Jurnal Pendidikan Malaysia 41(1)(2016): 47-51 Creating Awareness of Plagiarism Among Postgraduates in a Postgraduate Course Through a Talk (Kesedaran Tentang Plagiat dalam Kalangan Pelajar Pascasiswazah Menerusi Sebuah Ceramah dalam Kursus Pascasiswazah) Khazriyati Salehuddin* AbSTrACT Submitting plagiarised works at the postgraduate level is not a manifestation of a positive researcher character; yet, such an academic crime appears to be common among students. Although the crime committed may either be intentional or unintentional, the need to prevent this from happening is necessary. Hence, to curb this problem, a minor change in the course structure was made to a postgraduate course in UKM. This change was in the form of introducing a talk on plagiarism in the course activities. The talk on plagiarism was presented to the students at the beginning of the semester to create awareness of the various forms of plagiarism, the implications of plagiarism, and ways of preventing it. This talk was followed by an investigation on the students’ understanding of the subject matter through their relective diary entries. Results show that the talk has succeeded in getting the students to understand the forms of plagiarism and ways of preventing plagiarism. Keywords: Creating awareness; postgraduate; plagiarism AbSTrAK Penghantaran kerja kursus yang diplagiat di tahap pengajian pasca siswazah bukanlah satu manifestasi ciri penyelidik yang positif. Namun, jenayah plagiat ini terus menjadi perkara yang lazim dalam kalangan pelajar. Walaupun tidak diketahui sama ada jenayah plagiat ini dilakukan oleh pelajar secara mereka sedar atau tidak, masalah ini perlu ditangani. Untuk menangani masalah ini, satu bentuk perubahan kecil telah dilakukan ke atas struktur sebuah kursus pasca siswazah di UKM. Perubahan ini termasuklah mengadakan sebuah ceramah tentang plagiat dalam pembentukan aktiviti kursus. Ceramah tentang plagiat ini diberikan pada awal semester untuk memberi pencerahan kepada pelajar tentang pelbagai bentuk plagiat, implikasi plagiat dan cara-cara mengelak daripada melakukannya. Ceramah ini disusuli dengan mengkaji kesan ceramah ke atas pemahaman pelajar tentang plagiat menerusi entri diari releksi mereka. Dapatan menunjukkan bahawa ceramah yang diberikan telah berjaya membantu pelajar memahami bentuk- bentuk plagiat dan cara-cara mengatasi masalah plagiat ini. Kata kunci: Kesedaran; pascasiswazah; plagiat INTrODUCTION Plagiarism is “a crime against academy” (bouville 2008). It refers to the act of taking and using “another person’s ideas, writing, or invention as their own” (Oxford English Dictionary 1995). Plagiarism originated from the Latin word “plagiarius” – a word that is used in the 1590s to refer to a “kidnapper, seducer, and plunderer, one who kidnaps the child or slave of another” (Harper 2014). Today, plagiarism is dominantly used to refer to one form of academic dishonesty (Hayes & Introna 2005). Among students, this form of academic dishonesty comes in the form of “including other people’s words in a coursework assessment without marking them as being such” (Hayes & Introna 2005), and subsequently, “receiving credit for work that is not their own” (Ercegovac & richardson 2004). Plagiarism does not only take place within the same language. As a matter of fact, plagiarism does happen across languages, and this is known as “translation plagiarism” (Potthast et al. 2011). This takes place when texts from other languages are translated by a particular author and subsequently, the translated texts are integrated into the author’s own writing (Potthast et al. 2011). Such a phenomenon commonly occurs particularly when non-native speakers of particular languages have to submit or publish their works in languages they are not fluent in. Past studies on plagiarism (barret & Malcolm 2006; Carroll 2004) indicate that students plagiarisme either intentionally or unintentionally. While intentional plagiarism is clearly a result of dishonesty on the part of the students, unintentional plagiarism is not totally because of students’ undesirable character. They fall JP 41(1) Bab 7 New.indd 47 6/15/2016 11:48:26 AM