Remote Integrity and Accountability: Baseline Profile of Academic Fraud and Cheating in Online Classes

Abstract

The COVID pandemic crisis has tremendously interrupted the learning processes in schools, specifically in the instruction and assessment delivery. The traditional residential/face-to-face (F2F) mode of pedagogical delivery has to give way to remote, distance, virtual and online modes of instruction and assessment. The Philippine government and the CHED called off the traditional modes of teaching and learning, compelling all schools to invest in remote, distance, virtual and online technologies. Online or electronic classes have been given priority in the service of learning continuity, i.e., for the schools to continue to operate and for the students to continue learning and prevent educational stunting. The CHED even had to mandate the schools to observe leniency and expand the latitude of relaxing the curriculum requirements to give due consideration to students and parents, who already suffered a lot – financially, mentally, and socially – by the difficulties brought about by this pandemic.

Here lies the problem. Too much privileging the online, distance education firmly paved by the call for leniency gives rise to the proliferation of academic fraud and cheating in online classes. With the nature of remote technology, where the residential/F2F checks and balances are inadequate, online classes are more vulnerable to online cheating and academic fraud.

Employing a triangulated internet-mediated methodology through online survey of more than 26,000 student-respondents, a series of systematic focused group discussions with 88 discussants, and key interviews from 20 informants, this paper revealed that for every 5 students, 3 admit cheating in their online classes in various degrees and frequencies (66%). Majority (62%) also find it easier to cheat online as compared to RF2F classes. And for every 10 students, 7 claimed are never caught cheating. The FGD results generated 101 raw responses, 234 open coded responses, 149 axial coded responses, and 9 selective coded responses or core themes which serve as the factors that explain why students are cheating more in their online classes. Of the 9 core themes, two factors appeared prevalent: behavioral factors (41%) and assessment factors (31%). The paper also discovered that the easiest subject to cheat is Physical Education and the most difficult is Mathematics. Further, the assessment types that are easiest to cheat on are multiple choice, true or false, and matching type, while the most difficult are essays and oral examinations.

Academic fraud through cheating in online classes cultivates academic misconduct, which profoundly results in professional misconduct and workplace malfeasance. Academic dishonesty may lead to future immoral conduct in the workplace as research connects academic dishonesty among students with future unethical behavior in the workplace. Academic misconduct impedes and detracts opportunities for employability. It becomes a very urgent societal problem in general and an employability issue in particular as a result of a creeping educational crisis coming out from the COVID health crisis.