The prevention and detection of academic misconduct: an investigation of the experience, attitudes and beliefs of Open University Associate Lecturers and Academic Conduct Officers.

Published on 2023-10-19 - 12:13 by OUSE Repository Admin

Introduction This is the report of an Associate Lecturer initiated, unfunded, 'in-house' study with collaborators. The aim was to explore the perceptions of Open University Associate Lecturers (ALs) and Academic Conduct Officers (ACOs) of student academic misconduct and of our organisational responses to it. Along with my part in the outcomes of a parallel multinational study with a collaborator, the report was presented to SS&GS in March 2021 in fulfilment of research proposals made in my successful 2018 application for an Honorary Associateship in FASS. I was grateful for that recognition and for its 3-year extension until 2024 to allow for dissemination of the findings of both studies. I was also grateful for the inputs of my collaborators and for the help of other colleagues, especially the 120 who completed the quite demanding questionnaire. Method Two questionnaires were devised on the JISC platform, one for ALs and one for ACOs. There were closed and open-ended questions. Over the period 17-19 August 2020 email invitations to complete the questionnaire were sent to a randomly selected sample of 400 ALs (from a total cohort of about 5,000) stratified by the four faculties providing 100 ALs from each. On 21 August 2020 similar email invitations were sent to 25 ACOs. Again, recipients were selected randomly (from a total cohort of around 50 ACOs) but this time, regardless of faculty. An excellent response was received; 95/400 ALs and 25/25 ACOs. The responses were almost all thorough, many offering comprehensive comments in response to the open-ended questions. The JISC Online Survey software was used to analyse the quantitative answers and NVivo software was used to aid an inductive thematic analysis of the qualitative answers to the open-ended questions.

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Funding

None

Project lead(s)

David Pell

Authorship group

Associate Lecturers

Project start date

2018-03-31

Project end date

2021-03-30

Institutional priority category

Other

Subject discipline

Education, Childhood, Youth, and Sport

Project findings and recommendations

Findings There were 17 key findings. They included: a) prevalence and trends in the incidence of student academic misconduct 1. ALs and ACOs tended to believe that there is an academic cheating crisis in HE in the UK. 2. ALs and ACOs both tended to believe that the trend in recent years at the OU in respect of the incidence of academic misconduct has been for it to stay the same or to increase but at 46%, ALs were more strongly inclined than ACOs to believe that it has increased. b) factors leading to student academic misconduct 5. Almost three quarters of the ALs and over half of the ACOs felt that it was likely or very likely that some assessment content / TMA questions are recycled from previous presentations which may tempt academic misconduct by students. 6. According to ALs and ACOs the main ways that the OU might be encouraging academic misconduct by students include weaknesses of assessment design (including recycling questions), penalties that are too low, high chances of getting away with cheating, a lack of enough emphasis on it by the OU especially at Level 1 and inadequate checking of work. 7. There was general agreement between the ALs and ACOs that … 'insufficient study' and being 'time poor' were the 2 most likely (reasons) to contribute to student academic misconduct. c) effectiveness of the OU's response / scope for improvement 9. ACOs were positive about the effectiveness of the OU's prevention measures with 64% agreeing or strongly agreeing and 20% disagreeing that they are effective. ALs were quite a lot less convinced however, with 36.9% agreeing and 29% disagreeing (including 4.2% who strongly disagreed). 11. ACOs were positive about the effectiveness of the OU's detection measures with 68% agreeing or strongly agreeing and 12% disagreeing that they are effective. ALs were quite a lot less convinced however, with 41% agreeing and 30.5% disagreeing. 14. ALs and ACOs agree that the division of responsibility could be improved by better and more informed working together of ALs and ACOs. ALs seem to know relatively little about what degree of checking is done and feel that they should be made aware of the results much sooner and perhaps in all cases. This lack of knowledge seems to be leading to some lack of confidence in the system. Conclusion There are new challenges for HE policies and practices in respect of student academic misconduct. Examples are increasing pressure for qualifications for employment, the rapid growth of the essay mills, social media, less face-to-face teaching, a decline in real location examinations and at the OU more younger students taking on more modules at the same time to complete their degrees as quickly as possible. As the OU continues to assess and develop its student academic integrity policies and practices it is hoped that this study of the experience and attitudes of AL and ACO colleagues will be helpful.