Abstract:
In the last two decades, development of information technology in the conversion of printed
materials to digitalize forms has transformed the worldwide community's access to information.
This technological advancement has brought the undergraduate community to undergo
plagiarism and dishonesty in the classroom. Therefore, the present study is designed to analyse
the students’ perception of the similarity detection service offered by the University of Ruhuna
and their awareness of plagiarism in academic activities. A stratified random sampling method
was used to select a sample of 120 allied health sciences undergraduates representing three
departments and each academic year. Data was collected during August 2021 using a pre-tested
English medium online questionnaire. To achieve results based on the study objectives, the data
were analysed using descriptive statistics in the SPSS 25.0 edition. According to the results,
most of the participants were females (75.00%) and the majority of the respondents were Firstyear
students (33.33%). The considered sample awareness on the similarity detection software
service offered by the University was varied as a well-aware group (12.50%) and non-aware
group (37.50%). Undergraduates have used the Turnitin service to check assignments (26.66%),
testing/training purposes (53.33%) and check research publication (20.00%). It is important to
note that 45.00% of the undergraduates are not aware of how to avoid of plagiarism. Most of
them believe that plagiarism is unprofessional and unethical 79.16 %. A majority (54.00%)
considered that plagiarism should be a punishable offense at university and preferred
punishment was to resubmit the work without deducting marks (66.66%). Plagiarism is complex
and a mixture of factors might cause a student to plagiarize work once or multiple times. This
study recommends the university to conduct awareness programmes to avoid plagiarism in
undergraduate academic activities.
