Awareness and Perception of Plagiarism among Undergraduate Students of Selected Higher Institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria (Published)
Plagiarism has eaten deep into the fabrics of higher institutions worldwide and it has continued to be a global concern. A lot of measures have been put in place by organization/institutions to curb this menace. Some had even subscribed to plagiarism detection software such as Turnitin. This crime is so common among the undergraduate students, some go to the Internet or textbook to copy and paste without acknowledging the source. The understanding of various perspectives and attitude towards this issue is critical to finding a lasting solution. This study therefore investigated the awareness and perception of plagiarism among final year students of Faculty of Education in Rivers State University and Final year – HND2 students (Accredited departments) in Captain Elechi Amadi Polytechnic. Four research questions were formulated to guide the study, the study employed a descriptive survey research design and correlational study while using a well-structured questionnaire and rating scale as data collection instrument. The sample size of the study is 310, the instrument was designed into two sections. Section A covers the background data of the students while section B covered the research questions. Descriptive statistical techniques like table of frequency counts and percentages were employed in the analysis of the background data, mean score, standard deviation and correlation coefficient were used in answering the research questions while regression was used in testing the hypotheses. The result revealed that p-value of .211>.05 which means that there is no significant relationship between awareness and perception of plagiarism among the students. It also shows that every one of the discussants were aware of what plagiarism is and most students plagiarize without even realizing the implications. It was recommended that there should be penalties from institution and other relevant authorities to punish students who do plagiarism.
Keywords: Plagiarism, Students, Undergraduate, awareness of plagiarism, perception of plagiarism
Impact of Library Services and Resources on Undergraduate Students as users of faculty Library: A case study of Faculty of Management Science Library, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Ogbomoso, Nigeria (Published)
This paper examined the impact of library resources and service on undergraduate students as users of Faculty library. The research also based on the type of materials accessed by users, impact of library services provided, adequacy of library resources and service, problem faced in the usage of faculty library and solution. To retrieve the necessary information, a questionnaire was randomly distributed to a sample of 300 respondents drawn from a population of 600 library users of undergraduate students of Faculty of Management Science Library, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria. The findings revealed that library resources were not stressful to access to students as a result of adequacies emanating from resources. A response rate of at least 100% was achieved. The researcher used frequency and simple percentage to analyze the data, the outcome results indicated that the majority of 78% of the respondents find the resources and service of Faculty Library effective. 85% of the respondents agreed that the Faculty Library resources are adequate for their various information needs. Base on the finding, recommendations were made in order to boost the library services and resources provided to meet more of the demands of teeming population of users. It was recommended among others that electronic /online information resources should be made available in the library to help students and scholars to have access to current materials. Also the library collection should be well organized to ensure that the catalogue and other bibliographic access resources reflect the truth content of the library.
Keywords: Faculty, Library, Library Resources, Nigeria, Students, Undergraduate, University, impact of library service