What is Field Knowledge

Plagiarism seems like a straightforward term that in institutions of higher education identifies an act of stealing ideas, usually in an assigned paper, without citing the author, and this type of incident usually results in the student who committed the infraction receiving a warning or a failing grade, and on the second infraction, the student usually receives a harsher form of punishment such as being dropped from the course or the incident is reported to the administration. These are the general positions that are described in many university policies. However, plagiarism can also be an accidental act on the part of a student because he or she has not learned how to properly cite a source yet and may not understand the importance of citing all information in a paper. For this reason, college students should not be immediately punished for something that may have been unintentional. Instead, when an infraction takes place, faculty members in higher education should facilitate understanding in students about citations so that incidences of plagiarism might decrease.