Student Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty Scenarios
Instances of academic dishonesty have increased dramatically in recent years, with studies suggesting that up to 70% of students cheat at least once while in college (Keith-Spiegel, Tabahnick, Whitley, & Washburn, 1998). Colleges and universities have fought this by designing various programs to address cheating among students. The Multimedia Integrity Teaching Tool (or MITT) program is an interactive seminar consisting of 36 video modules that educate the user about academic integrity, types of academic dishonesty, risks of cheating, and how to avoid these risks (Whitley & Keith-Spiegel, 2001). Two studies were designed to test the effectiveness of the program and suggest future revisions to the program and consider its potential as a future preventative program for incoming freshmen. Study I assessed participant’s perceptions of academic cheating scenarios as a function of their reported Internet use and their performance goal structure. Study II assessed participant’s perceptions of academic cheating scenarios as a function of their degree of sensation seeking and used a randomized experimental design to compare the responses of participants who viewed excerpts of MITT videos with those of participants who viewed unrelated videos about listening skills. Results of Study I suggested that mastery goal orientation was positively correlated with seriousness ratings of cheating scenarios and that performance goal orientation was positively correlated with the belief that it was easy to cheat using the Internet and that most students cheat. Results of Study II suggested that participants who watch multimedia integrity-teaching videos are more likely to recognize cheating and consider it a more serious problem than those who watch an unrelated video. The results of these studies suggest that a preventative multimedia program would help incoming freshmen understand the importance of academic dishonesty, and also suggest that any such program include an emphasis on mastery goal orientation.