Plagiarism Among Students: Brief Overview and Assumptions of an Educational Problem in Indonesia

Amidst the international opportunities available to academics and students, plagiarism keeps plaguing the Indonesian educational sector. In general, plagiarism is actually taking one’s work without citing the name of the author. Plagiarism itself comes from plundering which means kidnapping or stealing one’s written works (Sutherland-Smith, 2008). Plagiarism has been detected as the result of the inexistence of copyright law, in which author’s name is not included in the printing and publication process. This situation leads to the creation of copyright law and penalties incurred if this law is not obeyed. In such a way, alerting Indonesian students on the importance of plagiarism and how they can implement their understanding on plagiarism not only in their written works but also in their presented materials would be crucial.

Since it has become a very common action done by students, several ways have been established to reduce the possibility of plagiarism. One of them is using antiplagiarism software, such as Turnitin. This software is used for checking the originality of students’ writing and calculate the percentages of plagiarised words borrowed from other authors. Despite this huge advantage, Turnitin can not be used in Indonesia because of its expensive cost that can not be covered by educational institutions in Indonesia. In line with this, Turnitin can only be used if students’ written works are in English. Therefore, it is necessary to find other solutions that can be considered to be able to reduce the number of plagiarism.

Furthermore, there has been a heated discussion of finding reasons why plagiarism occurred in academic world and Indonesian students in particular. It is infamously stated that cultural background has become a common reason (Bamford & Sergiou, 2005). Nevertheless, educational practitioners believe that incompetency of the language, in this case English language, and reading comprehension of students would be the most reasonable answers (Pecorari, 2008). In other words, students plagiarised one’s work because of their incompetence in the language as well as unwillingness to cite and paraphrase properly. Besides, previous learning curriculum which relies heavily on memorization might be another underlying issue. In consequence, this situation might result that the students will encounter another difficulties to comprehend and distinguish between general knowledge and information which requires proper references.

At higher levels, students should be taught the nature of plagiarism and its consequences, and how to avoid it. Even, at the outset, universities should provide an academic introductory course to freshmen as a part of the student orientation program, which includes lessons on how to create presentation slides, borrow and access (e)books from both the library and the internet, and so on. In general-education courses, where it is somewhat less important for students to learn the conventions of writing in a certain discipline, assignments can take more classroom-based forms, in which, for example, students must incorporate ideas from a class discussion into their papers or must write about the progress of their work as it proceeds.

Students who deliberately and knowingly represent the work of others as their own are guilty of plagiarism in an academic setting, a kind of misconduct that brings upon them the misfortune of institutional sanctions. Just as importantly, however, faculty and administrators must consider what role they play not only in creating and enforcing rules, but in supporting students' development as writers. Designing good writing assignments and supporting their development in the class is really about good pedagogy, a pedagogy that sees writing as a way to help students to learn, not simply to test the outcomes of learning.

At last, the government might also inaugurate further evaluation and assessment regarding the current curriculum. By looking at the current situation, many students from numerous educational institutions in Indonesia deal with the cases of plagiarism individually as a result from the absence of a specific law against plagiarism. Therefore, another concrete solution for the government is to bring in a particular regulation to stop rampant plagiarism in academia, with punishment ranging from a warning to deregistration in the case of students.