Plagiarism, Contract Cheating And Other Academic Misconducts In Online Engineering Education: Analysis, Detection And Prevention Strategies

Various types of academic misconducts including plagiarism have recently been a matter of concern for engineering educators and administrators. Apart from being a form of academic misconduct, plagiarism hinders the students from developing critical thinking and analysis abilities. If the issue is related with another newer form of academic misconduct known as contact cheating, where students can hire a third party to create their assignments, it poses serious threat to academic standard, quality of education and academic integrity. This paper analyses various forms of academic misconducts, what motivates students to commit academic misconduct and presents some innovative methods to detect and prevent various forms of academic misconducts including contract cheating in online engineering education. Many of these strategies are equally applicable to any field and mode of higher education.