Academic dishonesty is a long-term issue, it has been a long-standing concern

within education and has increased a lot over the past years. Reasons offered for the
increase of academic dishonesty include the fact that more students are engaged in
online learning, and new technology is constantly emerging which can assist students or
facilitate academic dishonesty. I would contextualize the influence of technology in
academic dishonesty depending on the; i) using information without proper referencing;
ii) using unauthorized materials that can cause plagiarism and cheating. And based on
the academic articles and research that I’ve read, scholars blame the internet for the
increased “opportunities” for cheating, and others consider the increased incidence of
cheating at least in part as a consequence of the use of the internet. Although there are
not strong evidences that the technology is the reason for the increase of academic
dishonesty, it cannot be denied that rapid adoption of new technologies, such as
smartphones and wearable smart devices, combined with the proliferation of social
media and online information, have changed the academic dishonesty landscape adding
new ways in which cheating can occur. The advent of social media, Wikipedia and
collaborative websites allow students to easily access a wealth of information in a matter
of seconds. The ownership of mobile devices provides unlimited opportunities for
students to easily take and store pictures or documents of course materials which can be
viewed in the exam room. Mobile devices can also be used by students to share
information during an examination. The results of internet searches are also electronic,
and students can quickly copy and paste the
information directly into assignments, papers, and other documents.

We, teachers, can avoid issues with academic dishonesty, plagiarizing and
cheating without causing our students to rebel against us, all it takes is a more
diplomatic approach to enforcing it. A helpful solution would be, advise students to cite
anything they did not specifically know before they began research or collecting
information in other people’s work. Teaching our students the importance of citing
sources and paraphrasing, making sure that plagiarism will not be tolerated. But, if we
really wanna make sure that our students submitted works were not somebody else's
information, a plagiarism detector program can be useful. These programs can assess
the credibility of the content of our student work. Lastly, advocating and encouraging
academic integrity to reduce opportunities to engage in academic dishonesty, and to
promote an environment of trust and honesty inside the school or academe. But always
remember to be empathetic to kids who are under immense pressure from their
families, peers, potential schools, and even themselves. Some academic dishonesty and
plagiarism stems from laziness, sure, but there are also many occurrences that signal a
larger problem of stress or awkward stages in their writing development. When our
student submits unoriginal content, address the problem individually, we’ll see much
more authenticity.