Awareness of Academic Integrity among the Undergraduates: A Case Study based on the Department of Library and Information Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Academic Integrity is considered a vital parameter to protect from academic dishonesty. Currently, undergraduates use these concepts in their studies and research. However, it was still looking for the survey related to the awareness of academic integrity among the Department of Library and Information Science (DLIS) undergraduates. Therefore, this case study focused on identifying an awareness of Academic Integrity among BA honours degree undergraduates of the DLIS, University of Kelaniya. The main objective was to examine the awareness of the academic integrity of the DLIS undergraduates under the main concepts of plagiarism, making false claims, paraphrasing, limitations on getting and giving help, and summarising. Under the non-probability sampling method, a convenient sample was used to select BA honours degree 106 undergraduates from the DLIS. An online questionnaire was distributed to the undergraduates as a tool for data collection. According to the findings, 80.4% of undergraduates knew the concept during the lectures, while 7.5% had the idea through self-studies. The rest of the 12.1% of percentages represented that they were aware of the concept when searching the internet, from friends, reading journal articles and through the final year research supervisor. Most undergraduates had a good understanding of plagiarism, making false claims, paraphrasing, and limitations on getting than the giving help than summarizing. All undergraduates would like to learn these concepts via the curriculum, and they proposed teaching the concept in detail in the syllabus. The study proposed establishing a compulsory course module for all undergraduates to complete before their final year.