Abstract
Academic plagiarism has remained a major concern for higher education institutions, as it hampers not only the quality of the teaching-learning process and research, but also the overall educational institution. This issue appears to be even more serious in online and distance education institutions. As a result, a qualitative study was conducted on an online university in Pakistan to investigate the determinants of academic plagiarism and to find ways to address this issue. The students were given an open-ended questionnaire to reflect their opinions on the awareness and understanding of plagiarism, its determinants, and ways to address it. The findings revealed that most of the 267 online university students had a poor awareness and understanding of plagiarism. Major reasons for students’ plagiarism turned out to be a lack of a proactive approach to create awareness, an omission of citation conventions from course content, untrained teachers, a lack of strict penalties and their proper implementation, poor time management, a fear of failure, a lack of confidence, laziness, and a culture of plagiarism. The study proposes the Awareness, Support, and Prevention model (AS&P model) to address this issue in higher education institutions.
Highlights
There is no universally accepted definition of plagiarism [1,2], as it is culturally and socially influenced [3], it may be taken as a type of fraud, where someone takes others’ ideas or work and presents it as one’s own [4]
It is generally detected through similarity index software such as Turnitin or Academic plagiarism is considered unethical in academia, as it damages the overall quality of education, and compromises merit
The findings revealed that 94% of the participants were not aware of the plagiarism policy of the HEC (Higher Education Commission)
Summary
There is no universally accepted definition of plagiarism [1,2], as it is culturally and socially influenced [3], it may be taken as a type of fraud, where someone takes others’ ideas or work and presents it as one’s own [4]. Students’ lack of awareness and understanding of plagiarism is another important reason. Murtaza et al [29] carried out a study investigating Pakistani university students’ awareness and perceptions about plagiarism. They collected data from 25,742 students from 35 universities in Pakistan. The HEC and higher education institutions in Pakistan have failed in their responsibility to create an awareness and understanding of plagiarism and its policies. There have been quite a few studies about plagiarism amongst online and distance education students [34,35], such research about Pakistan is quite rare.
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