Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices on Plagiarism among Law Undergraduates in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The action or practices of taking someone else's work or idea and passing it off as one's own is called plagiarism. This study aimed to assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices on Plagiarism, among law undergraduates of Kotelawala Defence University (KDU). An online questionnaire that consisted of four parts; sociodemographic data, knowledge, attitudes and practices on plagiarism was used for data collection, from among randomly selected 105 students in all four batches. The mean (±SD) age of the participants was 22.08 (±2.86) years, and the majority of them were females (58.1%; n=61). The majority (80%, n= 84) of the participants knew about "plagiarism", and out of them, 80% (n=68) have learnt it through university lecturers. Further, 79.0% (n=83) were aware of the plagiarism checking software, which is available at KDU. The majority (84.8%; n=89) of the participants have realised that plagiarism is unprofessional and many (76.2%; n=80) have accepted that the plagiarism should be a punishable offence. Moreover, 91.4% (n=96) have believed that the level of English Language proficiency influences on practicing plagiarism. Among the participants, 24.8%, 20% and 10.5% were using Turnitin, Plagiarism Checker X and Grammarly software respectively to detect plagiarism. However, 57.1% (n=60) have stated that they submit assignments for their academic institute without checking plagiarism. An online system which indicates the level of plagiarism in the initial stage of assignment submission should be introduced to the students. Further, the knowledge on plagiarism should be enhanced through compulsory course modules and interactive workshops on summarising and paraphrasing techniques.