How do we overcome Plagiarism in Universities.

(Muhammad Faizan Jamil, Lahore, Pakistan)

Plagiarism is, copy of other person’s words ideas, or concepts without giving proper refrence, and use by any person as his/her own material. Plagiarism is consider as academic dishonesty, but now days plegiarism is very common in academic field, particularly in universities. Plegiarism is becoming a way to perform academic work including assignments, reflection papers, paper reports etc. Most of students copy the material from internet or bring from their peers for the submition, students consider this way more convenient and less time taking to submit the work to their teachers. This academic crime should cover up to achieve better learning process and maintain high academic progress.

To resolve this type of un-ethical and illegal way of academic act, we should know the main reasons through which students plagiarize the material in universities. Let’s take the example of universities of Lahore, the plagiarism rate in the universities of Lahore is very high, students prefer the plagiarize work for the submition of academic work to their teachers. To resolve this problem we should have to perform participatory observation as well as un-participatory observation to examine academic surroundings of the universities, on the behalf of which we able to make the main problem point.

Than we have to do literature review, by that we can able to get an idea of previous studies on plagiarism. After doing Literature review, we have to interview the students, teachers and academic managers (Policy makers). In these interviews we ask students about the main reasons and such difficulties or issues which emphasise them to submit plagiarized material to their teachers, and ask them the alternative solutions by which students will not prefer plagiarism specially in academic field. We ask such questions to teachers while interviewing them, that what steps teachers perform that indicates students to perform plagiarism and which steps teachers should take to overcome plagiarism in academic field. Academic policies have also very deep link with the plagiarism activities, we should also discuse these questions with the University policies makers (management/administrators) and suggest them to make such rules and regulations which help us to discard the concept of plagiarism in practical meaning during university life.

After the whole procedure of interviews, combine the results and after performing analysis, execute the solutions to resolve the problem of plagiarism. Most of reasons for which students do plagiarism is the fear of good grades, Medium of writing problem, lake of practical work(Activities), lake of intrest in particular subject etc.

To overcome the concept of plagiarism, we should have to run a Pamphet compeign in Universities, in which we address the concept of plagiarism to the students, teachers and management organizers, and conduct a lecture on anti-plagiarism to give some particular solutions regarding plagiarism. The very impotant solution to control plagiarism is to design such courses which includes more practical work, and teachers should have to appreciate those students who give their own work (original ideas), do not criticize the efforts of students who done the work by his/her self.

To check that, our compeign against plagiarism has bring any change or not, we can check the progress in some particular ways which give us the progress results aginst plagiarism. We can also do the response interviews of students and teachers after some period of time, from where we start our plagiarism compeign.
 

Muhammad Faizan Jamil
About the Author: Muhammad Faizan Jamil Read More Articles by Muhammad Faizan Jamil: 14 Articles with 14938 views Student of Sociology, Social research & Blog writter... View More