This work-in-progress paper presents an initial survey of undergraduate engineering students and engineering course instructors on the use of websites and apps like Chegg, Course Hero, and Slader (collectively “unsanctioned online resources,” or UORs) in engineering courses. The survey sought to determine 1) the degree to which engineering students are using UORs to violate academic integrity, 2) how well instructors’ beliefs about students’ use of these resources align with students’ actual behaviors, and 3) potential strategies for decreasing the use of UORs in violating academic integrity. The students reported similar frequencies in using UORs compared to traditional resources for most of the queried behaviors. Instructors estimated a much higher frequency of students’ violation of academic integrity both with and without UORs than the student sample reported. However, the grade point averages of student respondents to the voluntary survey appear to be skewed high, and response bias in both the students and instructors may account in part for instructors’ overestimation of students’ violation of academic integrity. Three instructor strategies out of ten options—grading homework for attempted completion only, providing an instructor-moderated social platform where students can answer each other’s questions, and holding more office hours—are highlighted as showing promise for both being adopted by instructors and curbing students’ violation of academic integrity using UORs.
http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-4646-2572
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
[biography]
Philip P. Graybill is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Pennsylvania State University, where he works with the Integrated Circuits and Systems Lab. His research interests include embedded systems, neural devices, assistive technologies, and academic integrity in engineering.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3271-4836
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
[biography]
Catherine G.P. Berdanier is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from The University of South Dakota, her M.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. Her research interests include graduate-level engineering education, including inter- and multidisciplinary graduate education, online engineering cognition and learning, and engineering communication.
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