Misconduct of Spanish university students in their evaluations: assessment of its severity and proposals for sanctions from an experts’panel
Abstract
This paper focuses on the fraud in the evaluations perpetrated by the Spanish university students and its regulation by the universities as a device to combat it. From the analysis of the literature and the consultation of a panel of experts through the administration of a questionnaire in two rounds, the main fraudulent behaviours in the evaluations are identified. Subsequently, based on the opinions of the experts, it is determined, on the one hand, the level of seriousness of each of the fraudulent behaviours and, on the other, the type of sanctions applicable according to their severity. The analysis of the degree of concordance of the experts on these issues suggests that, although there are some elements that present a significant consensus, there continue to be important divergences in some fundamental criteria when assessing and punishing the fraudulent behaviour of students in the evaluations The results offered can be useful for the development and implementation of educational policies against academic dishonesty based on normative devices.
Downloads
References
Altman, D.G. (1991). Practical statistics for medical research. Nueva York: Chapman and Hall.
Belter, R.W., & du Pré, A. (2009). A Strategy to Reduce Plagiarism in an Undergraduate Course. Teaching of Psychology, 36(4), 257-261. doi:10.1080/00986280903173165
Brennan, R. L., & Prediger, D. J. (1981). Coefficient Kappa: Some uses, misuses, and alternatives. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 3(41), 687-699. doi:10.1177/001316448104100307
Cebrian-Robles, V., Raposo-Rivas, M., & Sarmiento-Campos, J.A. (2016).¿Ética o prácticas deshonestas? El plagio en las titulaciones de Educación. Revista de Educación. 374, 161-182.
Chapman, D.W., & Lindner, S. (2016). Degrees of integrity: the threat of corruption in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 41(2), 247-268. doi:10.1080/03075079.2014.927854
Comas, R. (2009). El ciberplagio y otras formas de deshonestidad académica entre el alumnado universitario [tesis doctoral no publicada] Universidad de las Islas Baleares, España.
Comas, R., & Sureda, J. (2016). Prevalencia y capacidad de reconocimiento del plagio académico entre el alumnado del área de economía. El profesional de la información (EPI), 25(4), 616-622. doi:10.3145/epi.2016.jul.11
Comas, R., Sureda, J., & Salva, F. (2010). Academic plagiarism prevalence among Spanish undergraduate students: an exploratory analysis. Biochemia Medica. 20 (3), 301-306. doi:10.11613/bm.2010.038
Comas, R., Sureda, J., Casero, A., & Morey, M (2011). La integridad académica entre el alumnado universitario español. Estudios Pedagógicos 37(1) 2007-225. doi:10.4067/s0718-07052011000100011
Curtis, G.J., & Clare, J. (2017). How Prevalent is Contract Cheating and to What Extent are Students Repeat Offenders? Journal of Academic Ethics, 15(2) 115-124. doi:10.1007/s10805-017-9278-x
Decreto de 8 de septiembre de 1954 por el que se aprueba el Reglamento de disciplina académica de los Centros oficiales de Enseñanza Superior y de Enseñanza Técnica, dependientes del Ministerio de Educación Nacional. Boletín Oficial del Estado, Madrid 12/10/1954, núm. 285. Recuperado de: https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-1954-17807
Denisova-Schmidt, E. (2017). The Challeges of Academic Integrity in Higher Education: Current Trends and Prospects. Boston: The Boston College Center for International Higher Education.
Ercegovac, Z., & Richardson, J.V (2004). Academic Deshonesty, Plagiarism Includes, in the Digital Age: A literature review. College & Research Libraries, 65(4) 301-318. doi:10.5860/crl.65.4.301
Estow, S., Lawrence, E. K., & Adams, K. A. (2011). Practice makes perfect: Improving students' skills in understanding and avoiding plagiarism with a themed methods course. Teaching of psychology, 38(4), 255-258. doi:10.1177/0098628311421323
ETINED (2018). South-East European Project on Policies for Academic Integrity. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publising. Recuperado de: https://bit.ly/2FBxxwX
Fleiss, J. L. (1971). Measuring nominal scale agreement among many raters. Psychological Bulletin, 76(5), 378–382. doi:10.1037/h0031619
Fleiss, J.L. (1981). Statistical methods for rates and proportions. Hoboken: Wiley.
Foltynek, T. (2013). Plagiarism Policies in Spain. Full Report. IPPHEAE Project. Recuperado de: https://bit.ly/2Rv5ary
Gwet, K.L. (2010). Handbook of interrater reliability. Gaithersburg, MD: Advanced Analytics.
Hallak, J., & Poisson, M. (2007). Corrupt schools, corrupt universities: What can be done? Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning.
Haswell, S., Jubb, P., & Wearing, B. (1999). Accounting students and cheating: A comparative study for Australia, South Africa and the UK. Teaching Business Ethics, 3, 211-239.
Heyneman, S., Kathryn, P., Anderson, H., & Muraliyeva, N. (2008). The cost of corruption in higher education. Comparative Education Review. 52(1), 1-25. doi:10.1086/524367
Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2015). Chinese University Students’ Perceptions of Plagiarism. Ethics and Behavior, 25(3), 233-255. doi:10.1080/10508422.2014.923313
Jakobsson, U., & Westergren, A. (2005). Statistical methods for assessing agreement for ordinal data. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 19(4), 427–431. doi:10.1111/j.1471-6712.2005.00368.x
Konheim-Kalkstein, Y. L., Stellmack, M. A., & Shilkey, M. L. (2008). Comparison of Honor Code and Non-Honor Code Classrooms at a Non-Honor Code University. Journal of College and Character, 9(3). doi:10.2202/1940-1639.1115
Kumar, R., & Tripathi, R.C. (2017). An Analysis of the Impact of Introducing the Plagiarism Detection System in an Institute of Higher Education. Journal of Information & Knowledge Management, 16(2). doi:10.1142/s0219649217500113
Ledwith, A., & Risquez, A. (2008). Using anti-plagiarism software to promote academic honesty in the context of peer reviewed assignments. Studies in Higher Education, 33(4), 371-384. doi:10.1080/03075070802211562
Ley Orgánica 6/2001, de 21 de diciembre, de Universidades. Boletín Oficial del Estado, Madrid, 24-12-2001 núm. 307. Recuperado de: https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2001-24515
LoSchiavo, F. M., & Shatz, M. A. (2011). The impact of an honor code on cheating in online courses. MERLOT Journal of online Learning and Teaching, 7(2).
Ma, Y., McCabe, D.L., & Liu, R. (2013). Students' Academic Cheating in Chinese Universities: Prevalence, Influencing Factors, and Proposed Action. Journal of Academic Ethics, 11(3), 169-184. doi:10.1007/s10805-013-9186-7
Macdonald, R., & Carroll, J. (2006). Plagiarism – A complex issue requiring a holistic institutional approach. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(2), 233–45. doi:10.1080/02602930500262536
McCabe, D. L. Trevino, L.K., & Butterfield, L. (1999). Academic Integrity in Honor Code and Non-Honor Code Environments, The Journal of Higher Education, 70(2), 211–234. doi:10.2307/2649128
McCabe, D., & Trevino, L. K. (1993). Academic Dishonesty: Honor Codes and Other Contextual Influences. The Journal of Higher Education, 64(5), 522-538. doi:10.1080/00221546.1993.11778446
Mohamedbhai, G. (2016). The Scourge of Fraud and Corruption in Higher Education. International Higher Education, 84, 12-14. doi:10.6017/ihe.2016.84.9111
Osipian, A.L. (2007). Corruption in Higher Education: Conceptual approaches and messurement techniques. Research in Comparative and International Education. 2(4), 313-332. doi:10.2304/rcie.2007.2.4.313
Randolph, J. J. (2008). Online Kappa Calculator [Computer software]. Recuperado de: http://justus.randolph.name/kappa.
Real Decreto 1791/2010, de 30 de diciembre, por el que se aprueba el Estatuto del Estudiante Universitario. Boletín Oficial del Estado. Madrid 31-12-2010, núm. 318 Recuperado de: https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2010-20147
Sureda-Negre, J., Reynés-Vives, J., & Comas-Forgas, R. (2016). Reglamentación contra el fraude académico en las universidades española. Revista de la Educación Superior, 45(178) 31-44. doi:10.1016/j.resu.2016.03.002
Sweeney, G., Despota, K., & Lindner, S. (Edit.) (2013). Global corruption report: Education. Transparency International. London: Routledge. Recuperado de: https://www.transparency.org/gcr_education
Tatum, H., & Schwartz, B. M. (2017). Honor codes: Evidence based strategies for improving academic integrity. Theory Into Practice, 56(2), 129-135. doi:10.1080/00405841.2017.1308175
Teixeira, A., & Rocha, M.F. (2006) Academic Cheating in Austria, Portugal, Romania and Spain: A Comparative Analysis, Research in Comparative and International Education, 1(3). doi:10.2304/rcie.2006.1.3.198
Tornos, J. (2010) Reflexiones sobre el régimen disciplinario de los estudiantes universitarios. En: CEDU XIII Encuentro de Defensores Universitarios y III Asamblea general ordinaria de la CEDU. Barcelona, Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona. pp.55-59. Recuperado de: https://bit.ly/2VQNSDL
Turner, S. P., & Beemsterboer, P. L. (2003). Enhancing academic integrity: formulating effective honor codes. Journal of Dental Education, 67(10), 1122-1129.
Warrens, M.J. (2010). Inequalities between multi-rater kappas. Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, 4(4), 271-286. doi:10.1007/s11634-010-0073-4
Youmans, R.J. (2011). Does the adoption of plagiarism-detection software in higher education reduce plagiarism? Studies in Higher Education, 36(7) 749-761. doi:10.1080/03075079.2010.523
The articles and scientific documents published in RIE abide the following conditions:
1. The Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia (the publisher) has the property rights (copyright) of all the documents published and allows the reuse under the user’s license indicated in point 2.
2. All documents are published in the digital edition of RIE under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 España (legal document) license. These documents can be copied, used, distributed, communicated and explained publicly if: i) the author(s) and its original source of publishing (magazine, publisher and URL of the document) are cited; ii) it is not used for commercial purpose; iii) the existence and the specifications about this license are mentioned.
3. Auto-archive’s conditions. The authors are allowed and encouraged to digitally distribute the pre-print versions (a version before evaluation) and/or post-print (a version that it is already evaluated and accepted to its publication). This promotes circulation and distribution earlier and can increase the citations and significance within the academic community.
