MODULE 201 1

Michelle Pitoscia

Assignment 5

June 17, 2019

A study was conducted to research if technology promotes cheating with middle school

students. For this study, there were four hypotheses that were being tested. These hypotheses

included ideas such as a higher prevalence of academic dishonesty in online classes compared to

traditional classes, and that plagiarism would be the type of academic dishonesty most common

in the online classes (Blau & Eshet-Alkalai, 2017). The study was conducted with 127 eighth

graders from a school in Northern Israel, and they were given a scenario-based questionnaire in

which they answered anonymously. Results concluded that technology did not have a big effect

on academic dishonesty. However, the results also showed that cheating is more common in

traditional settings, and plagiarism is more common online (Blau & Eshet-Alkalai, 2017). Based

on the results, it was noted that even if students are educated about behaviors that involve

academic dishonesty, it does not avert them from engaging in the behaviors. Even though the

study did not show a big relationship between technology and academic dishonesty, it did show

that ethical issues contribute to academic dishonesty. It was found that online students should be

made more aware of the ethical problems involving academic dishonesty through educational

activities (Blau & Eshet-Alkalai, 2017).

I find the results of this study very interesting because I would have thought technology

would have a bigger impact on academic dishonesty due to the wide variety of resources

available. However, I was not surprised that plagiarism was found to be most common online

and cheating to be the most common in traditional settings. I can use these results to guide my
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teaching practice by educating my students about the types of academic dishonesty and

consequences. It was stated about online students benefitting from education on ethical

problems, so I can use this to build more activities incorporating ethics and academic dishonesty

into my courses if I were to teach online. For teaching in a traditional classroom setting, I can

develop proper educational intervention strategies (Blau & Eshet-Alkalai, 2017) to help students

develop skills to help avoid academic dishonesty.

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References

Blau, I., & Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2017). The ethical dissonance in digital and non-digital learning

environments: Does technology promotes cheating among middle school

students? Computers in Human Behavior, 73, 629–637. https://doi-

org.login.library.coastal.edu:8443/10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.074