Students copying internet essays

College and sixth form teachers are becoming increasingly concerned about internet plagiarism amongst students.

Over half of the teachers who took part in a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) felt internet plagiarism was an issue.

Almost one in three of the 278 respondents said that at least half of all the work returned to their students was because it included material copied from the internet.

One teacher in the survey said that she had a piece of work so “blatantly 'cut and pasted' that it still contained adverts from the web page”.

Additionally the research found that nine in 10 teachers were concerned about the long-term effects plagiarism could have on students; they warned by copying internet material, many would lack the skills they appeared to have.

However, it seems that students are not being blamed for this. Just over half of teachers who responded came to their students' defence, claiming the learners did not have sufficient understanding of what is plagiarism and what counts as legitimate research.

Will Murray, director for the Government-funded Plagiarism Advisory Service, agreed. He told Computeractive: “In some cases pupils do not know they are plagiarising work when they collect different articles from the internet, as they usually make so many changes to their work. This makes it hard to differentiate between what has been cut and pasted and what is their own.”

Murray said students should keep a list of reference material to help them and also show their teachers which websites they had visited.

See also:

Students sue over plagiarism software

Anti-plagiarism firm Turnitin facing bill of $900,000  30 Mar 2007

Teachers want more classroom internet access

Online information enters the classroom  01 Sep 2006

Students 'think copying work OK'

Today's online-savvy students more prone to plagiarism, intentionally or unintentionally  21 Jun 2006

Chatrooms to lead plagiarism fight

Experts urge academia to adopt e-learning services and develop collaborative communities online  10 May 2006

Students using technology to cheat

Cheating by texting and surfing  05 Apr 2006

Teachers - we need you!

Is IT good for education  17 Dec 2004

Computers in a class of their own

PCs play an important role in child and adult education, but do they help you learn or merely encourage cheating? John Rennie sat at the back of the class to find out.  04 Aug 2003

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