International Journal of Education Vol. 10 No. 2, February 2018, pp. 141-148 ©2018 Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 141 EFL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF TURNITIN FOR DETECTING PLAGIARISM ON ACADEMIC WRITING Muhamad Nova, Westi Haryanti Utami English Education Department, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia mohnova@student.upi.edu First draft received: 31 Oct 2017 Accepted: 29 Dec 2017 Final proof received: 5 Feb 2018 Abstract As one of the negative impacts of technology development, the ease access to any information on the internet creates a new problem on academic integrity, in which the students take other’s works and claim as theirs. This phenomenon is termed as plagiarism which is against the academic ethics and honesty. Many universities have fought back the plagiarism cases and used plagiarism detection software as their tools in detecting plagiarism. Turnitin, as one of plagiarism detection software widely used in many universities, has been claimed as effective software in detecting plagiarism. However, prior studies have also revealed its inaccuracy in dealing with plagiarism cases. Reflecting from the both views of Turnitin, students’ view on its utilization may bring an essential consideration on the existence of Turnitin in detecting plagiarism. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the utilization of Turnitin based on students’ perspective and explored their responses and perceptions toward plagiarism detected by Turnitin. A case study was conducted in one classroom consisted of 20 EFL students in a university in Bandung, Indonesia. The data were taken from self-reflection questionnaire and the result shows that many students had unexpected results due to their misunderstanding about plagiarism and Turnitin system. It led to students’ unsatisfying responses toward their result of similarity percentage from Turnitin. Even though several benefits on writing skill improvement were found by the students, the inaccuracy result of Turnitin evaluation raised their negative attitude toward its utilization as well. Therefore, equal understanding between the lecturer and the students on plagiarism and Turnitin system is needed. Moreover, lecturer’s cross-checking, feedback on students’ academic writing, and additional change on the system configuration in detecting plagiarism are required to avoid any misconception of plagiarism. Further research on different respondents or different plagiarism detection software is recommended to be conducted. Keywords: academic writing; EFL students; perception; plagiarism; Turnitin To cite this paper (in APA style): Nova, M., & Utami, W. H. (2018). EFL students’ perception of Turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing. International Journal of Education, 10(2), 141-148. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ INTRODUCTION Technological advancement brings enormous impact in all fields including in education. The influx of information technology on the internet up until now provides easy and convenient both for student and teacher in supporting learning activities. The emergence of the internet allows everyone to store any data which can be accessed freely by everyone around the world. This phenomenon actually provides teachers to promote critical thinking and independent learning for their students (Ledwith & Rísquez, 2008). However, this remarkable chance to learn also has negative side- effect as well, that challenges the integrity of academic and good practices (Ali, 2013). Therefore, many dishonesty issues come up and vary in the educational field. A simple example of dishonesty by the students is copying other’s writing on the internet and admitting it as their own to be graded (Batane, 2010) which is termed as plagiarism. As a product of academic dishonesty, plagiarism is included as the act of cheating and violating rules of research that deserves severe punishment since it is against research ethics and academic integrity (Ranawella & Alagaratnam, 2017; Graham-Matheson & Starr, 2013). Hence, the issue of plagiarism among students attracts attention in some universities and becomes common phenomenon recently (Ali, 2013; Kaner & Fiedler, 2007). Commonly, someone’s failure in interpreting the concept of plagiarism into practice makes them fall into plagiarized others’ work as well (Bruton & Childers, 2015). In western countries, a simple definition of plagiarism is given by Graham-Matheson & Starr (2013) who stated that plagiarism is the act of taking someone’s work and claiming it as our own. Thus, one who takes other works without any credit of the owner or proper citation may lead to plagiarism phenomenon. Particularly, Bakhtiyari et al. (2014) identified two types of plagiarism named direct plagiarizing and unconsciously plagiarizing. Direct plagiarizing occurs when someone duplicating others’ work exactly as it is and claiming it as his/her work, meanwhile, unconsciously plagiarizing is affected by some factors, mailto:mohnova@student.upi.edu Nova & Utami EFL students’ perception of Turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing 142 including incited ideas and concepts, many authors, accidental similarity, fixed definitions, text recycling, self-plagiarism and metadata (Bakhtiyari et al., 2014). In line with unconsciously plagiarizing occurred, Nisha, Senthil and Bushan (2015) identified four current situations when someone may fall into unconsciously plagiarizing; accidental duplication without citing the sources, failure in constructing idea, inability in taking notes and citing sources correctly, and idea duplication and combination. Since it deals with academic integrity, affecting both students and university, it is very crucial to fight plagiarism where an individual student needs to be imparted from this unethical behavior and university needs to keep its integrity and its quality of products as well (Batane, 2010). Regardless, many efforts have to be made to deal with plagiarism not only from the teachers but also from university authorities by providing regulation and solution as responsibility in the educational field. The teachers have to make sure their students aware of the plagiarism issues by introducing the acts that categorized as plagiarism and how to avoid it by teaching them to use paraphrase, quotation marks and provide citing sources since it is necessary skill in academic writing (Nisha, Senthil & Bhushan, 2015; Jones, 2008; Ledwith & Rísquez, 2008). In this technology era, anti-plagiarism software is viewed as one of the solutions to fight plagiarism (Ranawella & Alagaratnam, 2017) which is not only a quick way to detect or even stop plagiarism and cheating, but also could be a tool for teachers to provide positive educational approach to academic honesty (Ledwith & Rísquez, 2008). However, there are also contradicts view that believes this kind of software could be a threat to trust issues and affects students and teachers relationship (Ali, 2013), but the use of plagiarism detection software can be very useful as long as it is operated in a proper way to educate the students in avoiding plagiarism and promoting academic honesty and integrity (Bensal, Miraflores, & Tan, 2013). Therefore, the institution or university needs to regulate their criteria of plagiarism that match the mechanism of the software. One of the most popular plagiarism detection software used is Turnitin. According to Scaife (in Goh, 2013), Turnitin is used in more than 80 countries with 10 million users. Generally, the mechanism of Turnitin is analyzing the originality of paper submitted from electronic sources in which the database comes from text stored digitally on the Internet (Hamilton & Richardson, 2008; Bretag & Carapiet, 2007). The comparison of paper on Turnitin is among the previous paper submitted to this program, including the materials found on the internet, both commercial and academic database, and online journals (Goh, 2013; Kaner & Fiedler, 2007). Thus, some scholars considered Turnitin as a powerful tool to help students in avoiding and minimizing plagiarism (Bensal, Miraflores, & Tan, 2013; Graham-Matheson & Starr, 2013; Hamilton & Richardson, 2008) and by showing the similarity percentage, it also improves students’ writing since their awareness of plagiarism increased (Batane, 2010; Crisp, 2007). On the other hand, there are also many negative views that claimed Turnitin weaknesses in many ways as plagiarism detection. Turnitin cannot be relied on completely as plagiarism detector since there are so many works that have not been published or submitted on the internet in form of books, journals, magazines, and conference papers that can be plagiarized (Goh, 2013). Turnitin can also make inaccurate reports of plagiarism since it is only showing the originality without differentiating the intentional plagiarism and similarity of wording including quotations, citations, famous names, reference pages, common phrases, figures of speech, simply coincidences and actually correctly cited references (Ali, 2013; Jones, 2008). One study has been conducted by Oghigian, Rayner, and Chujo (2015) in Japan and it carried out that the result of Turnitin evaluation brought an inadequate detection of actual plagiarism, where it was found 99% of university students’ writings have similar matching with Turnitin database, meanwhile, after setting up the configuration and eliminating false plagiarism, only 29% of these papers were categorized having actual plagiarism. Thus, the unspecific configuration on the Turnitin evaluation setting can result in inaccurate reports on students’ writing. Consequently, it creates confusion concepts between originality and plagiarism in writing (Dahl, 2007) and turns the students to be more concern in avoiding the high percentage of similarity rather than maintaining the writing in line with academic honesty (Bensal, Miraflores, & Tan, 2013). Moreover, attitudes conflict among students also rises up on this software utilization since the misuse of plagiarism detection software as a tool for detecting plagiarism and giving punishment are not in line with its original main purpose which is educating the students on how to avoid plagiarism (Bensal, Miraflores, & Tan, 2013). As the result, a mutual distrust between the students with their lecturer was also risen up and the students may feel sensitive to the lack of trust (Ali, 2013). Reflecting up from the both side effects of having Turnitin as a plagiarism detection software to fight plagiarism, students’ view on its utilization may bring an essential consideration on the existence of Turnitin in detecting plagiarism in higher education. Their view on its implementation may affect their learning attitudes and learning improvement in avoiding plagiarism. Since there has no study yet on the students’ perception regarding the use of this software as plagiarism detector in Indonesia, this study focuses on taking students of higher education views toward the use of Turnitin for detecting plagiarism on their academic writing. METHODS A case study was conducted to investigate the EFL university students’ responses and perception on the use of Turnitin for detecting plagiarism on their academic writing. In conducting this study, one class consisting of 20 EFL students in one university in Bandung, Indonesia was chosen to be the setting of the International Journal of Education Vol. 10 No. 2, February 2018, pp. 141-148 ©2018 Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 143 study. They were purposively chosen since they belonged to the same class. They consisted of seven male students (35%) and thirteen female students (65%). The students were the first-time Turnitin users in which they did not have any previous experience on using Turnitin and did not have any specific training on the use of Turnitin before. They only received a simple guide on how to submit their academic writing on Turnitin and how to see the result of Turnitin similarity percentage evaluation. In this study, the topic of academic writing assigned was a research proposal. Regarding the data collection, these students’ responses and perception were collected through a self- reflection questionnaire survey which allows the students to write their own comments and opinion on the use of Turnitin for detecting plagiarism on their academic writing. The items on the questionnaire were open-ended questions in order to gather deeper answer and perceptions of every student. The questionnaire was divided into two parts. The first one was about the general information of the students which is their gender. The second part consisted of three questions related to the use of Turnitin. Approximate time to complete this questionnaire was about 10 minutes. This self-reflection questionnaire survey was given after receiving their result in form of similarity percentage. In the light of the procedure of conducting the study, firstly, the students were assigned to write a research proposal with the due date was two weeks. The submission through Turnitin was also informed to these students when the task assigned. Then, after submitting the research proposal on Turnitin, the students were informed about their result of Turnitin evaluation on the percentages of similarity. The students were given the full-access to look at the Turnitin evaluation result, including the percentages, the part of their writing which was indicated as plagiarism, and the related sources of plagiarism indication. After viewing the results, these students’ were required to write down their comments and opinion on the result of plagiarism detection by Turnitin program in a self- reflection questionnaire survey. Moreover, a general perception on the usage of Turnitin was also recorded through this self-reflection questionnaire survey. After collecting these students’ comments and opinions on the use of Turnitin for detecting plagiarism on their academic writing, their responses and perceptions were classified into two categories, positive and negative. The data obtained was analyzed descriptively in form of narration and the interpretation of their perceptions was created and was justified with the related theory and previous studies. Moreover, a narration on their responses and perceptions were displayed on findings and discussion sections. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS In line with the research objectives mentioned above, the students’ view on the utilization of Turnitin as a plagiarism detection software was divided into two section; first, their responses toward the plagiarism phenomenon detected by Turnitin and second, their perception on the utilization of Turnitin in academic writing. Responses of Plagiarism and Turnitin Students’ responses were taken after they submitted their paper and got their paper’s similarity percentage result from Turnitin. These responses focused on students’ expectation regarding the plagiarism found on their papers. Basically, the students’ responses after receiving their similarity percentage from Turnitin were varied; there were those who convinced that their paper’s similarity percentage was not in line with their expectation, but there were also some other students who already expected their result. Some students were really assured that they did not do any activity related to plagiarism. They also did some possible ways to avoid plagiarism on their paper for example by checking to another plagiarism checker website, paraphrase the theories cited, and constructed their sentences with their own ideas. However, the result of similarity percentage from Turnitin was really surprised them. They did not expect that they got quite high of similarity percentage. It occurred due to the misunderstanding concept that the overall similarity percentage was not the actual percentage of plagiarism. In line with the study conducted by Ali (2013) which claimed that the percentage of similarity from Turnitin did not reflect the plagiarism done by the students, and thus, in order to decide whether a paper contained plagiarism or not, it needed careful judgment from a human which examined the detail on similarity percentage. The responses of the students regarding their result were: (S.1) Unexpected, because there are sentences that I write by myself but still categorized as plagiarism. (S.2) Of course the result I got is not in line with my expectation. I have checked the plagiarism of my paper before on another website and it turned out that there was none indicated as plagiarism. However, when it is submitted to Turnitin, the similarity percentage is high. (S.7) I am very confident that my paper has been organized well with many considerations to avoid plagiarism. Therefore I do not expect the result is quite high. (S.11) It is not the same as my expectation. Since I have tried to paraphrase the theories I used. Furthermore, there was one student who claimed that Turnitin was not detecting the plagiarism of the paper, but more of detecting the similarity from the sources on the internet only. She assumed that the overall similarity percentage could not be the one to be relied on as plagiarism detection, but could be a tool for helping in making decision. Every paper should be checked thoroughly from the originality report to decide whether there was plagiarism detected or not. Her comment was as follows: (S.20) The result is not in line with my expectation because Turnitin actually doesn’t check the Nova & Utami EFL students’ perception of Turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing 144 plagiarism, but only checks the similarity of the paper from sources on the internet. I think a paper is categorized as a plagiarism when high similarity percentage comes from only one source. The comment above supported the fact found on Ali’s study (2013) that there was incomprehension of the students between the definition of plagiarism and the similarity percentage calculated from Turnitin. Therefore, even if a student got high similarity percentage did not always mean that they plagiarized others’. It must be checked from the detail of the percentage on originality report. Thus, the decision whether someone did plagiarism or not can be done carefully and fairly. Likewise, students’ dissatisfaction was worsened by the fact that Turnitin system actually detected everything similar on the internet not only the content of the paper but also little things like author’s name, class’ subject, references, and common terms. As a result, many students assumed the similarity of those things was categorized as serious plagiarism by Turnitin. Related to the similar study conducted by Bakhtiyari et al (2014), those little things were categorized as unconsciously plagiarism. As stated from their study, there were factors affected unconsciously plagiarism such as accidental similarity, fixed definitions, text recycling, self-plagiarism, many authors, and metadata. Therefore, students often fell into this kind of plagiarism unintentionally. This issue was also in line with Jones’ conclusion (2008) that stated Turnitin was only checking the match or similarity of the paper with any sources on the internet and could not provide exact judgment whether one was plagiarizing others’ or not. Therefore, it added up the confusion about the plagiarism and similarity percentage proposed by Turnitin since the students’ understanding of plagiarism was limited only to the copy-pasting activity in word application. They assumed that unconsciously plagiarism detected by Turnitin was not supposed to be included as a plagiarism activity. The students’ comments regarding this issue were: (S.6) I am so sure that I write my own sentences but still indicated as plagiarism. Even, my name is categorized as plagiarism as well. (S.8) I submitted a similar paper from the one I submitted for another subject, but it has not been published, so I think it is not plagiarism since I write them both by myself. (S.10) I think there are some parts that are not categorized as plagiarism but still be highlighted by Turnitin which resulted in the increased similarity percentage. For example common sentences like, “the purpose of this study is to find out…” (S.15) My paper’s similarity percentage is high because the references are indicated as plagiarism. (S.17) I am confused when the questionnaire I adopt from others is categorized as plagiarism yet that is the one that I need for my research. (S.19) There are several things that make me confused, for example when we adopt table from the books, it is categorized as plagiarism by Turnitin. Moreover, some students who dissatisfied with their quantitative result from Turnitin admitted that they were lack of understanding about the plagiarism and how Turnitin system worked. Therefore, it might be the cause of the high percentage of similarity they got from their paper. It was related to a study conducted by Bruton & Childers (2015). They claimed that one’s failure in interpreting the concept of plagiarism into practice is the one that caused them to eventually fall into plagiarized others’ work. It was similar from what was happening on the participants in this study, even if it was just unconsciously plagiarism. It showed from the comment received from this study as follows: (S.4) At first, I assumed that the result was not in line with my expectation since I have re- checked before submitting it. However, after I see the originality detail, maybe I still have weakness in paraphrasing. (S.13) It is not in line with my expectation. However, I admit that there is about 3% that I forgot to paraphrase. (S.14) Had I known how the Turnitin system works in identifying plagiarism, I would have written my paper more carefully. But I’m okay with the result I got. On the other hand, there were those who believed that what they got as similarity percentage from Turnitin was expected. They already predicted the result and it matched with their activity done during the process of writing their paper. They seemed understanding of what plagiarism means and how to avoid it during the writing process. It was similar to Nisha, Senthil and Bushan’s classification (2015) who proposed four situations that make someone fall into plagiarism; accidental duplication without citing the sources, failure in constructing idea, inability in taking notes and citing sources correctly, and idea duplication and combination. Those who were aware of these kinds of situation would have avoided them by many possible ways, including some students in this present study. These students comments received regarding this issue were: (S.10) My expectation is quite in line with the similarity percentage I got since the parts that I paraphrased are not indicated as plagiarism by Turnitin. (S.12) I have tried to paraphrase the theories I used on my paper. It is shown from the result that indicated as plagiarism is only the common terms/sentences found on many papers. International Journal of Education Vol. 10 No. 2, February 2018, pp. 141-148 ©2018 Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 145 Reflecting up from the students’ responses regarding plagiarism and Turnitin, most of them showed the confusion between the concept of plagiarism and similarity detected by Turnitin. Most of them assumed that the overall similarity percentage was shown how much plagiarism detected on a paper and regarded as the final judgment of plagiarism detected on their paper. Therefore many students had unexpected results which led to the unsatisfying responses of the students with their result of similarity percentage from Turnitin. Perceptions of Turnitin In identifying the Indonesian EFL university students’ attitudes toward the use of Turnitin as plagiarism detection software, a general perception on the Turnitin utilization was also received in this study. Mostly, these EFL university students perceived both positive and negative perception on the use of Turnitin in detecting plagiarism. On the positive side, some students mentioned that Turnitin can be an effective tool for checking plagiarism on their academic writing, which is in common with Graham-Matheson and Starr’s study (2013) and Hamilton and Richardson’s study (2008). Specifically, in Graham-Matheson and Starr’s study (2013), the students found that this software is useful and it help half of them to avoid plagiarism act, while in Hamilton and Richardson’s study (2008),the students used Turnitin easily and they had a positive experience in using it as a plagiarism detector. In line with prior studies’ findings, some students on this study found the effectiveness of Turnitin as a plagiarism detection tool. Some students’ comments on Turnitin effectiveness received on this study were: (S.2) A machine which is used to help human’s work sometimes has many weaknesses that can bring some losses for the human themselves, and in my opinion, the use of Turnitin is quite effective to check the plagiarism level. (S.5) Generally, on one side, using Turnitin can help the lecturer in deciding on which paper is indicated having plagiarism or not. (S.10) It is quite helpful in checking students’ academic writing. Moreover, obtaining skill improvement, some students also mentioned that having Turnitin can enhance their skills in writing, including creativity and critical thinking. Meanwhile, one student mentioned that it can be used as guidance in revising the academic writing. In line with Ledwith and Rísquez (2008), students’ writing and referencing skill can be enhanced with Turnitin by giving the access for the students to take a look at their originality evaluation and helping them in expressing their writing. Thus, some students on this study also found the benefits of Turnitin in improving their writing skill, especially their creativity and critical thinking, and make it as their revision guidance in maintaining their writing. Their comments on their skill improvement received can be shown as follow: (S.14) It is a great tool. The assignment will be done with high effort and make the author become more creative and respect to others’ work. (S.15) It is very helpful to have Turnitin. It makes the students think critically in writing and pay more attention to their writing, not only copying and developing, but also making them read, conclude, and write on what they got from their reading. (S.19) Based on my perspective, Turnitin helps me to improve my writing skills so that I am not only depending on the content from book or journal that I had read, but also exploring my interpretation deeper. (S.3) It is a good application as a good guidance in revising our writing, but it does not mean that we depend mostly on the Turnitin system. Another student also stated that the awareness of her writing similarity was increased and two others mentioned that it makes them become more careful in writing and keeping the originality of their writing. Thus, using Turnitin can raise students’ awareness in their writing and it makes them become more attentive to the originality of their writing (Ledwith & Rísquez, 2008). The students’ comments written on self-reflection questionnaire were: (S.8) In my opinion, it is a good program and it makes us aware of the similarity on our writing. (S.17) Good program, it makes me be more careful in citing the sources. (S.18) It is an excellent application so that I can pay attention more in keeping the originality of my writing. Meanwhile, another student found out that Turnitin can also be a tool for student’s self-assessment. Using Turnitin as an assessment tool was also identified in Crisp’s study (2007) which revealed that Turnitin was beneficial software to improve students’ written work and assessment practices. Thus, Turnitin serves its another essential function as an assessment tool. (S.20) It is a good tool. It can be one media for self- assessment. Uniquely, one student also added that it can be used for honesty detection. As Ledwith and Rísquez (2008) mentioned above, anti-plagiarism software exists as a tool in promoting academic honesty and also getting the students to understand the importance of academic honesty. Therefore, the utilization of this software should not only stop the plagiarism phenomenon among the students, but also raise students’ awareness on academic honesty. The students’ comment on this matter was: (S.4) It is actually a good tool to test students’ honesty. Even though it has received positive perception, the negative attitudes also exist in line with its utilization. Two students found that Turnitin program Nova & Utami EFL students’ perception of Turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing 146 made some mistakes in indicating plagiarism which leads its ineffectiveness in detecting plagiarism. These students’ views are consistent with Ali’s findings (2013) which carried out that this software cannot detect accurate plagiarism and result in an inaccurate evaluation in detecting plagiarism. Their comments received on this study were: (S.1) Actually, it is a good application, but there are some mistakes in inputting the data of plagiarism indication. (S.6) I think it is not really effective. Moreover, some students suggested the lecture needs to be wise in utilizing Turnitin as one of plagiarism detector. Their suggestion is similar to other scholars’ advice in having the anti-plagiarism software. Some students suggested that the lecture should read and re-check on the plagiarism and similarity indicated by Turnitin. A similar advice also was given by Jones (2008) who mentioned that lecturer has the role in reviewing the Turnitin reports in finding more accurate result on differentiating incorrect referencing and intentional plagiarism. Thus, it requires manual interpretation and careful evaluation on the students’ writing conducted by the lecturer to investigate deeper plagiarism cases detected by Turnitin (Goh, 2013; Oghigian, Rayner, & Chujo, 2016). Then, in this study, students’ suggestions were: (S.4) Re-checking is needed to be done by the lecturer to filter the part which is indicated as a plagiarism. (S.9) The most important thing is that the lecturer must also read the content of the writing. (S.11) The lecturer has to take a look at the idea of writing and re-check which part can be indicated as a false plagiarism. It makes the lecturer work twice. Check it with Turnitin and then check it manually. (S.16) We still need human consideration. We cannot let that machine work alone since some parts are indicated as plagiarisms, but they are not. On the other hand, some other students also suggested for feedback and regulation on dealing with plagiarism phenomenon. A similar suggestion is also given by Graham-Matheson and Starr (2013) who stated that students’ confidence can be boosted if the lecturer gives further feedback on their writing and makes them understand on how to write the correct referencing on their writing. Thus, receiving feedback can improve students’ writing skill and raising their awareness on plagiarism acts. These students’ suggestions on feedback and regulation were: (S.2) A further regulation needs to be made from either the instructors or students to response on plagiarism acts detected by Turnitin. (S.8) Correction and clear aspects on which action that can be categorized as plagiarism need to be explained. (S.10) The result of Turnitin evaluation cannot be set as the only one guidance in evaluating the students’ writing. To reduce inaccurate result on detecting plagiarism, other students also advised that the Turnitin technical setting needs to be set up to avoid the plagiarism indication mistakes by leaving the reference list unchecked. These students advice received in this study can be seen as follow: (S.4) The lecturer also needs to set the Turnitin configuration setting to avoid in checking some part, such as reference list. (S.7) It needs a specific technical setting in checking students’ writing to determine common phrases or sentences. (S.12) A better progress can be reached if Turnitin can exclude the reference list in checking the plagiarism. (S.13) It would be better if the reference list, cover, and common phrases, such as “this part talked about. . .” are directly excluded from plagiarism checking because these parts were indicated as plagiarisms. Regarding the students’ general perception on Turnitin as plagiarism detection software, several benefits were found by many students and they realized the positive impacts of the Turnitin utilization on their writing skill improvement. However, their suggestion and recommendation on how to be wise in utilizing this software needs to not be taken for granted since it can influence the result of similarity percentage and leads to inaccuracy result of Turnitin evaluation. Therefore, being wise in using Turnitin by setting up some features and configurations on Turnitin may lead its maximum function on educating the students on how to avoid plagiarism in their academic writing. CONCLUSION The fact of the positive impacts given by the existence of technology in educational field cannot be argued. Though, as technology users, the lecturer and the students have to be wise in utilizing the tools to achieve its maximum beneficial impacts and to avoid the negative impacts on educational aspect. As one of the technology-based tools in detecting plagiarism, Turnitin has been perceived both positively and negatively by the EFL students in Indonesia. The positive perception was given on its effectiveness in raising students’ awareness on writing similarity and writing originality. Besides, students’ writing skill improvement, including creativity and critical thinking, is also one of its benefits in having Turnitin in checking the plagiarism on students’ writing. Moreover, Turnitin can also help the students in assessing their writing and checking their academic honesty. Nevertheless, the negative attitudes existed among the students cannot also be avoided. Some mistakes in detecting plagiarism cases with Turnitin, including the inability in differentiating direct quotation, common phrase, and citation, leads this International Journal of Education Vol. 10 No. 2, February 2018, pp. 141-148 ©2018 Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 147 software to its ineffectiveness which affected students’ understanding about plagiarism. Most of the students were actually confused about the plagiarism itself and how it works on Turnitin especially the similarity percentage result. Therefore, it is recommended for the academic staff in university, especially the lecturer to teach the students about plagiarism. It includes the definition of plagiarism, the activities regarded as plagiarism and how to avoid it. It is very crucial due to the understanding between the lecturer and the students about plagiarism must be equal. Moreover, the utilization of Turnitin should also be as clear as possible to avoid misunderstanding regarding the similarity percentage result. It is also recommended to have lecturer’s cross-checking and feedback on students’ writing in utilizing this plagiarism detection software to create accurate evaluation result on plagiarism phenomenon and not being dependent only on the evaluation result given by Turnitin. The detail from similarity percentage result should be examined carefully for the lecturer to come into the final decision whether a student falls into serious plagiarism activity or not. The additional change in the system configuration in detecting plagiarism on students’ writing is also needed, for example by disabling bibliography checker. It can help decreasing the inaccurate result of similarity percentages. Furthermore, the scoring rubric of a paper should also include the part of Turnitin’s utilization and be informed to the students. Thus, the students can write a paper that concerns on the content while ethically avoiding plagiarism at the same time. Even though the study had carried out its result on students’ perception on the utilization of Turnitin in detecting plagiarism on academic writing, this study still has some limitations which can give essential contribution toward its result. First, the number of students participated in this study still in a small number. A wider range of participant can bring a deeper explanation and a new perspective on Turnitin application. Second, as the study was conducted in Indonesia, a different result may be carried out by other researchers who conduct their research in another country. Cultural implication and the use of English as a foreign language can also give significant influence on the rate of plagiarism phenomenon in one country. Third, the technique of collecting data was limited on self-reflection questionnaire survey; meanwhile, deeper perception and attitude can be achieved through additional technique, such as interview which can strengthen students’ opinion and comments. Therefore, further research on the similar investigation is recommended to be conducted to seek deeper perception on students’ perception towards Turnitin or other plagiarism detection software. A further research regarding the attitude of the lecturers towards the utilization of Turnitin or other plagiarism detection software is also needed to be done. Finally, the result revealed can give a significant evaluation for a comparative study. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research was supported by the funds of Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education Scholarship (LPDP), Republic of Indonesia (Grant No. 20160611087314). REFERENCES Ali, H. I. H. (2013). Minimizing cyber-plagiarism through Turnitin: Faculty's & students’ perspectives. 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