Market Forces in Higher Education: Cheating and the Student-Centred Learning Paradigm

Market Forces in Higher Education: Cheating and the Student-Centred Learning Paradigm

Judy Nagy
Copyright: © 2009 |Pages: 19
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-867-3.ch015
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Abstract

This chapter discusses the globalisation of education and the challenges and opportunities arising from technologies that can impact cheating behaviours in higher education students. The chapter, commencing by contextualising cheating, discusses the endemic nature of cheating and presents various reasons for and factors that may encourage students to engage in cheating. To illustrate the potential for favourable outcomes when the particular needs of a student cohort are recognised, the chapter then considers a case study that proactively changed assessment strategies in postgraduate education to forestall cheating. The positive outcomes are then used to support a proposition to offer students more than one learning pathway as a means of recognising that student populations have become increasingly diverse with a corresponding need for diversity in teaching paradigms.
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Background: Global Cheating Behaviour

The contribution of technologies to education processes has been immense, with students and faculty each learning to adapt to an environment of continuous change and opportunities. Technologies have enabled greater access, richness and multimodality to suit individual learning styles, with students being empowered in ways that were previously not possible. However, this freedom has met with challenges as the diffusion of best practice pedagogies clashes with culturally grounded values, attitudes toward honesty and pressures to succeed as access to education becomes more open. Chapman and Lupton (2004) point out that:

while it is difficult for an instructor to manage academic dishonesty when the student and faculty are from the same country, the task becomes exponentially difficult when students and faculty have significantly different cultural backgrounds. Education, just like business, is now a global product. (Chapman & Lupton, 2004, pp. 426-7)

With business studies being the most popular course of study for international students, not only are students traveling to acquire an education but business schools are under increasing pressure from accrediting agencies to give their students and faculty international opportunities. With many partnership programs negotiated between U.S., UK, European and Australian institutions in emerging economies, faculty are indeed becoming more familiar with cultural diversity in student cohorts.

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