A legal study on plagiarism amongst undergraduate students in Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) / Nadya Azra Hassan and Nik Muhammad Azrin Hafiz Nik Mahmood

Plagiarism in academic institutions is now becoming a major problem. With the rapid progress in the area of information, communication and technology (ICT), students can access information at their convenience, at anytime and anywhere. This enables them to commit plagiarism in their academic writing through various ways such as cut-and paste information from the internet and also not doing the proper referencing. This paper investigates the extent of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) undergraduate students' understanding and awareness of avoiding the act. Literature reviews from previous study, cases and regulations are collected and digested in order to investigate this issue. Several interviews have also been conducted and the answer reveals that there is some lack of awareness among undergraduate students on plagiarism in their academic writing and they felt that the information regarding this act was not done extensively even though various campaigns has been done by the university in order to curb this problem. UiTM has come out with a new plan and policy that can be seen as quite impressive and will be able to deter this problem but sufficient awareness must be given to the students as well to promote academic integrity. The aim of this research is to encourage academic staffs and students to acknowledge the concerns on implementation of plagiarism policy. The definition of the word plagiarism and the awareness in avoiding the act shall be made clear and precise in order to overcome this problem in academic writing.