Restricting Academic Dishonesty at a Japanese University

Abstract

This research explores three approaches to handling academic dishonesty: punitive, preventive, and positive. First, the history of cheating and the punitive approach is briefly discussed. Next, research results of a preventive approach that was used at a Japanese university are given. During this research, three surveys were conducted to gauge students’ opinions about cheating, to account for the methods, and to measure the prevalence of cheating on post-reading quizzes. The survey results show that at least eleven types of cheating on post-reading quizzes were used and that non-cheating students were concerned about this issue. As a result of the surveys, the teacher tried a preventive approach with the subsequent semester’s students by restricting online access to the post-reading quizzes. Students were given the same cheating survey and their answers were compared against the first group of students. The research finds that this preventive approach significantly reduced the level of some methods of cheating. However, as the issue is highly fraught with shame, it is not clear that the self-reported levels of cheating accurately reflected the amount of cheating actually occurring. A solution to effectively inhibit the students’ from all forms of cheating, especially with artificial intelligence tools, is still needed. To that end, the positive approach using honor codes is proposed in the discussion section