Education + Training

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore the relationship between entrepreneurship students' ethical views on plagiarism, their self reported engagement in plagiarism and their participation in an online plagiarism prevention tutorial.

Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a questionnaire administered to 434 undergraduate university entrepreneurship students, combining self-reported data with behavioural measures.

Findings – The results illustrate that more than one online plagiarism prevention tutorial is required to change self-reported views relating to engagement in plagiarism, perception of peer participation in plagiarism and students' ethical views. However, it should be noted that even such a small intervention demonstrates an observable difference in students' capacity to recognise a case of verbatim plagiarism as an academic breach in practice.

Research limitations/implications – The research demonstrates that educators should focus on good educational design, educating students regarding plagiarism prevention while making use of technology enhanced learning, instead of considering e-learning choices as a quick solution to plagiarism.

Originality/value – The paper focuses on an emerging aspect of plagiarism education, that is, the use of technology enhanced learning. While acknowledging the potential of technology enhanced learning in plagiarism prevention the paper notes that plagiarism prevention should be embedded in the curriculum rather than addressed in an ad-hoc manner.