Internet and Plagiarism: Awareness, Attitude and Perception of Students of Secondary Schools

摘要

The aim of this research is to provide to secondary school students and school administrators in Nigerian educational sector a better understanding on students’ awareness of Internet plagiarism, attitudes towards plagiarism and perception of plagiarism in the context of writing and doing other assignments online. Methodology adopted is the survey design in which questionnaires and group discussions were used for obtaining data from students. Results shows that more of the students have not even heard the word plagiarism while very few of them could give the meaning of the term plagiarism. The purpose of using the Internet was observed to be on information needs.The work also discovered that students use the Internet more on educational activities especially in the area of doing school assignments. Although, it also showed that the students do not use the Internet in stealing what others have written as well as only few of them accepted that using internet for plagiarism is good because it helps them in meeting up with the challenges of class work and assignments. The results show that teachers do not teach the rules of using content from online and how to cite the works of others so as to avoid plagiarism. Consequently, it was recommended that teachers should enlighten the students on the plagiarism and its consequences.