Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
THE AWARENESS OF PLAGIARISM AMONGST INTI
INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE SUBANG STUDENTS
Eric Lee Chan Yu1 and Mathuri Subramaniam2
INTI International College Subang, Malaysia
(1chanyu.lee@newinti.edu.my, 2mathuri.subramaniam@newinti.edu.my)
ABSTRACT
This paper seeks to discover the level of awareness amongst private college students about the issue of
plagiarism. The authors also hope to discover the students’ thoughts about the issue and address the problem of
plagiarism with fellow students. 413 students participated in the survey which was voluntary to test the
hypothesis. The majority of students in College X are unaware of plagiarism and its consequences. The results
from the study indicated that the majority of the participants understood what plagiarism meant and that
plagiarizing was wrong.
KEYWORDS
Plagiarism, definition, reasons, awareness, private college, students,
INTRODUCTION
Plagiarism has become a common problem around the world, especially amongst students
(McCabe, Trevino & Butterfield, 2001). McNaughton (1995, 36-37) in his student handbook
defined plagiarism as ‘the attempt to gain advantage for yourself :academic advantage,
financial advantage, professional advantage, advantage of publicity – by trying to fool
someone, such as a teacher, an editor, an employer, or a reader, into thinking that you wrote
something, thought something, or discovered something which ,in actual fact, someone else
wrote, thought, or discovered’. Plagiarism is sometimes defined, aphoristically, as ‘literary
theft’. The simplest definition of plagiarism is, according to Peh and Arokiasamy (2008, 965),
“this crime refers to stealing someone else’s work or ideas, and passing it off as one’s own.”
LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature shows the various problems of plagiarism and how serious the consequences of
plagiarism can be to one person. Although this paper concentrates only on private college
students, the literature has shown that this issue does not only affect the student population,
but also the academics, professionals and writers as well ( Chan, 2005; Peh & Arokiasamy,
2008; Broome 2010).To illustrate this point, in September 2009, two academics from a
public university were caught plagiarizing. The junior author claimed that she thought that
any information from the internet did not need to be cited (Chapman, 2009). Similar cases
involving academics have occurred in private colleges as well (Chan, 2005). With academics
and professionals themselves being guilty of plagiarism or at best, unsure of what constitutes
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
plagiarism, it would be easy to assume that students themselves would be uncertain or
unaware of plagiarism being a crime.
The internet has become a popular venue for plagiarism to occur. Any information needed
can be obtained from websites by anyone who has access to the internet. According to the
Internet World Stats, a website run by Miniwatts Marketing Group, the number of people
who have access to the internet across the globe is 2,095,006,005 as of March 31, 2011.
Plagiarism is so prominent nowadays that Turnitin.com, a very popular plagiarism checking
software provider has a site called iThenticate specifically designed for “individual
researchers, authors, publishers, research facilities, government agencies, financial
institutions, and legal firms” (Turnitin.com, 2011). Even with these checking software
providers, plagiarism still occurs widely (Milliron & Sandoe 2008).
Why does plagiarism still occur so rampantly among the student population although there
are easily accessible resources provided to avoid plagiarizing? The literature provides a few
reasons based on various studies such as ignorance of proper referencing for online sources
(Gabriel, 2010), confusion over the definition of plagiarism (Rosman, Hassan, Suratman,
Ripin, & Marni, 2008; American Chemical Society, 2009), or even due to the fact that
students were coming from a different learning culture (Lahur, 2004).
However, there is more than meet the eyes. One of the major problems with taking sources
from the internet is failing to use the proper citation methods. There are so many different
sources nowadays that traditional citation sources do not address properly. The time gap
between producing the traditional citations sources (e.g. books, newspapers & journals) and
the information technology (e.g. online journals, blogs, online encyclopedias, Twitter,
Facebook & Youtube) today plays a vital role in causing plagiarism to transpire. This poses a
huge issue to the current generation of students who almost exclusively use the internet to
seek information and seem to only use books if strictly instructed to do so by the lecturers.
The idea of information being free and easily accessible is easily transferred to their use of
online materials for their research without thinking that they need to cite it accurately.
Another common problem is the lack of time to complete a research paper, as the results will
show. Due to procrastination, which is a very common excuse for students, resorting to last
minute work and therefore not referencing accurately or doing proper citation is relatively
common. Students also tend to “cut-and-paste” information due to the lack of time and hope
that the lecturers do not catch them. (Wadsworth, n.d., McCabe, Trevino & Butterfield,
2001).
In the Malaysian context, the current examination-oriented education policy does not teach
the students the basics of writing a simple research paper or project. According to Chapman
& Lee (2009), The Ministry of Education has realized this and started to move to a less examoriented policy in 2009. With such poor research skills, it is not surprising to think that
students would have little if not, no knowledge about the issue of plagiarism. Even in the US,
where students write papers and assignments as important part of their secondary level
education, plagiarism is still a major issue (Gabriel, 2010). Given the lack of education in
research and assignment writing, it is also difficult for them to know just what counts as
plagiarism. Many feel that changing a few words is sufficient or that only mentioning the
sources in the references page is enough.
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Given the various issues arising on plagiarism, this paper concentrates on the students’
understanding of the definition of plagiarism, how they learnt about plagiarism and the role
of the private college in promoting awareness of plagiarism and its consequences. This paper
predicts that the majority of students in College X are unaware of plagiarism, at its simplest
definition, and its consequences.
Research questions
1 What is the students’ definition of plagiarism and why do they plagiarize?
2 What do students think the private college can do to raise awareness of plagiarism?
METHOD
Participants
The data was collected based on convenient sampling. The participants were College X
students from various programs and various years, who participated voluntarily in answering
the survey. There were a total of 413 surveys by various respondents with an average age of
19 years. The majority of participants are 2nd year (35.4%) and 1st year (22.8) students.
Most of the students surveyed were from department A with programme 1 students making
up 31.5% of the participants and programme 2 making 30% of the participants. The other
significant programs were programme 3 at 15% and diploma level students at 7.99%.
Materials
This was a paper and pencil exercise. A series of questions related to plagiarism and the
importance of plagiarism as well as the consequences of plagiarizing were listed in a survey
form for the students to fills in. A copy of the survey is included in Appendix A.
Procedure
The survey consisted of four demographic questions namely the program and current
completing year of study, age and gender. 11 questions were asked about plagiarism that
focused on the understanding of plagiarism and raising awareness of plagiarism within
private colleges. The survey consisted of 5 open-ended questions and 6 closed-ended
questions.
The surveys were distributed to students through students who took up the Ethics class as part
of their assignment. Each student distributed 10 surveys and analyzed the results once
completed as a group research project .They took between 15-30 minutes to complete the
anonymous survey. The results of the survey were collated using MS Excel.
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
RESULTS
RQ 1 What is the students’ definition of plagiarism and why do they plagiarize?
Out of the 413 students, it showed that 94.76% of students understood the concept of
plagiarism while the remainder 3.57% did not. 71.19% (294) students knew people who have
plagiarized before whereas 28.81% (119) students did not know anyone who had plagiarised.
81.9% (335) students understood that it was wrong to plagiarise, 18.1% (74) did not know
that plagiarising was wrong. As for the college policy that has been put into place, 67.57%
(275) students knew that such a policy existed, whilst 32.43% (132) students did not know
there was one. The results indicated that the students perception of the definition to
plagiarism was : “Copy without crediting or citing the source, Claim other's work as own”
32.9% (136) or “Copying, duplicate data, copy & paste, copying other's work” 24.7 %( 102).
Some said it was either “Stealing other's work or just stealing” 9 %( 37) or “Cheating or
Cheating on assignment” 6.8 %( 28). See Figure 1.1 for a pie chart showing the breakdown
of Student definitions of plagiarism.
Stealing other's
work,stealing
9%
Don't know
24%
Rude not fair
1%
Bad
1%
Cheating, Cheating
on assignment
7%
Copying, duplicate
data, copy & paste,
copying other's
work
25%
Copy w/o credit,
citing, Claim other's
work as own
33%
Figure 1.1. Students’ definition of plagiarism.
The students were also asked why they thought college students plagiarize. The most
significant answers (see Figure 1.2 for distribution of Reasons Why students Plagiarize)
given were lazy 6.7%, convenience 19.9%, procrastination or save time 32%, lack of ideas in
answering the assignment 13.3%. 2.2% (9) had even put “Too many assignments” as a reason
why they plagiarized.
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
Too many assignments
No ideas, lack of knowledge
9
55
132
Procrastination, time saving,
82
Convenience
Lazy
69
Figure 1.2. Why students plagiarize
RQ 2 What do students think the private college can do to raise awareness of plagiarism?
From the survey results (as seen in Figure 2), 26.2% (108) of the students suggested
enforcing punishment as the way to raise awareness. 34.6% of the students suggested that
awareness campaign held can be done in the form of talks, hold education seminars or
awareness campaigns on plagiarism or even address it during new student orientation.
Another 9.2% (38 students) suggested reminders from the college, lecturers or course
advisors. Stating about plagiarism in the assignment guideline was recommended by 2.2%
(9).
Some of the punishments included cutting marks 2.7% (11), suspension 1.5 %( 6) and 0.5 %(
2) students even suggested expulsion from college. Warnings from lecturers, administration
or warning letters were suggested by 15.3% (63), strict rules by 7.3% (30) and 2.7% (11)
even suggested less coursework with long working time. 5.8% (24) identified that using antiplagiarism software is a favorable method to curb plagiarism among students.
The results indicate that most students understood what plagiarism meant (94.76%) and knew
it was wrong to plagiarize (81.9%). They also knew people who plagiarized or had
plagiarized before (71.19%), and responded that they knew about the college policy regarding
plagiarism (67.57%).
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
Banned/expelled from college
Cut marks
Suspension
Less coursework with longer prep time
0.5
2.7
1.5
2.7
5.8
Software
Set as assignment guideline
2.2
9.2
Reminder from college/lecturer/adviser
Strict rules
Warning
7.3
15.3
26.2
Enforce Punishment
Plagiarism talk, awareness campaign, orientation
19.4
Figure 2. Student suggestions for college to raise awareness on plagiarism
DISCUSSION
The results failed to show that majority of students in College X are unaware of plagiarism
and its consequences. There are a few explanations for this difference in the results. Majority
of these students were aware of plagiarism, had an idea that plagiarism was either cheating or
copying and knew that it was wrong. However, there were 24.2 %( 100 students) who said
that they did not know the definition. This does not match the numbers in the previous results
where only 3.57% (15) students said they didn’t understand plagiarism. This means they
either had a vague idea/could not define it or there is a possibility of being too lazy/ uncertain
to state the definition. Hence, they either stated they didn’t know or left it blank. Regardless,
there was only 24.2% of the students, which meant more than half 57.6% of their definitions
were similar or came close to the simplest definition “...stealing someone else’s work or
ideas, and passing it off as one’s own.”
Despite this knowledge, a majority of students (71%) still plagiarized. As the literature cited,
probable reasons such as being ignorant to proper referencing for online sources (The Sun,
2009; Gabriel, 2010), confusion over the definition of plagiarism (Rosman, Hassan,
Suratman, Ripin, & Marni, 2008; American Chemical Society, 2009), or even due to the fact
that students were coming from a different learning culture (Lahur, 2004). This was not
reflected in the results as the main reasons given by the students were either due to laziness or
procrastination. This result is similar to McCabe (2001) which also stated laziness as one of
the main reasons for plagiarism to occur.
In terms of proper referencing, as mentioned above, there is a gap where online referencing
has not been widely introduced to many. Methods of referencing books & journals have been
around much longer than online referencing. And since today’s generation is almost
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
completely dependent on the internet, confusions occur over the definition of plagiarism
(Gabriel, 2010, Milliron & Sandoe, 2008). So even though students admit they understood
plagiarism by principle, they tend not to assimilate that understanding into producing a
quality research paper.
As explained by Lahur (2004), learning cultures can contribute as a problem in terms of
curbing plagiarism. The Asian school system tends to emphasize grades over the learning
process as a whole. Lecturers in the Malaysian tertiary level agree that there’s a gap between
the secondary and tertiary education systems. Since it takes effort and time to master the art
of writing while avoiding plagiarism, it makes it difficult for students to cope when they enter
tertiary education. It definitely poses a challenge for students who have been trying to avoid
plagiarism since secondary school.
Since it is challenging to learn the concepts of proper referencing/citation and it takes a lot of
time, students generally tend to opt for the easier way out, which is using the cut/paste
method and changing a couple of words in an attempt to avoid plagiarism or getting caught
for plagiarizing. Lack of time to complete work and procrastination can cause students to
complete the reference section at the last minute and therefore produce a rather low quality
outcome, as shown in the results.
RECOMMENDATION
These reasons can be avoided using a couple of methods. Firstly, the education system should
introduce the idea of proper writing in high school level, so that students are prepared when
they enter tertiary level education. This way the students will not feel overwhelmed when
they start college/university. Colleges and universities should make it a point to introduce
students to plagiarism at the start of orientation before students begin, at the start of a course
and when assignments are handed out, so that all students are fully aware and constantly
reminded of the consequences of plagiarizing. This point was suggested by over 40% of the
students surveyed.
Furthermore, enforcement must be carried out strictly as it makes it easier for educators to
punish students who still plagiarize. This was suggested by 26.2% of students. A handful
suggested cutting marks (2.7%), suspension (1.5%) and 0.5% even suggested expulsion.
Another helpful point would be to show a sample of a plagiarized assignment caught by antiplagiarism software at the orientation and the punishment given to such a student. This
demonstration would show that: the college is serious about plagiarism; lecturers have the
tools to catch plagiarism and caught cases of such occurrences.
As all research, this research too has its limitations. Firstly, the sample group, although an
acceptable number, but the cohort captured was rather limited focusing on only a couple of
programs offered at College X, specifically the degree programs. This may have caused the
results to be skewed a little compared to if a more mixed sample was collected. Secondly,
there is always the possibility that the students conducting the project may have lied on the
surveys and filled many on their own instead of getting other people to fill in the survey. This
will again give a biased opinion on the survey. Further research needs to be conducted on
plagiarism to give more robust results and researchers will then gain better understanding and
gauge ways to reduce if not abolish the existence of plagiarism in the education setting.
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
Since this paper concentrates on a private college only, the researchers hope that this study
will help College X address the issue of plagiarism by gaining a better understanding of the
students’ awareness of plagiarism, their reasons for doing so and their suggestions on how the
college can educate students on the issue of plagiarism and its consequences.
Educators themselves need to be educated in the area of plagiarism since research indicates
that educators and professionals are not familiar with plagiarism and proper citation (TheCrankshaft Publishing, n.d., Chan, 2005., Peh & Arokiasamy, 2008., Chapman, 2009). This
can slow down the attempt to reduce plagiarism. Also, educators need to take time when
marking papers. This will enable them to correct the mistakes made by students and to help
students overcome any difficulties experienced with plagiarism. Students should be provided
with adequate resources related to proper referencing and citation. Colleges/universities
should equip educators with checking software providers to enable them to control plagiarism
more effectively.
CONCLUSION
Based on the findings of this study, generally students are aware of plagiarism and know that
it is wrong. Furthermore, they were even able to provide suggestions to prevent plagiarism
from happening such as introducing the importance of plagiarism during the orientation
session in colleges and constantly reminding students about plagiarism during assignment
periods. Punishment for plagiarism must be enforced to reduce the number of cases
occurring currently. As McCabe (2005, 2009) states “Unfortunately, such inaction in the face
of cheating leads to even higher levels of cheating as students quickly become aware of
which faculty are not likely to pursue cases of suspected cheating and their courses become
targets for cheaters." Therefore the college itself must play a serious role in educating
students about plagiarism and an even more serious role in enforcing punishment.
REFERENCE
American Chemical Society (2009, March 22). Confusion, Not Cheating, Major Factor In
Plagiarism Among Some Students. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 28, 2011, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/03/090322154413.htm
Broome, F. (2010, December 19). Plagiarism Among Ghost Researchers. In Hollow Hill.
Retrieved June 5, 2011, from http://hollowhill.com/plagiarism-among-ghost-researchers/
Chan, T. (2005). Are you Prepared to Teach Online? Perspectives of Faculty in a Private
College in Malaysia. In G. Richards (Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning
in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2005 (pp. 41-46). Chesapeake,
VA: AACE. [Electronic version]
Chapman, K. (2009, September 15). UPM lecturers hauled up over plagiarism [Electronic
version]. The Star.
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
Chapman, K. & Y.P. Lee. (2009, April 19) Less exam-oriented education under new UPSR
curriculum [Electronic version]. The Star.
Gabriel, T. (2010, October 25). 'Generation Plagiarism'? [Electronic version]. The New York
Times Upfront, 143.
iParadigms,
LLC.
(n.d.).
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5,
2011,
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Lahur, A.M. (2004). Plagiarism among Asian students at an Australian university offshore
campus: Is it a cultural issue? A pilot study. Proceedings from 27th HERDSA Annual
Conference : Transforming Knowledge into Wisdom: Holistic Approaches to Teaching and
Learning. Miri, Sarawak: HERDSA [Electronic version]
McCabe, D. L., Treviño, L. K., & Butterfield, K. D. (2001). Cheating in Academic
Institutions: A Decade of Research. ETHICS & BEHAVIOR,, 11(3), 219-232.
McCabe, D.L. 2005. Cheating among college and university students: A North American
perspective. International Journal for Educational Integrity 1:1-11.
McNaughton, W. (1996) Student Handbook on Writing Research Papers (pp. 36-37). City
University of Hong Kong, Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics.
Milliron, V., and K. Sandoe.(2008). The Net Generation Cheating Challenge. Innovate 4 (6).
http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=499 (accessed 10 August,2011).
Miniwatts Marketing Group. (2011, March 15). Internet Usage Statistics: The Internet Big
Picture. World Internet Users and Population Stats. In Internet World Stats Usage and
Population
Statistics.
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5,
2011,
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http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Peh, W., & Arokiasamy, J. (2008, December). Plagiarism: a joint statement from the
Singapore Medical Journal and the Medical Journal of Malaysia [Electronic version].
Singapore Medical Journal, 49(12), 965-966.
Rosman, A., Hassan, A., Suratman, A., Ripin, M., & Marni, N. (2008, June). PERSEPSI
PELAJAR UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA (UTM) TERHADAP PLAGIARISME
[Electronic version]. Jurnal Teknologi, 48(E), 1-14.
The-Crankshaft Publishing. (n.d.). JOURNALS, PROFESSIONAL (Social Science). In whatwhen-how:In Depth Information. Retrieved August 10, 2011, from http://what-whenhow.com/social-sciences/journals-professional-social-science/
Wadsworth. (n.d.). What is plagiarism?. Retrieved August 10, 2011,
http://www.wadsworth.com/english_d/special_features/plagiarism/definition.html
from
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INTI International University, Malaysia
APPENDIX A
PHL 301N/ PHI 102 Ethics assignment 100 marks
Due date: Monday, 29 March 2010. 5 pm SHARP.
Objective: Do a general survey on the awareness of Inti College students on the issue of
plagiarism.
10 surveys per student. Group of 4-5. Please submit to me your group members 1 names
beforehand and the group leader’s email. I will send out the survey to you. Print out the
survey below on one page. (front and back. Do not include this instruction page!)
Get the students to fill out the survey as honestly as possible. This survey is to be
confidential.
Compile the data from the survey and do a report on the general awareness of the students on
the issue of plagiarism in Inti College. As for the scenario, summarize the answers. If the
answers are similar, list down how many answered the questions in a similar manner.
For the report, write down your initial expectations of the students’ response and see if the
results match your expectation. Try to answer why you think the students results turned out
the way it did, based on what you’ve learned in class about cheating and stealing.
Everyone in the group needs to participate in this project. Be sure to do a proper credits
section stating who did what. There will be 2 separate grades for this project. Half of the
marks will be for the overall group project while the other half will for the individual’s grade
as decided by the individual members of the group.
The report should be between 10 – 20 pages long.
Please use this standard format : 12 point Times New Roman font. 1.5 space between the
lines and 1 inch margins on all sides.
PLEASE proofread your paper. Marks will be deducted for poor grammar, spelling, sentence
structure etc, and for not following instructions.
The softcopy of the survey is due in the dropbin by the above deadline.
Please put the hardcopy of the survey and all the completed surveys in an envelope and
submit them the next day in class, no later than 10:15 am
This is a short survey to help us understand about the level of awareness among Inti College
students regarding Plagiarism. Please answer the questions as openly as possible. Thank you.
Program:
Year:
Gender:
Age:
1) Do you know what plagiarism means?
Yes
No
2) What do you think it means? __________________________________________
3) Where and when did you first hear about plagiarism?
____________________________________________________________________
4) How did you hear about it?
a) Teachers
b) classmates
c) friends
d) Media. Please circle which form of media: books, newspaper, magazine, TV, internet
e) parents
f) Other :______________________________________
5) Have you or do you know people who’ve plagiarized in college?
Yes No
6) Do you think it’s wrong to plagiarize?
Yes No
Why or why not?_______________________________________________________
7) Why do you think college students plagiarize?
____________________________________________________________________
8) Do you know about the college policy on plagiarism? Yes No
9) Does the college help students to understand plagiarism and its consequences?
Admin .staff and policy
Yes No
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2011)
INTI International University, Malaysia
Lecturers
Yes No
10) What can the college do to help students be aware of plagiarism and its consequences?
___________________________________________________________________
11) What should be an appropriate punishment for plagiarism?
_____________________________________________________________________
Please turn over and continue on the next page.
A
The Cultural Dictionary defines plagiarism as:
Literary theft. Plagiarism occurs when a writer duplicates another writer's language or ideas
and then calls the work his or her own. Copyright laws protect writers' words as their legal
property. To avoid the charge of plagiarism, writers take care to credit those from whom they
borrow and quote. Note: Similar theft in music or other arts is also called plagiarism.
Plagiarism actually goes beyond just copying someone else’s work. It’s considered theft.
This covers photocopying books, buying pirated software, music and movies. Read the
scenario below and answer following questions.
You’ve won the latest Malaysian singing contest (think Malaysian Idol) and signed to a
record deal. Your debut cd is critically acclaimed but sales aren’t doing as well as you
thought it would. If sales don’t pick up, you might lose your record deal.
One night while shopping at the pasar malam (night market), you happen to see your cd
selling very well at the pirated cd stall. The buyers/stall owner recognize you from the cd
cover and ask you for your autograph.
What do you do? Would you report this to the authorities? Why or why not?
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
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