What Category Are They Anyway?

Abstract

As the world of academia grapples with the scandals shrouding some of the oldest and prestigious universities around the globe, it is becoming clear that a better understanding of the problem of academic dishonesty is the need of the hour. This chapter paves the path towards providing such an understanding by proposing first a new taxonomy of possible factors that may influence students' attitude towards academic dishonesty. First, this chapter provides a review of existing literature to propose a definition of e-cheating, highlighting the need to study not only traditional forms of cheating and academic dishonesty, but also the act as transformed by the digital age. This work posits that the underlying flaw in approaches to battling the issue of academic dishonesty lies in trying to curb it, rather than understanding ‘why' students are likely to indulge in such behavior. This chapter develops and validates a comprehensive factor-model to identify factors that may influence students' likelihood to e-cheat by first critically reviewing existing classifications and then proposing a new model of factors, including possible technological factors.