Violations of and threats to academic integrity in online English language teaching

Abstract

The move to online teaching has brought with it fresh opportunities for students to violate academic integrity. This paper considers such violations from within the domain of online English language teaching, although many of the ideas presented are applicable to other disciplines. The paper reports on a two-part study conducted at a university in Turkey. In the first part, qualitative data collected from students and staff through an online survey form were used to identify a new way of categorizing academic integrity violations. This provided three such categories, namely; exam-related, assignment-related, and online session-related violations. In the second part of the study, 462 students completed a survey related to their attitudes towards both academic integrity violations and the associated threats that may lead to these violations. Although the results revealed students generally presenting a commitment to the fundamental values of academic integrity, many students showed willingness to engage with machine translation software to prepare answers at times when they were expected to be working unaided. The findings underline a need for further consideration about how students are taught and assessed with integrity in an online environment. They also suggest that nuanced discussions about academic integrity need to take place between students and English language teachers.