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Some polls taken recently indicate that upwards of 70% of college students admit to cheating of some kind during their college careers. Obviously for those of us who are charged with educating college students this is very disturbing. What's worse, many don't seem to understand why cheating is wrong. I want to clarify the issue involved here because the problem is important and not uncommon in online classes.

The whole point of education is for you to learn something useful. Knowing something doesn't simply mean being able to look it up. This being the case the point of academic assignments such as exams and papers is not for you to simply provide the instructor with information that is accurate but to demonstrate that you have mastered the concepts involved. Copying another person's work simply doesn't demonstrate that you have the knowledge; only that you were able to locate it and copy it. This is not what it means to be educated and have knowledge! Of course, it's also inherently dishonest and in some sense constitutes theft. If someone were to use your car without your permission you would be very distressed! If someone were to use your ideas without your permission you should be equally distressed. In practical terms we cannot always get permission to use someone's words (since the author may be inaccessible or deceased) so the least we should do is to give credit to them by proper citation. Failure to do this is plagiarism.

Please bear something else in mind. If it is easy for you to find something online to copy and use as your own it will be easy for me to find that you've done this. This raises one last point about plagiarism. Please be aware of the impression you create when you hand in a plagiarized assignment. What it tells an instructor is that you don't care about the knowledge you are being taught and that you have contempt for the academic process. Also, it tells an instructor that you don't think they're very bright. Essentially it means you think that an instructor is not smart enough to tell the difference between your own work and something that has been copied. Of course, no instructor has read everything available online but that's not necessary. We each have a certain style of writing and a basic set of words in our written vocabulary. Deviations from this are easily detectable.

I hope this issue doesn't come up this semester but I can tell you that it always has in the past. I always warn students against plagiarism and always get a few who plagiarize their assignments (and earn zeros and sometimes even fail the class). Learning should be an enjoyable and rewarding process. We should have a fun semester engaging in interesting conversations and addressing interesting issues. You'll get a lot out of this if you can just be yourself. Don't try to be someone else by using someone else's words. Your words are interesting enough and they are the ones I want to hear!

Learn more about this author, Kevin J. Browne.
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