[ad_1]
The first wave of the Convid-19 pandemic began to sweep across India in early 2020, forcing schools and colleges to close as learning quickly shifted to online. As a result, the educational landscape in the country has changed dramatically as distance learning, focused on digital platforms, has become the new normal.
While digital transformation is always encouraging, it brings with it a number of new challenges that require adapted thinking and a more innovative approach. In online learning, maintaining academic integrity becomes a critical issue to protect the reputation of educational institutions and the legitimacy of online assessments and exams.
In an online learning environment, teachers are unable to supervise students as closely as they normally would in a physical classroom. It has sparked a surge in academic misconduct, with plagiarism at the forefront of this broader problem that hinders academic integrity. Today, plagiarism is more than just copying and pasting parts of text from other sources.
As education has evolved, methods of plagiarism have also taken various forms, demonstrating the need for educators to become more vigilant and take the necessary steps to minimize dishonest acts.
Factors that trigger deliberate plagiarism
There are numerous factors that cause students to resort to questionable means of tackling exams or exams. It involves striving for acceptance in top universities and colleges. Places at these universities are often limited to top performers, which leads to strong competition among students. Tremendous pressure to get the required scores can potentially lead to undesirable means of grading.
Peer and family pressures also contribute to academic dishonesty. Some students receive intensive scrutiny from family members to meet certain academic expectations, while others may feel pressured to emulate those of their classmates who are either doing exceptionally well or taking short cuts to good grades. And then there are students who lack the confidence or guidance to complete assignments or relevant assignments and turn to other means to get the results they want.
It is important to understand that not all plagiarism cases are deliberate. It can be argued that a significant proportion of plagiarism or other forms of misconduct occurs due to a lack of knowledge or understanding of the academic guidelines of students when completing term papers or exams. Bad habits can arise when writing assignments, such as copying and pasting text while trying to paraphrase original information, and incorrectly quoting or citing sources inappropriately.
Educating students from the outset about the importance of integrity and the impact of plagiarism on their academic path and career path can be of significant benefit and can guide them in the right direction. Equally important is helping students understand the importance of cultivating the right values ​​and ethics within them to ensure they are producing original work, whether in the academic or professional setting, in order to become competent and capable global citizens.
Plagiarism challenges for educators
While there are several types of plagiarism, either intentional or otherwise, some of the most demanding that educators may encounter include:
- Contract fraud – Students who commission an external party (with or without currency exchange) to complete their course work, which is then submitted as their own.
- Text manipulation – Swap characters / alphabets, replace spaces with invisible white text, insert text images and more to fool plagiarism detection tools.
- source C.or plagiarism – To copy someone else’s source code without attributing it to the owner and claiming it as his own. Also known as programming plagiarism.
- Self-plagiarism – Submission of an already published work by a student as a whole or reuse of parts of it in a new written work.
- Agreements between students – Students who work together to solve tasks that were intended for individual assessment and submission.
Approach the challenge with technology
Much is at stake for higher education institutions in India these days to develop students who truly achieve learning outcomes to meet the graduation requirements. Therefore, it has become extremely important for educators to take the right steps to maintain academic integrity at their institutions so that students can perform well and protect the institution’s reputation.
Thanks to technology that is fundamentally changing education, there are many highly secure and easy-to-use tools available to educators to promote responsible behavior. To deal with plagiarism, be it for exams, exams or the submission of student papers, teachers can use the latest plagiarism detection software to identify content similarities, code plagiarism in programming, text manipulation and the originality of student work.
Implementing this similarity detection software helps identify some of the most demanding cases of potential wrongdoing and provides educators with the ability to effectively evaluate online assignments, exams, and a variety of programming projects using artificial intelligence. The conduct of assessments is also greatly improved, as the entire process can now be managed electronically to enable efficient and unbiased assessment of tasks.
Similarity checking tools not only help teachers curb academic malpractice, but also help guide students on the right track and gain confidence in their ability to produce original work. It can be a crucial stepping stone in developing young minds to recognize the importance of honesty throughout their academic careers and to lay the foundation for successful careers.
(Chaitali Moitra, Regional Director of South Asia at Turnitin. Turnitin is an Internet-based plagiarism detection service operated by the US company Turnitin, LLC, a subsidiary of Advance Publications.)
[ad_2]
