Investigating academic malpractice within an MBA Marketing module

Abstract

This paper reports on progress and findings to date on an ongoing action research project designed to address the problem of academic malpractice, notably collusion, amongst postgraduate students on an international MBA programme. Its roots lie in 2008 when it was found that case study assignments had largely designed-out plagia-rism but that collusion had taken its place with the result that 132 cases were taken to the University?s Unfair Practices Committee. Understanding the problem was ap-proached in several ways, including reference to existing literature, which highlighted the importance of students? previous cultural and educational experiences, and quali-tative research drawing on students? views and feelings. As a result, a two-pronged strategy was adopted, one element being a zero-tolerance policy with all MBA assign-ments submitted to the Turnitin text matching software and wide broadcasting of the dangers and penalties resulting from malpractice. These were coupled with strength-ening the induction and Study Skills elements of the programme in order to develop students? independent study skills and understanding and ability to comply with UK academic conventions. We conclude that the dual strategy of prevention and cure was effective, resulting in the overall rate of academic malpractice falling from a high of 34.8%, and of collusion of 26.6%, to single figures with both being maintained with subsequent cohorts. The ongoing question of how best to adapt teaching practices to suit the background and expectations of international students remains unresolved. Therefore, further research is being conducted with selected preliminary findings be-ing presented in this paper.

Teaching research integrity in higher education: policy and strategy

“…Sutton and Taylor (2011, 831) also assert "Increased group work leads to issues around collusion when students are required to complete individual assessed coursework…". Indeed, one other study suggests that unauthorised sharing, collaboration and collusion may be the predominant forms of student academic malpractice (Wellman & Fallon, 2012). That study showed that students regarded it as expected and natural that more able students would help out their peers.…”

The Manchester perspective on using the Design Project to enhance the education of chemical engineering students

“…Other issues that are of general concern to course providers, but are of particular concern in the management of the Design Project, are those related to academic malpractice, 28 mainly through plagiarism 29 and underperformance due to mitigating circumstances.…”

Profiling the international academic ghost writers who are providing low-cost essays and assignments for the contract cheating industry

“…Contract cheating has been observed outside of written assessments, for instance in computer programming (Jenkins and Helmore, 2006), practical science courses (O'Malley and Roberts, 2012), business simulations (Baird and Clare, 2017;Wellman and Fallon, 2012) and within formal examination settings (Lancaster and Clarke, 2017). Research has shown that contract cheating solutions can be returned quickly (Wallace and Newton, 2014) and with high quality (Lines, 2016).…”