STUDENTS' AWARENESS OF PLAGIARISM AS AN ACADEMIC DISHONEST BEHAVIOUR

The phrase 'academic dishonesty' has become a very common and threatening phrase in the academic environment in many countries. It is very often related to the ruin of academics' careers as well as to the failures of many students at university. In this study we tried to investigate the Albanian undergraduate students' attitude toward plagiarism. The study is conducted in two universities in Albania: one public and one private. The number of students who participated in the study is 88. Data from the study show that even though students understand that plagiarism constitutes a dishonest behavior, still the majority of them (78%) admit to have plagiarized at least once during their time at university. The results also indicate that all forms of plagiarism listed in the questionnaire are used by students. The lowest form of plagiarism was paving someone else to prepare their assignment and the highest form was copying sentences or paragraphs from another material without citing the source. The most important finding from this study is that only few students (14%) reported to have been punished for plagiarism. In conclusion, the present study shows that plagiarism is a serious problem in Albanian universities which calls for more studies in order to understand the academic and social factors that encourage this behavior and the measures to be taken in order to prevent it from happening in a fast and effective way.