A deep dive into Canadian college policy: Findings from a provincial academic integrity and contract cheating policy analysis

Abstract

We share the findings from our study of contract cheating in institutional policies from Ontario post-secondary colleges. We studied 22 publicly funded colleges in the province of Ontario, Canada. This study is significant because it may serve to inform policy development of post-secondary institutions in other regions of Canada.

Contract cheating itself is not new. The influence of technology and social media, however, are changing the landscape creating the need for higher educational institutions (HEIs) to respond to this phenomenon (Ellis, Zucker, & Randall, 2018). HEIs across the globe are beginning to respond to the phenomenon through amended academic integrity policies and procedures. Australia and Britain, for example, have published documents that address contract cheating, providing robust recommendations to support academic integrity (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency [TEQSA], 2017; QAA, 2017). Among these is a recommendation to review policy language and process in the context of contract cheating. To date, a review on contract cheating in Canada has not been conducted. This research serves as the initial concentrated and focused assessment of Canadian policy in higher education organizations around contract cheating.

In this session, we share the preliminary findings from our study. The framework and methodology from previous work on academic integrity policy analysis (Bretag et al., 2011; Grigg, 2010) served as an exemplar for this work. We began by identifying publicly-funded colleges in Ontario, collecting academic integrity policy documents, including the principles and approaches to the policies, analyzing them with a focus the topic of contract cheating. The analysis showed how publicly-funded colleges in Ontario characterize the concept of contract cheating.

At the end of the session, participants will have a framework to undertake similar research and continue to contribute to a body of knowledge important to higher educational institutions around the world. In addition, participants will be able to characterize their own institutions’ approaches to academic integrity and specifically contract cheating in policy. The researchers aim to provide evidence to support Canadian policy makers to better address contract cheating across higher educational institutions. This session provides an opportunity to describe an evidenced informed framework for developing academic policy that targets the uniqueness of contract cheating.

This is a sub-project of the Academic Integrity in Canda: National Policy Analysis project.

Suggested citation: Thacker, E., Eaton, S. E., Stoesz, B. M., & Miron, J. B. (2019, April 17). A deep dive into Canadian college policy: Findings from a provincial academic integrity and contract cheating policy analysis Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity, Calgary, Canada. https://hdl.handle.net/1880/120534