E-Cheating

E-CHEATING: ARE STUDENTS MISUSING IT?
Darwin L. King, St. Bonaventure University, dking@sbu.edu Carl J. Case, St. Bonaventure University, ccase@sbu.edu

ABSTRACT Undergraduates have numerous technological avenues to utilize if they choose to cheat in a class. Students, for example, can use a cell phone to store answers or use the Internet to download a research paper. Even though the problem of “e-cheating” is important to teaching faculty, little research has been conducted to examine e-cheating at the undergraduate level. This study, therefore, was conducted to empirically investigate student behavior and perceptions. Results suggest that although cheating is common among students, e-cheating is not prevalent. Keywords: Academic integrity, e-cheating, ethics, undergraduates, empirical survey INTRODUCTION “E-cheating” or electronic cheating can be defined as using information technology (IT) to aid in the process of cheating in a class. This includes the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs), camera or picture cell phones, two-way pagers, programmable calculators, computers, the Internet, and so on to gain an unfair advantage. Because ethics are an important component of the information systems (IS) curriculum, the authors hope to gather information on how many students choose to violate the ethical practices taught in the classroom. One U.S. study found that over 90% of students indicated that they owned a cell phone [12]. Cell phones can silently vibrate to inform the student that a text message has arrived and can be used to access the Internet in order to locate information for a quiz or exam [8]. Moreover, PDAs can store a wealth of information including graphics, databases, text, and spreadsheets that could prove useful to a cheating student. Sophisticated programmable calculators can also store an entire essay or outline summary of exam topics. The Internet can be utilized to cut and paste information needed for a quiz or exam. Finally, twoway pagers... [continues]

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