Report Highlighting Academic Integrity

Introduction

Plagiarism is a state which occurs when someone steals others ideas and inscribes or published

as his/her own. It can be intentional or unintentional, by including it into ones own work without

complete acknowledgement (crediting the author or citing the source) (Lone, 2002). In most of

the UK universities, plagiarism is considered as knowledgeable and well-informed stealing, the

faculty in these universities hardly to-do and bother to govern that plagiarism content is

purposeful or student just copy and paste the words like wandering in the market partaking

overlooked to pay. According to Hyland(2015),in all universities of the United Kingdom, the

term plagiarism is defined as all academic work, written or otherwise, submitted by the students

to their instructors or other academic supervisors, is expected to be the result of their own

thoughts, research or self-expression.

Case # 1: Case of UK Nursing Students

According to Stephanie Jones at Nurse News Steph (2016),thousands of nurses entangled

duplicitous through academic courses in the United Kingdom. Moreover, these nurses have

undertaken penalty and faced ordered action for cheating in their university educations. In last

three years, the UK universities have scolded at least 1,706 nursing students for crimes for

instance plagiarism, conspiracy and copying other students. It is a matter of great concern

because this number can be increased as the authorities indicated that thousands other students

also marketing and selling modified essays through these websites. According to Polit and Beck

(2008), in the UK each year nursing academic papers high hundreds or low thousands were
traded to nursing students through firms. As cited by Pearce (2016) RCN (Royal College of

Nurses)professional lead education Anne Corrinn said that intentional cheating was totally

intolerable, but then again, many nursing students might not be accustomed with academic

resolutions. Likewise, many of the plagiarism cases were because of the lack of academic writing

convents as many students were not familiar with legal plagiarism; nursing students might not

know about the importance of correct referencing. Yet, the reason of this misconception was that

most of the nursing students enter in this field came from a diverse circumstances and

educational background, therefore, these students might not have skills and technicalities of

academic writings. Furthermore, Anne said that it is essential to educate these students and

improve and nurture their academic writing skills. In addition to this, Scott (2016) investigated

that in Edinburgh Napier University just about 300 nursing students were involved in cheating

but only five of them were stated for enquiry by qualification stage to prepare for investigation in

front of the director of boards. The university privileges that it acquired majority of the nursing

students than any other nursing university in the UK. As the University spokesperson told that

every so often plagiarism be indebted much more to simply than dishonesty so we put our effort

on the education of students and enforce them to pay full attention on upright training in their on-

paper work. A council of Deans of Health spokesperson told that there are70,000 nursing

students in the UK universities. He further said that even though any case of plagiarism is an

alarming situation and can be considered seriously, but in last few years the number of these type

of cases have been decreased almost 1% per year (Stephanie, 2016). The reason is that majority

of the students work hard and are serious about their professional life.

A spokesperson of National Medical Centre (NMC) identified that it was the responsibility of the

academic institutions to ensure the validity of the students who had passed all parts of their
modules (Stephanie, 2016). In addition to this, there could be no room for plagiarism and

cheating in nursing profession because nursing is directly concerned with the health of human

being. Thus, cheating in this profession can dismay many lives due to be in wrong hands because

a wide-ranging online plagiarism can put patients at risk (Price and Harrington, 2015). The

academic nursing institutions must have well-organized system to recognize the misconduct of

any nursing student, and in the meantime, take possible measures to make rapid arrangements

and address concerns about the demeanour of any nursing student, together with cheating and

plagiarism.

Cases of the UK Universities

As per the investigation of the Times newspaper The Times(2016), the universities in the

United Kingdom are said to be in the focus of a prevailing plagiarism, as the paper exposed that

in last three years, nearly 50,000 students were found shamefaced of cheating. Moreover, the

newspaper also revealed that as per the data obtained by Freedom of Information Act, usually

international students are the vilest lawbreakers of academic rules, as they are more than four

times expected to cheat in tests and assignments. The following are the two cases of plagiarism

from two well-known UK universities:

Case # 2: Case of Glasgow Caledonian University Student

A computer science student of Glasgow Caledonian University was suspect of cheating after an

instructor found resemblance between his coursework and his friends coursework (The Times,

2016). The student self-confessed that he convinced somebody to get their assignment. He tried

to change details and made some modification in code but it was clear that backgrounds of both
work are analogous (The Times, 2016). Both students were called by their instructor on separate

times and elucidate the summary of code, how it works. The reason behind that the instructor

needs to know the plagiarism material from code. The student thought that his work was well but

it was obvious that both coursework was by some means similar. Moreover, the student had

knowledge of theoretical concepts, thus he was satisfied that the instructors were more

compassionate. But in the end, the assessment was marked as fail and it was made the student to

resit assignment. At long last, the student was guilty and he admitted that from this experience,

he learned that do not attempt possessions, which cannot be explicated and not ever use other

students assignments (The Times, 2016).

Case # 3: Case of Royal Holloway University Student

A geography student of Royal Holloway University was suspected by duplicitous material after

anti-plagiarism software identified her essay as a cheated work. The student explained her case

by saying that after submission, my essay was held back. She was told by her instructor to be

present in an official meeting as she had been caught pledging plagiarism. The student was very

scared and confused about the problem because she knew that she had not cheated. In an official

meeting, she was told that one section of her essay had been identified as a similar content on a

website. Ultimately, she was found embarrassed of plagiarism but as it was her primary mistake

she only marked down by 10% on that coursework (The Times, 2016).

Conclusion

In my opinion, the current era of digital technology poses some great challenges in academic

writing. In this fast-paced modern world, the students not only access the internet through

desktop and laptops computers at home or at school but also access vast variety of information at
their finger tips by means of smart devices like notebooks, iPad, tablets, smartphones, etc. They

have easy wireless internet access from where they can extract all the needed information. On the

other hand, some teachers also provision the explosion of portable technologies to fit in digital

learning in their modules. Besides, there are many software in the market which can hide the

plagiarism content and makes it appear as the writers own work. That is why, these days it is a

matter of fact that plagiarism cannot be completely removed from the origins of writing in

academia. For this reason, the best way of avoiding plagiarism is to learn and engage the students

in an upright academic practice through the employment of basic principles of academic rules at

the initial stage of their academic career.

Additionally, avoiding plagiarism is not just a matter of correct referencing or paraphrasing, it is

about the well-organized arrangement of academic skills to make the best possible excellent

work as it can be. Nevertheless, it is not erroneous to integrate the words and ideas of other

people in ones own work, but to portray the work as ones own is wide of the mark. To

overcome this ethical issue, it is the responsibility of the teachers or instructors to teach the

students about the clarity of right plagiarism. The students must be extremely mingled into

dissertation groups of academic writing, in addition to this, they should recognize the causes of

plagiarism by knowing the framework and background of this ethical issue. The universities

should make policies in order to explain that citation is an agreement and the students should be

asked by their instructors to practice diverse types of ways of ascribing their own work and

external sources.

References
Hyland, K., (2015). Teaching and researching writing. UK: Routledge. Lone, A.A.(2002), . Title:

Things we should know about Plagiarism: An Academic analysis. Iqbal University of culture

and philosophy, University of Kashmir, pp. 1-2

Pearce, L., (2016). Clinical leaders of the future: The RCNs clinical leadership programme

offers multiple benefits for individuals and organisations, and its cost-effective. Nursing

Standard, 30(50), pp.38-39.

Polit, D.F. and Beck, C.T., (2008). Nursing research: Generating and assessing evidence for

nursing practice. United States: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Price, B. and Harrington, A., (2015). Critical thinking and writing for nursing students. United

Kingdom: Learning Matters.

Scott, G. ed., (2016). Cheating is never okay, but we shouldnt be too quick to judge. Journal of

Nursing Standards, pp. 7-8

Stephanie, J.B, (2016),. Thousands of UK nursing students caught cheating on courses.

Nursenewssteph,. [online]. [Accessed 12 Jan 2017]. Available at

https://rcni.com/nursing-standard/newsroom/news/thousands-uk-nursing-students-caught-

cheating-courses-61161

The Times (2016), The Epidemic of Plagiarism at universities, [online] [Accessed 12 Jan

2017}, Available at: <http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/letters/article4655312.ece >

The Times (2016), Universities face student cheating crises, [online] [Accessed 12 Jan 2017},

Available at: < http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article4654719.ece>