Plagiarism is always one of the main problems among students especially the undergraduates. Recently I have caught a few with plagiarized materials. In simple words, plagiarism is basically taking other people’s ideas and uses the ideas as one's own original work. Most students seem to think that it is not considered plagiarism as long as the authors' are cited somewhere in the assignment (or not cited…). Well, that notion is wrong. If you were to take someone else's idea, at least you must paraphrase it and then cite the author. If you were to insert the idea word by word, you must put the whole sentence in a quotation mark with the citation at the end. In the three cases that I have examined, the students simply cut-and-paste most of the materials found in the Web and combined them to make a complete project paper. They didn't even bother to change the logo of the company that they copied from the Web or the different fonts used. What is it with students nowadays? Do they think we are not going to notice when their writing suddenly miraculously improves? Or when suddenly all the bombastic words are expressed perfectly? Or when their grammatical errors are almost nil? Personally, I feel that the act is just simply an insult to my intelligence.
Still, I do not blame them 100 per cent. The universities and the academicians should also play their roles. Questions need to be asked. To what extend that academicians are willing to uphold their principles? Should we fail them, give warning or do nothing (grade the paper as a normal paper)? I know for sure that Western academicians adhere to zero tolerance for plagiarism. Most Western universities even required students to submit all their assignments directly to Turnitin online (one of widely used plagiarism software detection) before the assignments are graded by the lecturers. Personally, I believe that we should do the same in Malaysia. I don't mind about not having the software. I can still detect plagiarism manually through the internet by google-ing key words or sentences. But, students need to be told of the severity of the penalty and the universities along with the academicians should unite in our effort to curb this problem. Many things are acceptable or negotiable, but plagiarism should not be one of them.
1 comment:
Bunge, tell your VC or your dekan or better still your menteri pengajian tinggi to have a required writing course like Writing for Academic Purposes (WAP), then later bila nak graduate Writing in Business Settings. Writing is a skill. And universities and schools should develop students' skills, not simply expect students dah ada the skills when they enter uni :D
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