Education undergraduates and ICT-enhanced academic dishonesty: A moral panic?

This paper reports an illuminative small-scale study that trialled a survey instrument with 55 final-year undergraduates categorised by age. The survey investigated students' use of information and communication technologies ( ICT), including the Internet, and students' engagement in lecturer impressing strategies and cheating behaviours such as plagiarism. The study disclosed differences in ICT usage by age, but these differences did not achieve significance. The study disclosed also that 0.27 of the sample had reported a single instance of cheating behaviours while 0.2 of the sample had reported multiple instances of cheating behaviours. Analyses of data discerned no significant correlations between these cheating behaviours and age or ICT capability, but significant negative correlations were found between cheating behaviours and engagement in certain Internet activities. Inferences are tentatively drawn for further research and for academic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]