| dc.description.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. | en_US |
