Yunus Bin Yusoff Introduction Plagiarism, by definition, is the act of using somebody elses ideas or words published in academic

writings without giving any credits to the authors. It is indeed a serious crime that has been regarded pandemic among scholars in not just education world, but also the world organisations. With the easily accessible internet service all around the world, plagiarism has become a trend among university students as they can easily steal others intelectual properties by just doing some cut and paste actions over millions of electronic articles and journals. This, somehow, has become another issue whereby the availability of online resources is one of the leading factors to students committing plagiarism ( Williams, 2002). The bigger issue, perhaps, is the trend does not just reflect the students lack of studying skills (White, Owens, & Nguyen, 2008), but also reflect the qualities of institutions that are involved (Williams, 2002). After all, the ones who are responsible for the consequences are the students. This has led to discussions and research on reasons why do students commit plagiarism in the tertiary education, what are the possible ways to reduce the trend.

Reasons Students Plagiarise 1 Poor Time Management Skills

Abundance of research has been conducted on the reasons why students plagiarise in tertiary education. One of the most common findings is the fact that they have poor planning upon completing their writing tasks. This usually includes everything related to management skills especially on time management skills. Students do not always know what and when their assignments need to be submitted or assessed (Turnitin.com, 2011); this is common as far as busy lifestyles in the campus are concerned. They are just too busy with their social lives, commitments with sports and performances, and also responsibilties for their family members (Park, 2003).

Yunus Bin Yusoff Many students do not realise how important time management skills are to them especially when it comes to dealing with something that is to be assessed. They just take things easy as if they could buy time anytime they want to. This affects how students deal with their assignments the very last minute they have to finish them. Research by Kose and Arikan (2011) shows that 47.5% of the participants plagiarised when time constrains and deadlines gave them no time to think about paraphrasing or references (127). When students have little time left, they start to live with Who Cares? attitude whereby along the process of getting information from the internet, copying and pasting somebody elses ideas and words is no longer a worry to them; at the end, they end up committing the most high profile crime in education. This is prominent in the study by Batane (2010); only 4.7% of the participants claimed they plagiarised not because of lack of skills in academic writing, but the fact that they understand it requires a lot of effort and time to write a paper honestly (7).

Failing to understand the importance or mechanism of referencing and paraphrasing

Another major reason of students committing plagiarism is they fail to understand the importance or mechanism of referencing and paraphrasing. Park (2003) claims that there is a group of students who cheats more than other groups; they are international students whom English is not their mother tongue. Deckert (1993, as cited in Park, 2003) labels this group as persistent plagiarizers; while coping with language difficulties, most international students need to cope with different attitudes and cultures of academic plagiarism (Burnett, 2002; as cited in Park, 2003), and yet, they come with less well-developed study skills that include note taking, essay writing, and bibliograpy construction skills (2003). This leads to problems with plagiarism when students are genuinely lack of understanding on the academic ways of paraphrasing and referencing. Some students plagiarise unintentionally (Park, 2003: 479) when they are confused and unclear about what and how common knowledge sounds in academic writings. As students look up for information on the Internet, from

Yunus Bin Yusoff books or other types of resources, their heads are filled up with many different types of information and ideas about a particular topic or assignment that they get mixed up upon deciding which one is regarded common knowledge and which one is someone elses idea or words. This is in fact a common issue happening among university students, not just by international students, but the local Westerners too. This shows why having lack of understanding of a proper way to academic referencing is a major concern, as it involves not only those whom English is not their native language, but also the ones whom their language English - is the world medium of instruction in most academic resources.

Personal values and attitudes

Research also shows that students plagiarise just because of their own personal values and attitudes towards their writing tasks and courseworks. In the study conducted by Batane (2010) on the effectiveness of online softwares to reduce plagiarism among university students, it is reported that 75% of the participating students cheated mainly because of their laziness, and 80% of the lecturers agreed with the result. This indicates that students intentionally plagiarise in their coursework due to their laziness; some of them claimed that even when they had proper skills in referencing, they would resort for plagiarism as writing a paper honestly requ ires a lot of effort and time (7). Another excuse given by some students is they have a lot more assignments from other subjects to be completed; with materials readily available on the Internet, it is highly tempting to take the easy way out (7) by just copying and pasting information and it saves you a lot of time to do other things (7). Some student see no reason why they should not plagiarise or do it because of social pressure, because it makes them feel good or because they regard short cuts as clever and acceptable (Park, 2003: 479). This usually happens to students whose grades in schools are lower than other students. Studies by Straw (2002, as cited in Park, 2003) indicate that students with lower GPAs are likely to commit cheating or plagiarism compared to those with higher GPAs. This is, perhaps, related to students personality factors

Yunus Bin Yusoff which are usually influenced by their personal problems. Raffetto (1985, as cited in Park, 2003) suggests that students tend to cheat more often if they lack confidence, feel under pressure from and seek the approval of parents and peers (480). Taking this problems into considerations, students, yet, should not resort to intentional plagiarism or cheating in academic writing by purpose. Perhaps they could rather seek help and support from the university student council or peer support groups for those are groups from which they could learn better ways to cope with their studies that include learning how to write honest academic writings. Students attitudes towards teachers and class

Despite the fact that teachers should not always be blamed for students academic performance, studies have shown that students attitudes towards teachers and class is one of the contributing factors to students committing plagiarism. Some prominent cases indicate that teachers play an important role in developing students attitudes not just towards their subject matters, but also themselves. Burnett (2002,as cited in Park, 2003) highlights the importance of a relationship of trust between students and teachers, as he believes that the classes in which students are more likely to cheat are those where students think their lecturer will not even bother to read their work or look closely at them at all. This somehow makes students become less interested or, to some extent, uninterested to learn the subject matter and even be in the class. When it comes to writing up courseworks, students rather choose to plagiarise because they think teachers have no big issues over doing it; this is voiced out through one of the students comments where spending more time on doing a paper honestly gives them nothing better than any other students who plagiarise and yet get higher marks (Batane, 2010). Ashworth and Bannister (1997, as cited in Batane, 2010) found that students felt alienated from teaching staff because of their demeanour and their lack of contact with students; this perhaps develops negative student attitudes towards both the teacher and the subject. Lecturers might have good teaching instructions and practical knowledge on their particular field or subject; however, that does not guarantee good interactions and rapport with

Yunus Bin Yusoff students if there is a gap between them and students. Williams (2002) further emphasized that assesment tasks that did not engage students symbolized the gap between students and staff (8). Those that are engaging and relevant to lecturers do not necessarily mean the same to students; In fact, some students plagiarize because they think that the tasks given are not meaningful to them, though the lecturer thinks those tasks are (Howard, 2002, as cited in Park, 2003).

Reducing plagiarism 1 using a constructive feedback approach

Indeed, studies have been conducted on finding the best solution for plagiarism among students; of all the possible solutions suggested, one that shows lasting results is using a constructive feedback approach. This approach is believed to have been better than any other approaches used for the results are more lasting. Many studies have found using online detection softwares could have been resulting fewer plagiarism cases among students without really looking at the long-term effects of trending the approach; it is not until recent research has found that giving a constructive feedback to students learning referencing skills gives a better and lasting result. In response to the failures to deterrent plagiarism using online detection softwares, Landau, Druen, and Arcuri (2002, as cited in White, Owen, & Nguyen, 2008) taught some undergraduate students about identifying plagiarism and proper referencing and paraphrasing skills; they found that when students are provided with examples of plagiarism, plagiarism was reduced (128). This somehow gives a convincing sample of how teaching students about proper referencing and paraphrasing skills promises a meaningful and lasting result compared to adapting approaches that only last a few days or months. Accordingly, Born (n.d.) supports teachers involvement in dealing with plagiarism suggesting that they must educate and communicate what plagiarism is and why is will not be tolerated (224). This is reasonably important that raising students awareness towards plagiarism through giving constructive feedbacks is the affective solution to plagiarism, as to everyones concern, one of the major reasons students

Yunus Bin Yusoff plagiarising is they have a lack understanding of what and how to do proper referencing and paraphrasing when writing academic papers. Reinforcing the universitys honour codes and establishing a special committee to educate students on plagiarism When plagiarism was getting more popular among university students in the United States in the early 90s, it was only then about a quarter of the college and universities in North America had introduced the honour codes (Kibler, 1994; as cited in Park, 2003). The Centre for Academic Integrity (CAI) of Duke University in North Carolina was one of the centres that first acknowledged the importance of having honour codes in academic institutions; it promotes an approach that emphasises the fundamental values of academic integrity (honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility) (McCabe & Pavela, 1997; as cited in Park, 2003: 482). The CAI approach looks forward to raise students awareness on academic integrity and its importance from which students learn the values and promoted behaviours; meanwhile, the approach encourages and requires students to sign a pledge that they will uphold academic integrity and not cheat or plagiarise (Park, 2003: 483). This is a form of agreement made between students and the institution telling the former that they are agreed to receive any penalties for any violations of rules made. In other institutions, however, students are asked to write and sign an honour pledge on each of their assignments and exams (483); such institutions are the University of Maryland, United States (Anonymous, 2001; as cited in Park, 2003) and University of Otago, New Zealand.

Using online detection softwares

Despite the claims that online detection softwares do not teach and raise students awareness on plagiarism, they still remain one of the most trusted solutions applied in most of academic institutions. Turnitin -

http://www.turnitin.com - appears to be one of the leading anti-plagiarism softwares available (Kose & Arikan, 2011); it functions by comparing a

Yunus Bin Yusoff students writing paper with an extensively indexed archieve of online sources including the essays previously entered to its database (Maurer, Kappe, & Zaka, 2006; as cited in Kose & Arikan, 2011:123). Some other examples of online detection tools are CopyCatch - http://www.copycatch.freeserve.co.uk -, Eve2 http://www.CaNexus.com -, and Findsame.com -

http://www.findsame.com (Williams, 2002: 4). Culwin and Lancaster (2000, as cited in Williams, 2002), in their review, found that those online detection tools were usually able to detect plagiarised documents submitted, though there were critics complaining that they were too costly for regular institutional use (5). However, there are some institutions that provide the detection softwares to students for personal use, and this seems to be an effective way to promote students awareness in using those tools. A study by Batane (2010) found that 65% of students welcomed the use of online detection tools (Turnitin) as those would encourage the users to put more effort into their studies especially in writing a coursework paper; though so, there are some limitations of using the approach that they might be affecting the successful of the online software approach in dealing with plagiarism. Cumber and Lancaster (2010) found that the process of submisssion was somehwat cumbersome and the format of the results returned to academic staff was not always helpful (5). Some of the tools are more robust than the others, and not all of them performed to an acceptable level for all tasks (Williams, 2002: 5).

Considering different types of assessments

One of the contributing reasons why students plagiarise is they know there are tendencies that lecturers would give the same essay questions and tests every year, and thus, it is easier for them to get the previous students assignment and copy from it (Batane, 2010: 7). A study by Kose and Arikan (2011) found that 47.5% of the participating students think that submitting an essay or paper that was previously submitted to another class would not be considered plagiarism (126). This is somewhat another pandemic issue among university students that they have no -big-deal attitudes towards

Yunus Bin Yusoff academic crimes. Accordingly, the major concern of the problem is the types of assessment that lecturers give to students influence students attitudes towards plagiarism; thus, considering different types of assessments for students courseworks could be helpful. Born (n.d.) has listed out some suggestions regarding varying types of assessment for students courseworks; those include designing questions that require discussion rather than rote memorization (223), giving more often quizzes, tests, and assignments, and assigning different questions to different individuals (223). Nevertheless, as plagiarism is concerned, not all ideas suggested would be working to reduce the percentage students plagiarising. Provided that lecturers were to assign different questions to different students, another issue raised is they would be burdened with marking too many papers. Giving more assignments also does not surely guarantee students would learn more the proper way to write honest academic writings. These all measures would not be working effectively if students are still not aware of the importance of giving credits to somebody elses ideas and thus, they steal and make those as their own; that is still considered plagiarism.

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Yunus Bin Yusoff References

Batane, T. (2010). Turning to Turnitin to Fight Plagiarism among University Students. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (2), 112. Retrieved from http://provost.hamptonu.edu/cte/docs/plagiarism.pdf

Born, A. D. (n.d.). Teaching Tip How to Reduce Plagiarism. Journal of Information Systems Education, 14(3). Retrieved from

http://jise.org/Volume14/14-3/Pdf/14(3)-223.pdf

Kose, O. & Arikan, A. (2011). Reducing plagiarism by using online software: An experimental study. Contemporary Online Language Education Journal, 2011(1), 122-129. Retrieved from http://www.colej.org/vol1/colej_11_kose.pdf Park, C. (2003). In Other (Peoples) Words: plagiarism by university studentsliterature and lessons. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 28 (5). Retrieved from

http://dutmoodle.dut.ac.za/moodle/pluginfile.php/30664/mod_reso urce/content/0/In_other_people_s_words__plagiarism_by_university_students_-_literature_and_lessons.pdf

White, F., Owen, C. & Nguyen, M. (2008). Using a constructive feedback approach to effectively reduce student plagiarism among first-year psychology students. UniServe Science Proceedings Visualisation. Retrieved http://science.uniserve.edu.au/pubs/procs/2008/127.pdf from

Williams, J. B. (2002). THE PLAGIARISM PROBLEM: ARE STUDENTS ENTIRELY TO BLAME? ASCILITE.