Turnitin Usage and its impact on Academic Integrity and Honesty of General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU)

Abstract

Higher educational institutions are expected to adhere to academic integrity and honesty in their mission for gaining and disseminating knowledge. But the advancement of new technology is one of the negative impacts on it because easy and open access to information on the web encourages students to use other’s work and claim as theirs. This is against the academic integrity and honesty which is termed as plagiarism. Therefore, KDU has subscribed to Turnitin anti-plagiarism software to control and maintain the academic integrity and honesty among the university population. Analyzing administrator’s statistics, this paper intends to find out the Turnitin usage and its impact on academic integrity and honesty of KDU. The results indicate that the percentage of active instructors and usage of Turnitin is comparatively increased year by year. Similarity level was high at the beginning and became less gradually. Hence the academic culture is influenced among the users and it shows a positive impact on academic integrity and honesty of the university. Finally, the researcher recommends to conduct training sessions for staff and students on handling techniques of Turnitin as well as how to use it as a tool for academic writing to maintain academic integrity and honesty