Cheating in Engineering College Student: Reasons, Techniques, and Mitigations

Abstract

On August 2020, the main researcher was selected to be part of the Undergraduate Research Program for Honor Students (URP-HS) within the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico with the assigned topic of cheating (academic dishonesty). The project looked to understand the necessary aspects of Engineering Education and academic integrity within all the Engineering Departments of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, San Juan Campus. To obtain this information, the main researcher, alongside the research team’s mentor, created a survey that had demographical, behavioral, and situational questions using the literature review they carried out at the beginning of the project as the basis for them. Also, the research team sent via email the survey to several courses obtained through calculations that represented each type of course provided by all Engineering Departments for the Spring 2021 (SP-21) trimester. Additionally, the hypothesis established by the research team was that the cheating done by the students in the classroom will be less than the cheating they do in the workplace. The survey produced 171 responses from the courses it was sent, and the answers were analyzed. After analyzing the results, the research team provided the recommendations of the creation of a course explaining academic dishonesty, professors and/or teaching assistants providing reminders to students of the contents of this course to their respective courses, the establishment of cheating definitions for each specific course, more utilization of group assignments with a few amounts of students, and more course material containing real-world examples and/or projects. Additionally, the research’s hypothesis was not accepted because the results indicated that the cheating done by the students in the classroom was more than the cheating in the workplace.