Combating Plagiarism: Strategies for Universities and Students - Essay

This essay addresses the pervasive issue of plagiarism in universities, defining it as the act of presenting someone else's work as one's own without proper credit. It explores the reasons behind student plagiarism, including fear of failure, poor time management, perceived unimportance of assignments, generalized assignment topics, and lack of institutional reporting and penalties. The essay suggests several strategies to reduce plagiarism, such as informing students about the consequences, emphasizing proper citation, educating on research importance, teaching effective note-taking, and insisting on citations even in drafts. It concludes by highlighting the benefits of avoiding plagiarism for students, institutions, and the academic world, emphasizing increased productivity, improved research skills, and the development of essential writing skills, ultimately contributing positively to professional values. Desklib provides access to this document and many other resources for students.

Running head:Essay 1
ESSAY ON PLAGIARISM
Presented by
Student affiliation
Supervisor

Running head:Essay 2
“Plagiarism refers to the act of stealing someone else work and using the ideas, words or
work as your own working not even crediting the source or the owner” (Batane 2010, p.1).
Plagiarism is an academic theft which a person tries to present an old idea, words or document as
a new document derived from an existing source.
In the current world in Universities, plagiarism has become rampant among students. Most of
the students rely on plagiarized work to conduct their research, assignments and essays. It is
important to understand the reasons why the students plagiarize their work in order to find ways
of reducing the plagiarism in the current world especially in the Universities.
Most students fall into the trap of plagiarism because of the following reasons; students in the
universities fear to failure or either taking risks in submitting their own original work. Another
reason is that the students don’t know how to manage time well since they lack skills of
managing time so they end up plagiarizing their work. “Students may also view the work given
by the tutors which could be documentation, research and assignments of less important hence
look for easy way of finishing the work in time without fear of the consequences of plagiarism”
(Mccabe 2008,p.237).
Another reason that most students plagiarize their work is because of the nature of work that
the teachers give generalized assignments which are easy to plagiarize instead of giving in depth
analysis assignments. Lastly institutions in most cases do not report any cases of cheating that
may arise in the institutions and set strict penalties.
There are a number of ways in which plagiarism can be avoided or reduced in any institution
of learning which involves; first the students should be informed on the consequences of
plagiarism and strict penalties should be levied on them. The students should also be informed
about the importance of citing their work and also protecting their own work from plagiarism. It
will also be important to educate students on importance of doing research and avoiding
plagiarism. “Scholars and teachers should also help the students to learn more from examples
presented in source documents in different citation styles” (Ramzan&Munir 2012,p.73). In
addition students should be taught on the strategies that will be used to organize their notes in
order to avoid plagiarism and also insisting on the use of citations even if in drafts

Running head:Essay 3
In conclusion, there is a benefit for the students, institution and the whole academic world on
the importance of avoiding plagiarism in their work. The professional world should try their
level best to avoid plagiarism and sensitize the community on the importance plagiarism free
research.. Awareness can lead to students increasing productivity, should improve research and
develop essential writing skills and lastly to review performance that will contribute positively to
values of their profession in future.

Running head:Essay 4
References
Batane, T., 2010. Turning to Turnitin to fight plagiarism among university students. Journal of Educational
Technology & Society, 13(2), p.1.
McCabe, D., 2005. Cheating: Why students do it and how we can help them stop. Guiding students from
cheating and plagiarism to honesty and integrity: Strategies for change, pp.237-242.
Ramzan, M., Munir, M.A., Siddique, N. and Asif, M., 2012. Awareness about plagiarism amongst
university students in Pakistan. Higher education, 64(1), pp.73-84.
Shahabuddin, S., 2009. Plagiarism in Academia. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education, 21(3), pp.353-359.