Student Cheating and Their Perception Regarding the Consequences of Cheating

Abstract

The problem scholastic dishonesty has always been a concern of educators. There is evidence that the percentage of college students engaged in scholastic dishonesty has been on the rise. Past studies have shown that the rates of scholastic dishonesty incidents have been higher for students majoring in business or engineering, exceeding 90% for business majors. Scholastic dishonesty occurs in various types and forms, which ranges from copying homework solutions to cheating during the exams. The degree of severity for each form is treated differently by the instructors. The technology has made it easier for students to cheat in recent years. Few years ago, cheating included copying homework solution from friends, bringing unauthorized cheat notes to exams, looking over other students' exams, or exchanging problem solutions during exams. With advances in technology, almost all students have access to digital forms of solution manuals available for textbooks. Cell or smart phones are used to exchange solutions to exam problems or search the internet for answers to exam problems. In addition, large volume of text materials can be stored in advanced calculators.Cheating by students in the Mechanical Engineering (ME) department at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is perceived by many faculty members to be a problem. To further understand the extent and attitude of the ME students to cheating, an anonymous survey was conducted involving 89 seniors in the capstone Senior Design 1 course at UTSA. The survey form asked students to assess their individual cheating activity and evaluate the consequences of scholastic dishonesty. The results of this survey is presented and discussed in this paper.

Students Poor Exam Performance in an Engineering Course after Twenty Months of Online Instruction and Efforts to Improve

“…The greatest challenge for online courses is maintaining academic integrity. We have observed a increase in cheating, even prior to the required online instruction and assessment [15]- [16]. Examples of scholastic dishonesty had included copying solution manuals for homework assignments, using phones, text, and apps to share answers; using phones to take images of exam questions, sending them to external tutoring services, and copying solutions received from the external tutoring services.…”

Comparisons of Student Performance in Similar Courses prior to, during, and after Online Instruction Due to COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The greatest challenge for some instructors was maintaining academic integrity during exams. A sharp increase in cheating has been detected in recent years 13,14 . Examples of Scholastic dishonesty had included copying solution manuals for homework assignments, using phones, text, and apps to share answers; using phones to take images of exam questions, sending them to external tutoring services, and copying solutions received from the external tutoring services.…”