpaper work. A council of Deans of Health spokesperson told that there are70,000 nursing students in the UK universities. He further said that even though any case of plagiarism is an alarming situation and can be considered seriously, but in last few years the number of these type of cases have been decreased almost 1% per year (Stephanie, 2016). The reason is that majority of the students work hard and are serious about their professional life. A spokesperson of National Medical Centre (NMC) identified that it was the responsibility of the academic institutions to ensure the validity of the students who had passed all parts of their
modules (Stephanie, 2016). In addition to this, there could be no room for plagiarism and cheating in nursing profession because nursing is directly concerned with the health of human being. Thus, cheating in this profession can dismay many lives due to be in wrong hands because a wide-ranging online plagiarism can put patients at risk (Price and Harrington, 2015). The academic nursing institutions must have well-organized system to recognize the misconduct of any nursing student, and in the meantime, take possible measures to make rapid arrangements and address concerns about the demeanour of any nursing student, together with cheating and plagiarism. Cases of the UK Universities As per the investigation of ‘the Times’ newspaper The Times(2016), the universities in the United Kingdom are said to be in the focus of a prevailing plagiarism, as the paper exposed that in last three years, nearly 50,000 students were found shamefaced of cheating. Moreover, the newspaper also revealed that as per the data obtained by Freedom of Information Act, usually international students are the vilest lawbreakers of academic rules, as they are more than four times expected to cheat in tests and assignments. The following are the two cases of plagiarism from two well-known UK universities: Case # 2: Case of Glasgow Caledonian University Student A computer science student of Glasgow Caledonian University was suspect of cheating after an instructor found resemblance between his coursework and his friend’s coursework (The Times, 2016). The student self-confessed that he convinced somebody to get their assignment. He tried to change details and made some modification in code but it was clear that backgrounds of both
work are analogous (The Times, 2016). Both students were called by their instructor on separate times and elucidate the summary of code, how it works. The reason behind that the instructor needs to know the plagiarism material from code. The student thought that his work was well but it was obvious that both coursework was by some means similar. Moreover, the student had knowledge of theoretical concepts, thus he was satisfied that the instructors were more compassionate. But in the end, the assessment was marked as fail and it was made the student to resit assignment. At long last, the student was guilty and he admitted that from this experience, he learned that do not attempt possessions, which cannot be explicated and not ever use other students’ assignments (The Times, 2016). Case # 3: Case of Royal Holloway University Student A geography student of Royal Holloway University was suspected by duplicitous material after anti-plagiarism software identified her essay as a cheated work. The student explained her case by saying that after submission, my essay was held back. She was told by her instructor to be present in an official meeting as she had been caught pledging plagiarism. The student was very scared and confused about the problem because she knew that she had not cheated. In an official meeting, she was told that one section of her essay had been identified as a similar content on a website. Ultimately, she was found embarrassed of plagiarism but as it was her primary mistake she only marked down by 10% on that coursework (The Times, 2016). Conclusion In my opinion, the current era of digital technology poses some great challenges in academic writing. In this fast-paced modern world, the students not only access the internet through desktop and laptops computers at home or at school but also access vast variety of information at
their finger tips by means of smart devices like notebooks, iPad, tablets, smartphones, etc. They have easy wireless internet access from where they can extract all the needed information. On the other hand, some teachers also provision the explosion of portable technologies to fit in digital learning in their modules. Besides, there are many software in the market which can hide the plagiarism content and makes it appear as the writer’s own work. That is why, these days it is a matter of fact that plagiarism cannot be completely removed from the origins of writing in academia. For this reason, the best way of avoiding plagiarism is to learn and engage the students in an upright academic practice through the employment of basic principles of academic rules at the initial stage of their academic career. Additionally, avoiding plagiarism is not just a matter of correct referencing or paraphrasing, it is about the well-organized arrangement of academic skills to make the best possible excellent work as it can be. Nevertheless, it is not erroneous to integrate the words and ideas of other people in one’s own work, but to portray the work as one’s own is wide of the mark. To overcome this ethical issue, it is the responsibility of the teachers or instructors to teach the students about the clarity of right plagiarism. The students must be extremely mingled into dissertation groups of academic writing, in addition to this, they should recognize the causes of plagiarism by knowing the framework and background of this ethical issue. The universities should make policies in order to explain that citation is an agreement and the students should be asked by their instructors to practice diverse types of ways of ascribing their own work and external sources. References
Hyland, K., (2015). Teaching and researching writing. UK: Routledge. Lone, A.A.(2002), . Title: Things we should know about Plagiarism: An Academic analysis. Iqbal University of culture and philosophy, University of Kashmir, pp. 1-2 Pearce, L., (2016). Clinical leaders of the future: The RCN’s clinical leadership programme offers multiple benefits for individuals and organisations, and it’s cost-effective. Nursing Standard, 30(50), pp.38-39. Polit, D.F. and Beck, C.T., (2008). Nursing research: Generating and assessing evidence for nursing practice. United States: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Price, B. and Harrington, A., (2015). Critical thinking and writing for nursing students. United Kingdom: Learning Matters. Scott, G. ed., (2016). Cheating is never okay, but we shouldn’t be too quick to judge. Journal of Nursing Standards, pp. 7-8 Stephanie, J.B, (2016),. Thousands of UK nursing students caught cheating on courses. Nursenewssteph,.
[online].
[Accessed
12
Jan
2017].
Available
at
https://rcni.com/nursing-standard/newsroom/news/thousands-uk-nursing-students-caughtcheating-courses-61161 The Times (2016), “The Epidemic of Plagiarism at universities”, [online] [Accessed 12 Jan 2017}, Available at: <http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/letters/article4655312.ece > The Times (2016), “Universities face student cheating crises”, [online] [Accessed 12 Jan 2017}, Available at: < http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article4654719.ece>