Rising challenges of plagiarism in the era of online education

By Alisia Stren

Plagiarism is becoming an everyday occurrence among college students in online education. A student is more likely to copy another individual’s work than create his original work. Plagiarism is made more accessible by technology as students can easily access a wealth of information on different topics online.

Plagiarism has become increasingly popular, to the point that you hear about plagiarism in the news 2022. College students consider plagiarising necessary, seeing no wrong in the act. Undoubtedly, this affects the academic performance of college students as they rarely think for themselves. To reduce the plagiarism rate among students, a plagiarism checker of 10,000 words free helps to detect copied text. Due to the speed of recent plagiarism cases in 2022 in online education, plagiarism checkers are an easy remedy to check this rising occurrence. 

Plagiarism in online education

When you take the words or ideas of another person and present them as your own without providing credit to the source, you are committing plagiarism. Copying other people’s work is literary theft. It is frowned upon by schools for various reasons. Students who plagiarise break the law on intellectual property. 

Plagiarism does more harm than good in online education. It allows students

 to escape the critical thinking task and develop their original ideas. When given assignments, instead of using their own words, they resort to copying other people’s works. Plagiarism doesn’t have to be copying the creation of publications. A student can plagiarise by collaborating with a fellow student to reproduce that student’s work.

Self-plagiarism isn’t a strange concept. Many students are victims of self-plagiarism. Such happens when a student turns in their previous work for new research. Reusing some parts of old research for a new project falls in as self-plagiarism. Most times, students self-plagiarism unintentionally. Since it’s their work, they believe it is from them, so they can use it as often as they want to for different tasks, which is wrong. 

Even though teachers understand that copying ideas could happen unintentionally, there may still be consequences. Despite strict standards and the severe repercussions of plagiarism in academic settings, many students nevertheless engage in academic dishonesty. School educators must educate themselves on the warning signs of academic dishonesty and develop policies to address it.

How to avoid plagiarism

The occurrence of plagiarism can be avoided when intentional measures are taken. Below are a few ways to prevent plagiarism by school instructors and students.

Express your opinion

To avoid plagiarism, express all you have to say about a subject rather than simply repeating the ideas your source of information provides. It will help if you avoid plagiarising texts at all costs. Consider what distinctive viewpoint you may bring to your work that is entirely original to you and incorporate it into your work.  Remember that even if you make a passing reference to the words of another source to illustrate your idea, you should still follow the criteria in the source.

Use a plagiarism tool

Employing a tool that checks for plagiarism online helps identify a copied text. The originality of work is crucial, so choosing a good plagiarism tool will help students present unique papers. Plagiarism checkers examine the content of your text to identify any instances of copied material. The tool will indicate the words or sentences that need to be addressed and tell where the student originally got the work.

Emphasis on the uniqueness of research

Teachers can also adopt this method to avoid the submission of plagiarised works. Emphasizing the fact that the work should be unique is essential. As a tutor, you should make a conscious effort to let students know that you are looking for work that has not been published. To further help students, teachers need to get them ready by giving them assignments that will assist them in producing research papers that are both original and genuine. 

Conclusion

The benefits and drawbacks of online education are not enough to exonerate us from our responsibility to maintain academic honesty. It is vital to educate students about intellectual honesty and instruct them on how to avoid plagiarising others’ work. It is essential to understand the role it plays in one’s life and in developing informational skills. 

College instructors should ensure to show students the correct way to use the internet and develop a repository of examples to assist them in identifying what makes up high-quality content. They should also describe the abilities needed to jot down notes quickly and how they can later be applied to creating original work. 

Author’s Bio

Alisia Stren is an online instructor and a research writer. She has written various works about the online education system on academic blogs. She is a strong advocate of originality and intellectual honesty.