The Impact of Covid-19 on Academic Dishonesty: Malaysian Evidence

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic affects education system across the globe by shifting teaching and assessment practices from traditional face to face to open and distance learning (ODL). The ODL however come with higher risks for academic integrity as it provides more opportunities for students to engage in academic dishonesty. Thus, this study aims to examine students’ perceptions and actual experiences of academic dishonesty among accounting students under two different learning settings; face to face and ODL. Using questionnaire-survey as a method to collect data from 94 final year accounting students of one public university in Malaysia, the result shows that student engaged in academic dishonesty more frequently in ODL than in face to face. In addition, the results reveal that the most popular methods of academic dishonesty are sharing answer or work with other students and plagiarizing for both learning conditions. The findings from this study are valuable to the educators as well as higher education institutions’ administrators in devising monitoring mechanisms to deter academic dishonesty in ODL.