Undergraduate engagement in permitted and unpermitted collaboration on homework

Academic dishonesty has existed as long as higher education, and there is an extensive record of research on it. Through that, we know that the most significant increase in cheating since the mid-1960s has been in undergraduate students’ participation in unpermitted collaboration on homework, the most common method of academic dishonesty, form of academic dishonesty for students to believe is trivial or not cheating, and type of academic dishonesty for students and faculty members to disagree about its severity. This increase mirrors the growing use of collaborative learning techniques in K-16 schools. The purpose of this research was to investigate this collision of higher education’s traditional ways of addressing academic dishonesty with students’ widespread use of collaborative learning techniques. The research questions were: 1) How do undergraduates describe their experiences with collaboration with classmates on homework assignments? 2) How do undergraduates describe their experiences with unpermitted collaboration with classmates on homework assignments? and 3) How do undergraduates describe the situations that influence their engagement in unpermitted collaboration on homework assignments? The goals were accomplished through a phenomenological approach, or learning about students’ participation in collaborative learning on homework assignments as well as the contexts within which it can become cheating. The researcher gathered students’ stories of permitted and unpermitted collaboration on homework which could be described by social interdependence theory, or the construct on which collaborative learning techniques are built. Several frameworks that describe the students’ behaviors were identified, and the stories of permitted and unpermitted collaboration were compared through the lens of moral development and goal orientation theories. The researcher found that students engage in unpermitted collaboration for learning. In addition, students make purposeful decisions about cheating, and it can be due to a desire to learn. Also, students’ collaborative teams can be complex. In addition, students believe that faculty members want them to learn and faculty members are an important source of information for students. The researcher found that neither moral development theory nor goal orientation theory explain students’ participation in unpermitted collaboration on homework. Based on these findings, recommendations for practice and research are provided.