Students’ perception of academic dishonesty in programming courses

ABSTRACT

Plagiarism in programming assignments is a common and current challenge. However, insufficient studies have examined plagiarism in the Middle East region. Thus, this research surveyed 422 students from a middle eastern university. It primarily purported to assess the students’ perception of plagiarism in writing programming assignments. Additionally, this study reported the changes in students’ perceptions of plagiarism in programming assignments between 2018 and 2021, the extent of this dishonest behaviour, and the demographical factors that influence it. A comparative analysis of the data from the 2017–2018 and 2020–2021 surveys of students specialising in Information Technology-related programmes found that those in the latter survey considered plagiarism less acceptable. In addition, the female students and those with a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) higher than or equal to three also considered cheating and plagiarism behaviours in programming assignments to be less acceptable. Furthermore, these findings did not report a substantial perception variance related to student class standing or specialisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• plagiarism
• programming assignments
• student perception

Data availability statement

The data is available on request from the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mahmoud Abou Naaj

Mahmoud Abou Naaj, (Member of IEEE, ACM, and ISI), (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Technology, College of Engineering and Information Technology, at Ajman University. He has obtained his Ph.D. (1983) and MSc. (1979) in Computer Science from the University of Leeds (UK) and BSc (1975) in Mathematics from the University of Baghdad, Iraq. He served as the College of General Studies Dean, dean of the College of Information Technology, and Dean of Admission and Registration at Ajman University. He has more than 35 years of teaching and research experience. His current research interests include IT Education, Blended Learning, Assessments, Computer Ethics, Computer Algorithms, and Educational Data Mining.

Mirna Nachouki

Mirna Nachouki, Ph.D., Member of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), is the Head of the Information Technology Department, College of Engineering and Information Technology, at Ajman University. She has obtained her Ph.D. (1995) and MSc. (1991) in Computer Science from the University of Paul Sabatier, Toulouse III, France and BSc (1990) in Computer Science from the University of Pau et Pays de l’Adour, France. She served as acting dean of the former College of Information Technology, She has more than 22 years of teaching and research experience. Her current research interests include IT Education, Blended Learning, Assessments, Computer Ethics, Cloud Computing, and Educational Data Mining.