One of the UK’s top educational institutions, Oxford University, has reportedly seen a marked increase in the incidents of plagiarism that the university’s senior proctor believes has largely been encouraged by the rise of internet usage.
According to recent media reports, the university’s senior proctor, professor Alan Grafen, claimed schools were responsible for accepting and thus encouraging the submission of work that is effectively cobbled together from the internet.
Grafen explained that students are increasingly using the ‘copy-and-paste’ tool to extract material from the internet that is not their own, and using this to construct their essays.
Concerns of this nature were raised previously when it emerged that students were buying essays from the internet and submitting them as their own coursework. Furthermore, a report published last year by the higher education technology organization Jisc warned that student plagiarism in the UK was common and likely to become even more so.
To address the problem, professor Grafen suggested that all the university’s new students should have to attend a lecture on plagiarism and learn exactly what is deemed unacceptable.
