How Are Pedagogical Practices Associated with Cheating among Students of Russian Universities

Abstract

Student academic dishonesty is one of the most serious problems of higher education in Russia and all over the world. This problem became especially severe and widespread during a mass forced transfer to distant education followed by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this regard, it is highly demanded to find affordable measures to combat academic dishonesty, some of which can be implemented at the level of the organization of the learning process. The purpose of this study was to assess and analyze the relationship between the prevalence of passive and active pedagogical practices and academic cheating among students. Based on pieces of evidence, we hypothesized that students are more likely to cheat in conditions where their classes are organized mostly around passive educational practices such as writing down or retelling the course material. The empirical basis of this study is data gathered within the project “Monitoring of education markets and organizations” in spring 2020. Students of full-time bachelor and specialist programs of Russian higher educational institutions were surveyed. The sample includes 17 316 students from 291 Russian universities. Data analysis was carried out using a series of binary multilevel logistic regressions with the sequential addition of groups of individual and group level variables. This study was the first to show the relationship between different pedagogical practices and the risk of student cheating. The main result of this study can be considered a confirmed positive relationship between the prevalence of rewriting and retelling of the course materials during seminars (passive pedagogical practices) and student cheating. The second hypothesis about the relationship between active pedagogical practices and cheating received partial confirmation. The results of this study may be used as a base for recommendations for instructors and administrators of universities to enforce student academic integrity and reduce the prevalence of cheating among them.