Ramification of Plagiarism on Student Information Literacy and Internet Use

Studies have been carried out to investigate the information search behavior of students on the Internet and the regurgitation of facts from the Internet by students, often called “copy and paste”. It is possible that the problems documented about the search behaviour of students are compounded by the lack of motivation following an “imposed query”. Literature in the field pointed to a number of factors that are likely to affect searching behavior of students and the resultant “copy and paste” behaviour or plagiarism. This is an opinion paper which explores factors such as; motivation, cognitive states, and affective states as the things that influence the search behavior of students using the Internet following an imposed query. In discussing the above factors, typical information search behaviors of students will be explored using the Information Seeking Behaviour Paradigm and the Imposed Query Model as a conceptual framework through a synthesis of relevant literature. The paper concludes by recommending measures to be taken to improve the search behavior of users and to strengthen the skills for acquiring relevant information for solving information needs in a digital environment.