Students’ Perception on Similarity Detection Service of University of Ruhuna

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.