Abstract:
In the present digital era, plagiarism is widely spoken of as an issue which is relevant to
the academia due to the increase in academic dishonesty. With the availability and easy
access of cyber information, copying and pasting information from the online resources
has become a trend among many students.
This research focuses on observing-the prevalence of cyber plagiarism among MBA
students in public higher education establishments in the Colombo district of Sri Lanka.
From a sample of 214 students, 134 valid questionnaires were used for the analysis. The
Questionnaire addressed the issues of the extent of cyber plagiarism among MBA
Students, the frequent types of cyber plagiarism, prominent factors affecting towards
cyber plagiarism and influence of demographic characteristics to prominent factors
affecting towards cyber plagiarism among MBA students.
The results of the analysis indicate that 37.9% (50 out of 132) did not plagiarize and
majority of 62.1% (82 out of 132) plagiarized. According to the student point of view the
most frequent type of cyber plagiarism activity was unacceptable paraphrasing and most
prominent factor affecting towards cyber plagiarism were deadlines suddenly looming
over the horizon. In accordance with the analysis, some of the demographic
)
characteristics influence upon the factors affecting towards cyber plagiarism and some
others do not influence or are independent from the factors affecting towards cyber
plagiarism. The outcome of the study could help the academics to educate the students on
how to avoid academic dishonesty, cyberplagiarism and create a better awareness about
fair use of information. The research concludes by providing an insight into the
limitations of the research and indicates the parameters for further research directions
emerging out of this research.
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