Internet plagiarism as flash point and folklore: Do high school students plagiarize more from Internet sources than from print-based sources?

摘要

Reports of Internet plagiarism abound in the media. Some English teachers respond to these reports by discouraging or prohibiting Internet research in an era when most high school students prefer to do research online. Do high school students plagiarize more when they do Internet research and less when they do research in books and printed articles?;To address this question, Chapter 1 reviews theoretical discussions and research findings on student plagiarism and the Internet. Chapter 2 reviews methods of data collection and categorization. Chapter 3 conveys the findings of the analysis of a sample of high school student research papers. The Chi-square test of independence determined the relationship between the type of source (traditional print or Internet) from which students gathered information and the "acceptability" or "unacceptability" of individual passages from the papers, each traced to its source text and analyzed in terms of high school writing standards and citation practice. Contrary to what one would expect from reports of an Internet plagiarism "plague," Internet-based passages were less likely to contain incidents of textual unacceptability. Instead, print-based passages were more highly related to poor appropriation of source text, such as failures to cite paraphrased text or information, and failures to use quotation marks where needed.;Furthermore, the findings reveal a deceptive citation practice not previously discussed in plagiarism literature which I coined "third party" fraud. Prevalent in this study's sample, third party fraud was found to be more strongly related to print-based passages than to Internet-based passages.;Chapter 4 concludes the study with recommendations for teachers on high school research writing assignments. Recommendations are based on findings from the Chi-square analysis, interviews with student and teacher participants, and current pedagogical research. From the standpoint of organizational improvement, the key recommendation is that instead of discouraging or forbidding students from using the Internet in efforts to prevent plagiarism, schools should teach students reading and writing practices that help them engage with the thoughts of others and express them in an acceptable way, whether those thoughts are conveyed through traditional print or Internet-based sources.