Insidious, Invasive, Invisible: Academic Dishonesty and On-Going Assessments in Higher Education

Abstract

Academic or Scholastic Dishonesty is defined as misconduct including, but not limited to, plagiarism, cheating, and collusion. Various concerns have been raised by many studies which focus mainly on the issue of plagiarism and not on traditional academic dishonesty (AD) of cheating and collusion. Hence, this study seeks to address the issue of the traditional scholastic dishonesty on cheating and collusion by analyzing the prevalence and seriousness of cheating on quizzes, exams, and coursework (i.e. assignments), to gain an insight into students' perceptions of such academic dishonesty. The study adopted a quantitative approach utilizing a descriptive design. A questionnaire was administered to 1132 undergraduates from five colleges within Klang Valley. The findings reveal that more than two-thirds of the students concede that AD is a serious problem despite efforts made by institutions in overcoming the issue. When asked about the occurrences of AD in exams, quizzes and assignments, the sample consider cheating in quizzes to be the most serious among the three, followed by assignments and quizzes. The results also reveal that the students' understanding of policies regarding AD in exams is significantly higher than that concerning quizzes and assignments. This is corroborated by the students' perception that lecturers' implementation of AD policies in exams is higher than that for quizzes and assignments. It is suggested that future research attempt to identify the factors leading to AD in quizzes and ways to formulate instructional policies concerning the matter.