Internet and Academic Misconduct in High Education

Despite the educators' efforts to uphold high levels of academic integrity, cases of dishonesty have been increasing. Although, even before the introduction of the internet, there were cases of cheating in academics, the rise of the internet makes it easy to fabricate and plagiarize content. Initially, for academic misconduct to occur, someone had to find hard copy books and other learning materials to get information. Still, with the introduction of online learning, articles, books, and other academic sources, students can easily search for content and copy and paste. Students are aware of academic misconduct but want to excel in academics without committing to being responsible, honest, fair, trustworthy, and respectful. However, although the internet contributes to academic misconduct due to easy access to articles and other academic materials, there is a lack of strict policies and consequences for misconduct and proper guidance on what misconduct entails, which lead to rising cases.

In higher education, dishonesty could entail plagiarism, impersonation, altering academic documents, or copying answers from other students' work if the institution lacks clear policies. Misconduct in higher education mainly originates from peer behavior if the school administrators lack proper strategies to encourage academic integrity (Hughes and McCabe, 2006). For instance, if students realize that others have been plagiarizing, copying answers, and using other unfair means without being noticed to excel, they could be tempted to cheat to remain competitive in the class. In addition, damaging resources in the library and altering documents such as transcripts could also be termed academic misconduct. Also, it could be challenging for students to learn a second language to use expressions and make sentence structures without plagiarism (Hughes and McCabe, 2006). However, in some instances, the administration fails to educate new students on academic integrity and what misconduct entails, and the possible consequences during orientation. Therefore, although the easy access to learning materials on the internet contributes significantly to the increased level of academic misconduct, the administration could curb such behavior by clearly training students during orientation, which entails academic integrity and misconduct.

Moreover, in other instances, students lack adequate knowledge of what constitutes academic misconduct and the heightened cases (Perry, 2010). However, the increased plagiarism and misconduct could be contributed by the online enterprises that make customized research papers readily available to students if they lack proper guidance on utilizing the materials to avoid misconduct (Perry, 2010). In addition to the impact of the internet, there is a wide range of literature regarding academic misconduct. For instance, educators and students could hold different perceptions, attitudes, and understanding of academic integrity/ misconduct. However, the increased concern about plagiarism and what it constitutes increased with the introduction of the internet and the establishment of online enterprises dealing with selling academic papers (Perry, 2010). However, there still exists confusion as different institutions have different interpretations, consequences, and policies regarding misconduct and reinforcement of academic integrity. Therefore, although the internet plays a vital role in the increasing academic misconduct, it is a lack of guidance on what misconduct entails and a lack of proper strategies to enhance academic integrity that contributes to misconduct to a great extent.

Although most universities are struggling to eradicate cases of plagiarism, the introduction of Apps such as Turnitin helps in encouraging students to avoid academic misconduct by presenting their original work. Furthermore, the internet makes information readily accessible, making it easy for students to gather relevant information for their research papers and identify research gaps (Batane, 2010). However, if no strict rules are set to curb plagiarism, students could be tempted to copy and paste, hindering creativity and innovativeness. The Application has gained popularity in recent years due to the increased use of the internet in learning to combat academic misconduct. For instance, approximately 65% of students utilize the software, although others felt that it deterred them from performing well in academics due to detection of plagiarism (Batane, 2010). However, it ensures that students are not tempted to cheat academically. Therefore, although the internet has made work easier for educators and students, the establishment of the Turnitin software plays a critical role in helping educators and students detect plagiarism in their academic work to promote academic integrity.

However, the school administration should have appropriate strategies for identifying ghostwriters and plagiarized work as they are the primary forms of misconduct. In most cases, ghostwriters could fail to adhere to the paper's guidelines or present a similar paper which could be easy for the educators to detect (Sivasubramaniam, Kostelidou and Ramachandran, 2016). However, although institutions have established software such as Turnitin to curb plagiarism, there has been no solution to the issue of ghost writers and purchasing academic papers to excel. For instance, it could be difficult for educators to detect ghostwriters or purchased papers if all guidelines and academic integrity are upheld. Although research indicates that 60% of articles written by ghostwriters can be detected through content matching, most of the ghostwriters are experts (Sivasubramaniam, Kostelidou and Ramachandran, 2016). They tend to ensure that the papers have zero plagiarism and follow the academic policies. Therefore, although the internet could increase academic misconduct, apps such as Turnitin and hence lack of strict punishments for misconduct lead to increased cases of misconduct. Therefore, too much inclusion of the internet in education has worsened the rate of academic misconduct. Students have become lazy in being creative and overly rely on the internet to obtain content increasing the rate of cheating, ghostwriting paper purchasing, and plagiarism.

However, although the internet contributes to academic misconduct due to easy access to articles and other academic materials, it is a lack of strict policies and consequences for misconduct and lack of proper guidance on what misconduct entails that lead to the rising cases of academic misconduct. Therefore, lack of guidance on what misconduct entails and the lack of proper strategies to enhance academic integrity contribute to misconduct to a great extent. However, in some instances, the administration fails to educate new students on academic integrity and offers the team what misconduct entails and the possible consequences during orientation. However, educators and students could hold different perceptions, attitudes, and understanding of academic integrity/ misconduct. However, although institutions have established software such as Turnitin to curb plagiarism, there has been no solution to the issue of ghost writers and purchasing academic papers to excel. Students have become lazy in being creative and overly rely on the internet to obtain content increasing the rate of cheating, ghostwriting paper purchasing, and plagiarism. However, although the internet could increase academic misconduct, apps such as Turnitin and hence lack of strict punishments for misconduct lead to increased misconduct cases.

Bibliography

Batane, T., 2010. Turning to Turnitin to fight plagiarism among university students. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 13(2), pp.1-12.

Hughes, J. and McCabe, D., 2006. Understanding Academic Misconduct. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 36(1), pp.49-63.

Perry, B., 2010. Exploring academic misconduct: Some insights into student behaviour. Active Learning in Higher Education, 11(2), pp.97-108.

Sivasubramaniam, S., Kostelidou, K. and Ramachandran, S., 2016. A close encounter with ghost-writers: an initial exploration study on background, strategies and attitudes of independent essay providers. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 12(1), pp.1-14.