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Plagiarism And Its Effects On Students

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Online academic learning gave options for many students to return to school. Online education also opened up the doors for new ways of cheating. Plagiarism is defined as theft of ideas or work from others (Council of Writing Program Administrators, 2003). This can happen either accidentally or consciously. Higher education institutions now prioritize on educating the students on plagiarism to prevent it from happening. Institutions also set penalties when dishonesty occurs. The students’ understanding of plagiarism is critical in averting accidental or conscious cheating during their student and professional career. Plagiarism has many levels starting from not including a references with a paper, copying and pasting sections or purchasing papers online. Students know that it is wrong to copy someone’s work, but maybe because of time crunch or disinterest in the topic, they are not following the steps to prevent plagiarism from happening (Writing Tutorial Services, 2014).
Conscious plagiarism is when a student or researcher copies someone else’s work and does not give credit for that on purpose. This includes even when groups of people work together and the credit is not given to the other members of the group. According to Office of Research Integrity (1994) plagiarism can occur when members of a research group are unable to decide who came up with what idea.
Accidental plagiarism occurs when one is not giving proper credit to the work being referenced. This can be due

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