Assessment, plagiarism and its effect on academic integrity: Experiences of academics at a university in South Africa

Abstract

The quality of teaching, learning and assessment is compromised by the growing problem of academic dishonesty, especially in large class sizes as a result of the ‘massification’ of education. In South Africa and around the world, student plagiarism and cheating has become a matter of concern, especially when it comes to teaching large classes. This concern has received much attention as it impacts negatively on the maintenance of academic standards and integrity at many universities. Academics have a major role to play in the process of maintaining academic integrity. Through an ‘interpretivist’ and qualitative approach, we explored the experiences of three emerging academics within the Discipline of Curriculum Studies at a university in South Africa. We used Pinar’s method of currere as a lens that focuses on academics’ experiences of assessment and plagiarism in teaching large classes and its effect on academic integrity. The findings suggest that although ‘massification’ of education in South Africa is commended for addressing past social injustices and for facilitating accessibility to education, quality teaching and learning including assessment is seriously compromised. This demands a serious rethink of assessment strategies to deter academic dishonesty, and a reconsideration of the way academics and institutions think about plagiarism detection tools in teaching large classes.

Rethinking academic tasks as a way to fight against cyber-plagiarism in higher edcuaction

“…Students' poor concept of plagiarism, scarce academic and reference skills, laziness, lack of motivation, little follow-up by teachers, inadequate tasks, feeling that the commissioned assignments are a waste of time, (self)demand for high grades and/or fear of failure, inadequate admission criteria, and the need to defy the system are the most repeated factors that would encourage students to plagiarize in a face-toface teaching context (Cebrián-Robles et al, 2018;Darwish and Sadeqi, 2016;Dawson, 2004;Devlin and Gray, 2007;Dordoy, 2002;Mahabeer and Pirtheepal, 2019;Park, 2003;Reducindo et al, 2017;Ronda-Pérez et al, 2015;Sentleng and King, 2012). Some factors that would encourage cyber-plagiarism, especially when talking about e-learning education, may be added to these, as the students' sense of distance from their instructors and the belief that the information on the Internet does not belong to anybody and can be used in any way.…”

“…Nevertheless, e-learning instructors are not alien to the heavy teaching load most faculty complain about (Howard, 2002;Mahabeer and Pirtheepal, 2019), and possibly due to this the assignments given to students often lack originality and critical content.…”

Demystifying student plagiarism in academic writing: Towards an ‘educational’ solution

“…In addition, Mahabeer and Pirtheepal (2019) associate the problem of plagiarism with the massification of higher education in that it imposes a great deal of strain on post-secondary institutions, particularly with regard to the existing financial, physical and human resources.…”

“…Such strains have resulted in teaching staff being able to spend sufficient teaching time with their students, negatively impacting the quality of education university students in the country receive (Mahabeer and Pirtheepal, 2019). Furthermore, the large number of students in classrooms make it difficult for lecturers to adequately deal with large volumes of assessments to be marked, and so quality of response and the academic integrity of student writing is compromised (Mahabeer and Pirtheepal, 2019). It is difficult to provide individual or at least timeous feedback in large classes because of the large numbers of students hence poor referencing techniques and other practices that may lead to plagiarism may persist without the student knowing.…”

“…For example, instead of exclusively relying on summative assessments, academics can assess student learning through continuous, formative assessments, with student feedback key in this particular process. The importance of creativity in assessment methods is highlighted by Mahabeer and Pirtheepal (2019) in a study which explored the experiences of three emerging academics on assessment and plagiarism in the discipline of curriculum studies at a university in South Africa.…”