scholarly journals Varying institutional procedures for dealing with student academic misconduct: A short comparative analysis

Author(s):  
Shiva Das Sivasubramaniam ◽  
Zeenath Reza Khan

Establishing and maintaining academic integrity has always been a focal point amongst all higher education organisations. A few studies have been designed to compare the efficacy of measures/procedures amongst different institutions. Some other attempts were also made to compare the procedures for academic misconduct investigations amongst different institutions about handling potential plagiarisms and/or academic misconducts. The aim of this workshop based investigation was to show the participants, the importance of pro-activeness and practical awareness to establish institutional procedures for handling potential plagiarism and/or academic dishonesty. We wanted to show the inconsistencies in the approaches of conducting academic investigations relating to plagiarism related misconducts. We have carried out a simple Google® search and selected publicly available institutional policies and procedures of five different international universities representing different geographical representations. The comparison has highlighted the approaches to investigate plagiarism or academic misconduct are varied amongst these universities. Some institutional policies have established clearly defined processes, others have vague and ambiguous procedures. The study has highlighted the importance of investigating institutional procedures in a comparative manner. In order to provide some recommendation of institutional policies and procedures, we would work closely with the European Network of Academic Integrity (ENAI), and other international stakeholders to expand this study in a larger scale.

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Simpson

Academic dishonesty is a long-standing issue for faculty and administrators, yet the concern over dishonesty among international students is growing. With the changing demographics of higher education, faculty and administrators must revisit how campus policies and procedures serve all students’ needs, but especially international students, as it relates to academic dishonesty. This article explores academic dishonesty from an international student context and provides suggestions for facilitating a campus culture of academic integrity.


Author(s):  
Michael L Kremmer ◽  
Mark Brimble ◽  
Peta Stevenson-Clarke

Academic dishonesty is a fundamental issue in terms of the educational integrity of higher education institutions. Accordingly, there is a growing pool of literature that examines this issue. This study adds to this literature by investigating factors that may influence student engagement in academic misconduct. We examine the influence of the type of assessment items, age, gender, nationality, discipline and level of study and the students' self-reported history of cheating. Drawing from a survey of 1,057 students across four major Queensland universities, we find that a student's age, gender and nationality are useful in explaining the probability of a student cheating. Our key finding, however, suggests that the likelihood that a student will engage in any given cheating behaviour is most strongly influenced by the extent to which the student engages in other forms of cheating, supporting the notion of "once a cheat always a cheat". We conclude that more needs to be done to combat a culture of acceptance of academic dishonesty and to minimise defensive misconduct by students who otherwise might not engage in such behaviour. We suggest that university administrators devote increased resources to this issue and develop mechanisms for managing and curtailing the level of academic misconduct. A failure to do so may result in a further undermining of the academic integrity of the Australian tertiary sector.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia M. Christensen Hughes ◽  
Donald L. McCabe

Despite a plethora of research on the academic misconduct carried out by U.S. high school and undergraduate university students, little research has been done on the academic misconduct of Canadian students. This paper addresses this shortcoming by presenting the results of a study conducted at 11 Canadian higher education institutions between January 2002 and March 2003. We maintain that academic misconduct does indeed occur in Canada – amongst high school, undergraduate and graduate students. Common self-reported behaviours were as follows: working on an assignment with others when asked for individual work, getting questions and answers from someone who has already taken a test, copying a few sentences of material without footnoting, fabricating or falsifying lab data, and receiving unauthorized help on an assignment. Possible factors associated with these behaviours include student maturity, perceptions of what constitutes academic misconduct, faculty assessment and invigilation practices, low perceived risk, ineffective and poorly understood policies and procedures, and a lack of education on academic misconduct. Canadian educational institutions are encouraged to address these issues, beginning with a recommitment to academic integrity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Dixon ◽  
Kelly George ◽  
Tyler Carr

The digitization of higher education is evolving academic misconduct, posing both new challenges to and opportunities for academic integrity and its research. The digital evidence inherent to online-based academic misconduct produces new avenues of replicable, aggregate, and data-driven (RAD) research not previously available. In a digital mutation of the misuse of unoriginal material, students are increasingly leveraging online learning platforms like CourseHero.com to exchange completed coursework. This study leverages a novel dataset recorded by the upload of academic materials on CourseHero.com to measure how at-risk sample courses are to potential academic misconduct. This study’s survey of exchanged coursework reveals that students are sharing a significant amount of academic material online that poses a direct danger to their courses’ academic integrity. This study’s approach to observing what academic material students are sharing online demonstrates a novel means of leveraging digitized academic misconduct to develop valuable insights for planning the mitigation of academic dishonesty and maintaining course academic integrity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercedez Hinchcliff ◽  
Pranit Anand

While universities have instituted use of various forms of technologies to help identify instances of academic integrity compromises, these tools are unable to detect cases where students get someone else to do their academic work for them. This paper discusses a two-stage approach to addressing academic integrity at a postgraduate business studies course where students were engaged in understanding what academic integrity means within their context and explore various forms of unethical behaviours. They were also made aware about various institutional policies and procedures for academic integrity breaches. This was followed with a post-assessment, ad-hoc feedback from students about their submitted work. Although a thorough evaluation is planned at a later stage, this paper shares some initial results about the effectiveness of this approach to countering academic misconduct behaviours. The paper will be of interest to other teaching academics interested in developing a culture of academic integrity.


NASPA Journal ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie L Zelna ◽  
Marilee J Bresciani

Based on concerns regarding current trends in higher education, one Research I institution set out to measure knowledge, attitudes, behavior, and perceptions related to academic misconduct. Through a self-report survey, trends specific to the university’s community as well as educational interventions were identified to further educate the campus community about academic integrity in order to reduce academic misconduct.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (6 (344)) ◽  
pp. 162-171
Author(s):  
Anastasiia Kuzmenko ◽  

The article deals with the features of higher education of the third level in Latin America, namely Brazil and Mexico. The object of the research is the quality system of higher education in Latin America (Brazil and Mexico), and its subject is the formation and attitude to the culture of academic integrity of PhD-applicants in these countries. The goal is highlighting the implementation of the leading practices for the formation of the academic integrity culture among PhD-applicants in Latin America, in particular Brazil and Mexico. Objectives are to consider ways of forming the academic integrity culture of PhD-applicants at the international, state and institutional levels in Latin America, in particular Brazil and Mexico. It has been investigated that scientific activity is widely developed in Brazil, and the basis for the formation of academic integrity is used according to the experience of the United States of America. However, violations such as plagiarism or deception are perceived not as a manifestation of unethical behaviour, but more as a violation of ignorance or unintentional borrowing. There is also a low level of success of applicants for higher education, which is also fruitful for the generation of dishonest behaviour. Mexico is the «opposite lever» in the experience of the academic integrity culture, since the economic system of the country has its own gaps and leads to a high level of corruption, and as a result, the manifestation of academic dishonesty in all its forms. Despite this, the country understands the need to form the academic integrity culture as a factor influencing the further responsible and ethical activities of a future competitive specialist. Thus, there is a cyclical nature: the honest behaviour of the applicant for education forms the skills of the honest behaviour of a specialist, the honest behaviour of a specialist is the absence of corruption, in particular in education.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia M. Christensen Hughes ◽  
Donald L. McCabe

Research suggests that the majority of U.S. undergraduate students have engaged in some form of misconduct while completing their academic work, despite knowing that such behaviour is ethically or morally wrong. U.S.-based studies have also identified myriad personal and institutional factors associated with academic misconduct. Implicit in some of these factors are several institutional strategies that may be implemented to support academic integrity: revisiting the values and goals of higher education, recommitting to quality in teaching and assessment practice, establishing effective policies and invigilation practices, providing educational opportunities and support for all members of the university community, and using (modified) academic honour codes. There is a dearth of similar research in Canada despite growing recognition that academic misconduct is a problem on Canadian campuses. This paper suggests that Canadian higher education can learn much from the U.S. experience and calls for both a recommitment to academic integrity and research on academic misconduct in Canadian higher education institutions.


10.28945/3629 ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 193-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi Friedman ◽  
Ina Blau ◽  
Yoram Eshet-Alkalai

This study examined the phenomenon of academic dishonesty among university students. It was based on Pavela’s (1997) framework of types of academic dishonesty (cheating, plagiarism, fabrication, and facilitation) and distinguished between digital and “traditional”- analog dishonesty. The study analyzed cases of academic dishonesty offenses committed by students, as well as the reasons for academic dishonesty behaviors, and the severity of penalties for violations of academic integrity. The motivational framework for committing an act of academic dishonesty (Murdock & Anderman, 2006) and the Self-Concept Maintenance model (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008) were employed to analyze the reasons for students’ dishonest behaviors. We analyzed 315 protocols of the Disciplinary Committee, at The Open University of Israel, from 2012-2013 that represent all of the offenses examined by the Committee during one and a half years. The findings showed that analog dishonesty was more prevalent than digital dishonesty. According to the students, the most prevalent reason for their academic dishonesty was the need to maintain a positive view of self as an honest person despite violating ethical codes. Interestingly, penalties for analog dishonesty were found to be more severe than those imposed for digital dishonesty. Surprisingly, women were penalized more severely than men, despite no significant gender differences in dishonesty types or in any other parameter explored in the study. Findings of this study shed light on the scope and roots of academic dishonesty and may assist institutions in coping effectively with this phenomenon.


2021 ◽  
pp. 153-159
Author(s):  
Elena Denisova-Schmidt

AbstractThe lack of academic integrity, fraud, and other forms of unethical behaviour are problems that higher education faces in both developing and developed countries, at mass and elite universities, and public and private institutions. While academic misconduct is not new, massification, internationalization, privatization, digitalization, and commercialization have placed ethics higher on the agenda for many universities (Denisova-Schmidt and De Wit 2017; Denisova-Schmidt 2018, 2019; Bretag 2020).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document