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Frequency of cheating in live and blended courses

Patrizia Poščić, Danijela Jakšić

Department of Informatics, University of RijekaRadmile Matejčić 2, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia

http://www.inf.uniri.hr

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Introduction

• Issue of security - academic dishonesty in online courses

• Department of Informatics - courses which take place live in the classroom and courses that take place online

• Research on the frequency of academic dishonesty in live and blended courses (2014)

• Research on the reasons for academically dishonest behavior in live and blended courses (2015)

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Related Work

• Research related to academic dishonesty in a fully online environment– Students cheat more in online courses (King, 2009 / Guanlao

Ravasco, 2012) vs. Students cheat more in a live environment (Black, 2008 / Watson, 2010) - students' behavior and perception is different depending on the sample

– Students cheat in online courses because it is easy - it is hard for the teachers to identify this behavior in an online course (Underwood, 2003 / Khan, 2012) - no comparison with a traditional environment

– No research for blended learning environment

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Research Method (2014)

• Objective:– to determine the extent to which students are cheating in both

types of courses and whether higher rate of academic dishonesty is present in live or blended courses, based on a students opinion

• Participants:– A total of 133 students - participants in the survey

– 89 undergraduate and 44 graduate students of computer science, who are enrolled in completely live and blended courses

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Research Method (2014)• Instrumentation:

– An anonymous questionnaire with 29 questions

– 27 questions were closed questions with an open option (Other) and 2 questions were open-ended

– In 13 questions a five-point Likert scale was used with following responses offered:

• a) Always (more than 10 times), b) Often (5-10 times), c) Sometimes (3-4 times), d) Rarely (1-2 times) and e) Never.

– Data analysis was performed in Microsoft Excel

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Research Results (2014)

Frequency of cheating and perception of the frequency of cheating

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Research Results (2014)

Academic dishonesty in a live and blended (online) courses

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Research Results (2014)

Students' perception of cheating

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Research Method (2015)

• Objective:

– to identify the most common reasons for cheating in live and blended courses at the Department of Informatics

– to determine what students think about current penalties if discovered cheating

• Participants:

– a total of 114 students (participants in the survey) - 86 undergraduate and 28 graduate students of computer science, who are enrolled in completely live and in blended courses

– students who cheated at least once so far in their college life

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Research Method (2015)

• Instrumentation:

– An anonymous questionnaire with 28 questions

– 26 questions were closed questions (statements) with an open option (Other) and 2 questions were open-ended

• in 12 questions a five-point Likert scale was used (Strongly agree, Agree, Undecided, Disagree and Strongly disagree),

– Data analysis was performed in Microsoft Excel

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Research Results (2015)

Usual penalties for cheating and academically dishonest behavior

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Research Results (2015)

Perception of penalties

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Research Results (2015)

Reasons for cheating in live and blended (online) environment

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Conclusions

• The survey results (2014) suggest that a higher level of academic dishonesty among the students of the Department of Informatics, University of Rijeka is present in live courses

• Students feel that:– in the live environment they are less likely to be caught

– there are more ways and opportunities for cheating in live courses

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Conclusions

• We determined the main reasons for cheating in both learning environments (2015)

• The survey results (2015) have have shown that students have nothing to lose if they try to cheat and are discovered (weak current penalties)

• More than 60% of the participants consider cheating the common occurrence in their college life

• Students largely think the current penalties for cheating are good as they are and they should not be changed (0 points with the possibility of repeating the activity)

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Future Work

• The next step is to:

– create a 3-year sample in the research on the frequency of cheating in live and partially online courses

– find a correlation between the reasons for and the prevalence of academic dishonesty in a live or blended environment.

• The main goal is to eventually develop appropriate measures and activities for prevention and reduction of academically dishonest behavior in both learning environments

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Thank You for Your Attention!

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