Academic Integrity in Online Education
As institutions and faculty work towards producing an effective online learning platform, they face the challenge of providing a quality learning experience that provides students with meaningful credentials while upholding their reputation and integrity. An estimated “73 percent of all test takers, including graduate students and teachers, agree most students cheat at some point during their academic careers” - Jarrod Morgan, February 14, 2018
Top Reasons Why Students Cheat
In our current climate, students are under intense pressure to maintain momentum towards graduation while transitioning to online learning midstream in their education experience. In order to successfully prevent cheating, it is helpful to understand why students make the decision to engage in dishonestly in academic activities.
Procrastination/lack of time - pressure due to students feeling that they have insufficient time available to prepare assignments or study for a test can lead to issues with academic integrity.
Large class sizes – a perceived umbrella of safety in that the student can feel it is unlikely they will get caught with a large group of students.
Impersonal relationship with professors – students that don’t have a personal relationship with their instructors are more likely to engage in cheating.
Grades – competition for jobs and for grad school result in students having increased pressure to inflate their GPA.
Peer pressure/cheating culture – in some social groups, cheating can be viewed as a ‘standard way’ of getting through school. Access to videos on YouTube and TikTok have enabled cheating strategies to go viral.
Genuine lack of knowledge/confusion over which actions are not acceptable – Generation Z students are known as the “Google generation”. Many students don’t understand the need to cite information found on the internet because they believe it is public knowledge. Increased focus on team building skills throughout their education has resulted in students in the habit of working together on assignments, viewing working with peers as ‘collaboration’ vs cheating.
Lack of deterrence – not knowing where to start, some institutions do not actively set up monitoring systems to assess cheating and plagiarism.
Personal crisis – mental health and issues related to anxiety have been on the rise over the past decade. The current isolation and economic stress linked to Covid-19 create additional pressures that can result in students looking for an escape.
Response Strategy to Promote Academic Integrity and Reduce Academic Dishonesty
Education
An important part of the response to mitigating issues of academic dishonesty begins with providing students with clear and specific examples of what you consider to be associated with academic dishonesty and clearly outlining the consequences. Telling the story of past examples of cheating will help provide clarity as to what specific actions lead to being reported to the Dean’s office. For example, can they discuss assignments with peers? Help students understand your expectations with respect to identifying boundaries between collaboration opportunities and when that crosses the line into collusion.
Including a copy of the institution’s written academic integrity as part of the course syllabus, and highlighting the detailed steps of how the university will address academic dishonesty can be an effective deterrent.
Consider posting a video for students to review, highlighting expectations as well specific examples of stories explaining ways that students have been reported for cases of academic dishonesty in your class or within your department. Identify what your expecting in terms of when collaboration is permitted or expected and when it is not allowed.
As part of “meet the class” introductions, ask students to write a paragraph that includes their own personal philosophy about academic dishonesty issues, especially cheating and internet plagiarism.
Design Strategies to Minimize Cheating Opportunities
By removing ambiguity and other stumbling blocks that encourage student cheating, we can help to reduce instances of cheating in our courses. Providing marking rubrics, sample assignments and video walkthroughs of assignments can help to avoid situations where it is more motivating for students to cheat than to learn through effective application of the course material. Scaffolding assignments by breaking large projects or assignments into smaller portions as weekly assignments will help students work on projects over the course of the semester, rather than procrastinating until the final weeks.
Helping students to understand how their learning in your course relates to specific job-ready skills will also help reduce instances of academic dishonesty, as they will better be able to understand the big picture of why the assignment/test is important for their personal development and growth. Included in job ready skills are ethical value systems that are relevant to their particular industry. Also, increasing the opportunities for students to gain face to face interactions through tools such as Google meets and Zoom meetings can help students to develop a personal relationship with instructors and reduce their likelihood of engaging in conduct that would disappoint their instructor.
Practical strategies instructors can consider in order to reduce opportunities for cheating include randomizing quizzes and developing comprehensive multiple-choice questions that require some level of analysis. Ensure students are aware that you use multiple versions of exams with slight variations to prevent them from sharing their answers electronically with each other. If students are provided an opportunity where a Google search can provide a direct answer, it is more likely that they will do so. Consider providing students the opportunity to do more real-world research and subsequent analysis.
Another method you can use is to directly ask students, as an assignment to design controls to reduce cheating in your class or department. This activity will often highlight additional means of cheating that you may have not even considered and help you develop controls to prevent occurrences in the future.
Some students have been identified as sharing information via large group chats using apps such as GroupMe, Slack, and WhatsApp. This is important to be aware of especially when structuring online exams as students can take photos and share the information with each other. Consider invigilation software to help reduce cheating during online testing such as Proctorio.
Be Very Clear and Explicit with What Actions Lead to Consequences for Cheating
Remember that several of your students have a strong ethical value system and would never consider cheating. It is important to ensure your communication is not accusatory but is educational and informative. Ensuring students understand institutional consequences as well as what specific actions are reportable, will help prevent many students from choosing actions that would be associated with cheating. Help students understand what strategies you, as their instructor, are using to help prevent instances of cheating in your classroom. Remind them of these strategies over the course of the semester, as projects are being worked on and prior to exams.
Consider approaching your institution to develop an honour system video that educates students as to what types of academic misconduct policies you have in place and what the consequences are for violations (link to sample video provided below). By helping students to understand the steps you are taking to preserve their academic reputation and interests in the prevention of cheating, you will provide an additional barrier and improve the focus on ethics within your classroom.
Sources:
Academic Dishonesty – Why Business Students Participate in these Practices, 2012 Hadijah Iberahima, Norashikin Husseinb, Nusrah Samatc, Fauziah Noordind, Normala Daude
ACADEMIC DISHONESTY: ARE MORE STUDENTS CHEATING? Dorothy L. R. Jones Norfolk State University, Business Communication Quarterly, Volume 74, Number 2, June 2011 141-150 DOI: 10.1177/108056991140405
https://www.academicintegrity.org/integrity/syllabi-designed-with-integrity-in-mind/, Accessed October 14, 2020
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2018/02/14/creative-cheating-online-learning-and-importance-academic, accessed October 14, 2020.
Resources:
Helpful faculty checklist (a great resource for new instructors): https://www.academicintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Academic-Integrity-Faculty-Checklist.pdf
Sample honour system video that can be produced by your institution to help educate students on your institution’s expectations and consequences for academic honesty. (used by Texas A&M University): https://youtu.be/AKVIO5-Ftxg
Other resources:
About the Author: Heidi Dieckmann, CPA, MPAcc
Heidi has spent the majority of her career in education as an accounting instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. While at KPU, Heidi has served as Department Chair and has sat on several committees. Heidi focuses her research on engagement and motivation strategies to reach today’s generation of technology-immersed students, and strategies to improve academic integrity.
Heidi is a member of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association’s Education Committee and has presented at the CAAA annual conference for her work in student engagement through online education and top strategies to reach today's diverse learners. Heidi is also the co-author of McGraw Hill's Fundamental Accounting Principles Volumes I, II (2019). In September 2020, she achieved a Quality in Online Learning Certificate from the Online Learning Consortium and is a Digital Faculty Consultant for McGraw Hill Canada.