Student Ethics In The Digital Age

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Student Ethics in the Digital Age Student ethics in the digital age are on a continuous decline and don’t seem to have a foreseeable change in the future. Students seem to have no grasp on the concept of cheating and the dangers it poses to them. One of the biggest examples of the degeneration of student ethics in the digital age is plagiarism and how the increase in availability of technology has given immoral students an easier way to cheat and have enticed them to do so more often. The internet has been a helpful tool for many years now, giving teachers and students alike the opportunity to find sources and collaborate with other people who are similarly oriented. However, it has also been a tool to cheat and steal ideas from works of…show more content…
Craig. In this article, Craig says that the reasons students cheat and plagiarize vary dramatically for each individual but the overall theme of those reasons is to “ avoid punishment and maximize personal gain.”(50) This is a common theme among students in high school and i see it happen all the time. These days students are expected to do more because they can and have the tools necessary to do so. This puts an immense pressure on students to complete all of their work and to be the best they possibly can. Some students crack under the pressure and either procrastinate until the last second or are too lazy to complete the assignment on their own. This ultimately leads to an increase in loopholes or shortcuts that students take to finish their assignment such as plagiarizing works from the internet or copying from fellow classmates. Craig also examines sites that allow students to purchase papers online that are nearly undetectable by usual methods. This has pushed institutes to use sites such as “TurnItIn” that have very intricate methods to detect plagiarized works. Although these websites have proven their abilities in detecting illicit works, they have issues detecting the works that students buy off of the internet because they are mostly original and aren’t usually found as fraudulent. Students will go to extreme lengths to find…show more content…
Bradley, she describes plagiarism in today’s society as being “rampant”.(240) She also states that, “ Roughly half of college students admit to plagiarizing..”(240) This is a very large number of students willing to defy authority and academic guidelines or rules in order to pass the class. This number is similar and/or greater in high school environments. Students are willing to cheat and plagiarize in order to make more time for sports or other extracurricular activities and don’t put as much effort into their school work as they should. College students are at an even larger disadvantage because professors expect more from their students at the same time that coaches are expecting more from their team members. Craig states this in his article when he says, “The pressure to get good grades also heavily influences students to cheat.”(50) These kinds of situations put an immense amount of pressure on students to perform as expected and ultimately leads the students to find faster and easier ways to complete assignments which often includes plagiarism and other forms of
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