Abstract

Contract cheating, or “ghostwriting” as it is more commonly known, has become a growing threat to academic integrity in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across the world. This survey-based empirical research duly reviews a substantial body of the relevant literature of contract cheating or “ghostwriting” and it looks into this serious and often undetectable phenomenon with the view of exposing some of the implications of this practice and proposing a holistic approach that could assist educators to curb the practice. Focusing on the Omani higher education context, this paper empirically explores this issue from the perspectives of teachers in HEIs with the view of highlighting the seriousness of contract cheating to academic integrity and then making recommendations for HEIs and educators to combat the practice. Three main research questions were addressed: (1) How do teachers in higher education institutions perceive contract cheating? (2) In what way do they believe contract cheating affects academic integrity in HE? (3) What can be done to curb the practice of contract cheating? A qualitative methodology with an open-ended survey and follow-up interviews for the data collection was used. 30 participants voluntarily took part in this research. The findings showed that teachers viewed ghostwriting as a form of plagiarism. They also reported that there were negative consequences on the academic integrity of the assessed written work required of the students enrolled in different degree programmes in the Oman HEIs. At the same time, they made suggestions on ways to combat and curb the practice, such as manual verification and awareness-raising. The data informed both the pedagogical implications highlighted in this study and our recommendations.

摘要

合同作弊（俗称“代笔”）已成为全球高等教育机构（HEI）对学术诚信日益严重的威胁。这项基于调查的实证研究适当地回顾了合同作弊或“代笔”的大量相关文献，并研究了这种严重且通常无法发现的现象，以期揭示这种做法的某些含义并提出一种整体方法，可以帮助教育工作者遏制这种做法。本文着眼于阿曼高等教育的背景，从高校教师的角度对这一问题进行了实证研究，以期突出合同欺诈对学术诚信的严重性，然后为高校和教育工作者提出反对这种做法的建议。提出了三个主要的研究问题：（1）高校的教师如何看待合同作弊？（2）他们认为合同作弊会以何种方式影响大学的学术诚信？（3）如何制止合同作弊行为？使用了一种定性方法，该方法具有不限成员名额的调查和后续访谈以收集数据。30名参与者自愿参加了这项研究。调查结果表明，教师将代笔视为as窃的一种形式。他们还报告说，参加阿曼高校不同学位课程的学生所要求的评估书面工作的学术完整性受到负面影响。同时，他们就打击和遏制这种做法的方式提出了建议，例如人工核查和提高认识。