Motivation, plagiarism and performance of Third Year BIOP students of Makerere University Kampala

Abstract

Plagiarism on college encompasses well documented academic integrity breach. The ease of cut and paste plagiarism in the age of the internet has been cited as the primary culprit along with students own ignorance of acceptable citation practices. Plagiarism consists of a diverse range of unfair practices such as theft of other students’ work, paying a third party for assignments, downloading a whole or part of assignment from internet and falsification of data. According to a survey conducted by the Pew research Centre (2005) more than half of college presidents believe that plagiarism has increased substantially in the last ten years. Eighty nine percent indicated that computers and internet have played a major role p; 16. It should be noted that the copying from a written source without acknowledging it constitute plagiarism.