Why is this poor academic practice?

This is poor academic practice because Alex: 

• has used unvalidated websites, rather than academic text books and journals;
• has cut-and-pasted verbatim (word-for-word) quotations into her essay, thereby failing to demonstrate comprehension and application of this material; and
• has not acknowledged her sources properly.

• Using someone else’s writing (e.g. found on the internet or in a book, copying a fellow student’s work or by using an essay-writing service) without referencing it makes it appear that you are trying to cheat – to pass their writing off as your own. This is against all Universities’ rules.

There are also some less obvious reasons why this constitutes poor academic practice:

•  Good academic writing should use the evidence to support the points/arguments you are making, rather than being used to make the point itself. 

• Using the internet to source evidence for academic work means you are much more likely to find poor quality sources of evidence that do not provide a credible, balanced and comprehensive perspective on the issue in question.

• If you cut and paste someone else’s writing then you are just demonstrating that you have found that information, not that you understand it or can apply it to the aim of your assignment. This is also the case with using a lot of direct quotes, but in this case it would not appear that you are trying to pass it off as your own work as you provide a reference. In either case, you will not achieve the depth and critical analysis in your work to achieve a good mark.

• A good assignment requires time spent planning the structure and content of the work at the start, to ensure the assignment aim is achieved and to make the writing easy and logical to read. Cutting and pasting someone else’s work and trying to make it fit with your assignment aim means this logical flow is lost and that you may not address all the marking criteria.

How would a marker detect that there was a problem with Alex’s work?

The marker might:

• notice one or more changes in style or formatting within the essay;
• observe a lack of application to nursing practice, and of reflection on Alex’s own clinical experience;
• discover, by running strings of text from the essay through an internet search engine, that Alex had used inappropriate or poorly referenced sources;
• take advice from one of the University’s Plagiarism/Academic Integrity Officers;
• seek to confirm any suspicion of poor academic practice by running the essay through text-matching software (in accordance with the University’s policy).

• All students have a writing style, which is very clear to the person marking the work. Marking a lot of assignments on the same subject/question makes the marker very sensitive to recognising each student’s personal writing style, that is, the way in which the student uses language and constructs sentences and paragraphs. When a student ‘lifts’ work from someone else and places it in their own work, it is very obvious because the style of writing suddenly changes. It is this change that makes most markers initially question if a student has plagiarised.

What can Alex do to improve the quality of her work and avoid the risk of being accused of plagiarism a second time?

• Alex should avoid cutting and pasting text directly into her assignment, but rather read the text, make notes on the most salient points in her own words and then use these points to support her writing (making sure she provides a reference to the original source) as she highlights the important issues to consider in addressing the assignment aim.

• Alex should avoid using the internet to source general evidence for academic work, but try to use more credible and trustworthy sources of evidence, such as databases of evidence or other sources provided by her University library.

• Alex should make a habit of keeping a careful note of the sources of evidence she uses even when just making notes to inform her assignment, as this will remind her that the ideas she has made notes on are not her own.

• Alex could start by devising and working to a study plan that ensures she allows sufficient time to prepare her academic work. This would involve planning the structure and content of the work, and then adding bullet points of ideas (referenced) drawn from the notes she has made from the evidence, to build a comprehensive and detailed essay plan. In this way, she will be forced to weave these ideas into her work using her own words, as she will not have perfect sentences to work with, and to make her own connections between sources of evidence and her developing argument. In the end, this will make her writing more analytical, logical and easier to read.

• Alex could use a publication such as ‘Cite them Right’ (Pears & Shields, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and/or guidance and resources provided by her Higher Education Institution to build academic understanding, skills and confidence.

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