We are now living in the age of technology and access to information is as easy as just pressing a button on the computer keyboard. There are numerous advantages of this fast developing World of Web but there are also some disadvantages if not used properly. The new generation, or digital natives as Prensky (2001) calls them, have been conditioned to consume more and more every day and they are getting used to ready-made solutions to any problem or task they have to fulfill. This is also partially true for some students while preparing homework assignments or during the tests.

Plagiarism and cheating have become common problems in many countries as well as in Turkey. The background to these serious problems stemmed from the complaints of many students, teachers, teacher candidates, parents, school principals as well as academicians. While it seems that these parties do complain about “information theft”, they may sometimes become the agents of this serious misconduct.

As defined by Fialkoff, plagiarism is ‘the misuse of the writings of another author…including the limited borrowing, without attribution, of another’s distinctive and significant research findings, hypotheses, theories… or interpretations’ (Fialkoff, 1993 cited in Park, 2003)

There are different types of plagiarism, as listed by Maurer et al. (2006) Accidental, Unintentional, Intentional and Self-plagiarism. Moreover, plagiarism methods range from copy-paste, idea plagiarism, to no proper use of quotation marks. (Maurer et al. 2006) In a recent study conducted by Doyran (2013) it has been found that the most common type of plagiarism among teacher candidates attending a teacher certificate program in Turkey was “accidental.” Most of them admitted that they felt ashamed not having known how serious this issue was and that they were not aware of the possible consequences. It was also found that there were some contributing internal factors like “ignorance about the issue” as well as some external factors like “limited time, concerns about grades.”   

 The specific research questions of the research are as follows: 1. What do faculty members think about plagiarism and cheating? 2. How do they create awareness related to these issues? 3. What precautions do they take against these problems? 4. How do they solve these problems if they face them? 5. According to them, what are the contributing and inhibiting factors of plagiarism and cheating? 6. What are their suggestions for deterring plagiarism and cheating?

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