In this session, Eaton examines how a systems approach is needed to address contract cheating in its various forms. Using the 4M framework, Eaton demonstrates the role of the individual (micro), the department (meso), the learning organization (macro) and stakeholders beyond the institution (mega). In this session, Eaton shares insights from her…

Purpose: The goal of this session is to provide an in-depth account of the history and development of contract cheating in Canada over the past 50+ years. You will also learn about the one and only (failed) attempt at legislation to make ghostwritten essays and exams illegal in Canada. Method: The content of this session is drawn from Eaton's book…

The shift to online assessment during the pandemic has generated debates on academic integrity, also highlighting good practice in supporting students and staff. Academic integrity is commitment to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage and academic misconduct refers to practices that are not in…

The use of essay mills and other online sites to buy academic work is a global industry estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The practice is known as "contract cheating" (Clarke & Lancaster, 2006), and it occurs when a student engages with a third party to complete academic work on their behalf. Canada lags behind…

The COVID-19 crisis challenged us to learn, teach, and work in ways we never had before. As we move further into 2021 more educational institutions are thinking about how online teaching and learning can become a permanent way of offering programs. However, there are still ethical considerations that merit deeper consideration. Before the…

It has long been debated whether the Open-Book-Open-Web exam was useful and efficient as the traditional closed book exams. Some scholars and practitioners have doubted the efficiency and the possibility of cheating in the OBOW as it is not directly monitored. This paper tends to investigate the effectiveness of OBOW exams by comparing them with…

Plagiarism continues to be an issue in postsecondary contexts. This paper discusses how educators can take a proactive stance to prevent plagiarism and cultivate students' sense of honour and academic integrity, rather than focusing on punitive consequences after plagiarism has already occurred. Strategies include assessment design, formative…

This paper explores the phenomenon of "patchwriting," a term which Howard (1992) coined to refer to the practice of "copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym substitutes" (p. 233). Although patchwriting in universities is often labeled simply as…

This study examined the frequency of engagement in academic dishonesty among undergraduate students at a large urban college and also explored the use of traditional cheating methods and contemporary cheating methods to determine various forms of cheating, the number of times students cheat, and the number of ways students cheat. The sample was…

This paper is an updated presentation on the subject of cheating and plagiarism via the World Wide Web. In a few hours searching the Internet, the author found even more "cheat" sites than in 1998 that offered not only all types of term and research papers, but college admission letters, reviews, case studies, even dissertations as well. Most now…

Cheating and plagiarism were studied at a midwestern public university's College of Education, by interviewing three male and three female students who were in Master's programs in health education, rehabilitation counseling, and community counseling. None of the six students had had a formal orientation program covering expectations about…

In an attempt to get an idea of students' perceptions of cheating and the frequency with which cheating occurs, a study examined 203 students currently enrolled in public speaking classes from two-year and four-year schools on the East Coast and in the Midwest. The survey was divided into four parts which: (1) gathered biographical information…

Cheating causes serious harm to all members of the academic Community and to society at large, and instructors are in the best position to curb it. The communications student who rationalizes academically dishonest behavior as a means of coping with academic pressure may later behave unethically in highly competitive work situations. Honest…

Academic dishonesty is a concern at any educational level. However, many faculty members feel uncomfortable with delivering courses in the online environment due to a concern that students may find it easier to participate in academic dishonesty than they would in a traditional classroom. This paper looks at factors that are considered to…

Negative attitudes toward collaborative writing are common, especially in the humanities, and some people view it as a form of plagiarism or cheating. Plagiarism, or the borrowing of ideas from other writers, can be both conscious and unconscious, and can stem from a variety of motives. Even single-authored works are products of many minds,…