Students’ Experience of Institutional Interventions On Plagiarism: Nigerian Case

In the last ten years, there has been much research into academic integrity with a focus on plagiarism in developed countries. There is still a dearth of such research in developing countries like Nigeria.
This paper presents the results from a larger exploratory study on student plagiarism in Nigerian Higher Education Institution of Learning (Nigerian universities), which is associated with the Impact of Plagiarism Policies in Higher Education Across Europe (IPPHEAE) project.
It seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge by focusing on the experiences of previous institutional interventions on student plagiarism issues and their impact on student experience when they study elsewhere.
Nigerian students studying abroad had to adapt to diverse teaching, learning and assessment styles under a different institutional system. This resulted in the students struggling when they had to apply skills they had not acquired during their previous study.
This study adopted a mixed method approach; 25 Nigerian Postgraduate Students studying in a United Kingdom University were interviewed for the qualitative data and 171 IPPHEAE student questionnaires were completed for the quantitative data.
Results from the data suggest that the previous institutional system experienced by the students was quite different from what they met in their present institutions of study in England.
As a result, the students struggled to cope with their studies when they had to apply skills they had not acquired.