Promoting academic integrity: A tale of two case studies

Academic dishonesty is a major concern for academicians and institutions. The topic got wider attention in academic literature for decades and a number of studies focus on the new challenges in this domain including the role of technology. Creating an environment that foster academic integrity is important in promoting a healthy learning environment. In addition to the many short-term solutions to eliminate academic dishonesty, it is important to devise solutions that promote long term changes that instill academic integrity practices in students. This paper addresses the issues of academic dishonesty in summative coursework submissions and presents two case studies. The first case study explores the use of technology in curbing social loafing in group assessments. Social loafing is the tendency of individuals to spend less effort when working collectively than when working individually (Karau and Williams, 1993; Smith, 2017). Focus of the second case study is to improve the integrity practices in individual coursework submissions. The second case study aims to identify the ways to integrate formative assessments in the module and develop strategies to improve the effectiveness of these assessments.