Plagiarism and the Internet :: Cheating Education Essays

Plagiarism and the Internet It appears that plagiarism is a problem that has very unclear guidelines according to most. People seem to be struggling with the concept of it in regards to the internet because others do realize the vastness of information on the internet is very difficult to regulate in plagiarism. The realization is that in many institutions instructors simply overlook the crime because they themselves find it too tedious to check all the information on the websites to verify their originality. This seems shocking because of all the warnings students receive about plagiarism. The largest concern it seems is finding ways to sift through all the information that is turned in for a paper. One of the websites used to aide in this process is turnitin.com. It is a place where students can send their papers to be checked. It searches the internet and finds anything that is plagiarized in the entire paper. This then also rids the instructor from having to check all the sources the student used because that is what the website does. "Who wants to sit around looking for websites trying to find out if a paper is plagiarized or not... pretty soon you're a private investigator." -- a Stanford University professor, from an article in TechWeb News. (http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism_stats.html) While the internet is so huge and many ideas circulate throughout it at all times, there are proper ways to do a research paper without having a problem with plagiarism. There are several websites that list the proper way to cite several types of information on the web. There are plenty of resources available giving out information and warnings about plagiarism. One website offers information about the situations instructor face when dealing with students who plagiarize. The website commented that it is something that can be  ¡Ãƒ a painful, time-consuming experience for faculty. ¡ÃƒÅ" Because there are different levels of plagiarism sometimes faculty feel that the punishments that universities give are too much and need to vary with the level of plagiarism.