Sponsoring Academic Integrity: The Role of Human and Informational Sources of Scholarship in Adoption of Plagiarism-Avoiding Techniques among Research Students of Social Sciences

Plagiarism is a serious offense that defies the ethics of scholarship and research. Research students need to pay substantive attention to the dynamics and contours of plagiarism in their creative, ethical, and academic endeavors. Scholarship avenues such as online tutorials and work assignments are important sources of instructions for plagiarism-avoidance among students. The current study explores the frequency of consultation of scholarship avenues and the usage of plagiarism-avoidance techniques among research students in social sciences. The study also recommends a scale to investigate plagiarism-avoidance techniques. Furthermore, it also examines the level of the study in predicting the usage of plagiarism-avoidance. Using the online survey technique, 108 research students from Pakistan were sampled. The questionnaire was uploaded on several student-based research groups of social media, including; Facebook, and Yahoo groups. Bivariate linear regression analysis was used for hypothesis testing. Findings revealed that scholarship avenues lead to greater usage of plagiarism-avoidance techniques among research students (R2 =0.065). Supervisors, class-fellows, colleagues, and faculty of the department are prominent human scholarship avenues. Similarly, articles and books from the web, books from the library, the anti-plagiarism policy of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), and lectures delivered in the classroom were leading informational scholarship avenues. Stage of the study and consultation of the scholarship avenues were predictors of usage of plagiarism-avoidance techniques. It is recommended that (i) plagiarism-avoidance is promoted through prevention rather than detection, and that (ii) scholarship avenues (e.g. Delivering lectures, institutional policy, and interaction with relevant websites) are used for enhancing awareness about intellectual dishonesty.

Comparative Performance of the Students of Higher Secondary Schools and College at Intermediate Level in Punjab

The main purpose of the study was to evaluate the overall performance of the students of higher secondary schools and colleges at intermediate level in Punjab. Higher secondary school level is the intermediate stage, where students have to carry out their future planning. It is necessary to improve the academic performance of students at higher secondary level of education, particularly in the field of Mathematics because the mathematics curriculum identifies the different attributes of learning which is to be assessed through the performance of students. Therefore the study was conducted to evaluate the performance of the mathematics students of HSSs and colleges at intermediate level. The major objectives of the study were to analyze overall performance of the students at intermediate level in higher secondary schools and colleges in a comparative perspective; to investigate factors affecting teaching-learning environment faced by the students and teachers in Higher Secondary Schools and Colleges of Punjab; to evaluate performance of male and female students of Mathematics in Higher Secondary Schools and Colleges and to explore performance of rural and urban area students of Mathematics. The population of the study comprised 946 principals, 1336 maths teachers and 73455 maths students of higher secondary schools and colleges of Punjab province. Province of Punjab is densely populated and consists of 37 districts. These districts are administratively divided into nine divisions. Each division has a BISE (Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education). Keeping in view the short span of time and resources constraints, the study was delimited to two Boards, i-e Rawalpindi and Sargodha. For evaluation of the performance of the students in comparative perspective, the research was also delimited the results of the students of the Mathematics part-1 at intermediate level in higher secondary schools and colleges. The researcher used three questionnaires (First for the principals, second for the mathematics teachers and third for the students of mathematics part-2) as research instruments. The researcher personally visited the selected institutions and the questionnaires were administered to 440 mathematics students of part-2 at intermediate level, 60 mathematics teachers and 48 principals of Government higher secondary schools and Government colleges. The respondents were requested to give their responses to each item on three-point Likert Rating Scale. The researcher also visited BISE Rawalpindi and BISE Sargodha for obtaining HSSC-I Annual Examination 2012 results of the students included in the sample. The data were analyzed by using SPSS version-21 and statistical techniques (ttest, chi-square-test “Monto Carlo Simulation Method”). Themain conclusions of the study were: 1. Overall performance of the students of HSSs’ and colleges was indifferent. However, performance of higher secondary schools students of Rawalpindi Board was better than those of Sargodha Board. In colleges, the performance of the students of Sargodha Board was better than those of Rawalpindi Board. 2. The performance of students of Rural and Urban institutions was similar both higher secondary schools as well as for colleges. 3. The performance of boys and girls was significantly different. The performance of girls was better than performance of boys. 4. The math’s teachers were aware of the objectives of teaching Mathematics at higher secondary level who completed syllabus with in time. In both setups, majority of the teachers used demonstration, inductive and activity based methods. Mostly teachers of HSS were given individual attention and used appropriate teaching aids effectively to the students as compare to colleges. 5. Mostly teachers of HSS’s gave individual attention to students who used appropriate teaching aids effectively to the students as compared to colleges.