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App-centric Students and Academic Integrity: A Proposal for Assembling Socio-technical Responsibility

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Abstract

Academic integrity (AI) is a complex problem that challenges how we view action, intentions, research, and knowledge production as human agents working with computers. This paper proposes that a productive approach to support AI is found at the nexus of behavioural ethics and a view of hybrid app-human agency. The proposal brings together AI research in behavioural ethics and Rest’s (1979) four stages of ethical decision-making which tracks the development of moral sensitivity, moral judgement, moral motivation and finally moral action combined with insights taken from Actor-Network Theory (ANT). This framework, bluntly named the Academic Integrity Model (AIM), positions AI as an effect of an entangled hybrid of human-technology actors moving through distinct but related steps towards ultimately mobilising (un)ethical learning behaviours. This model highlights the importance of developing socio-techno responsibility in students and suggests that approaches to address academic integrity performances such as contract cheating, collusion and plagiarism should include considerations of the complex nature of app-centric students.

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Notes

  1. Peter Kroes is associated with the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at Delft, Netherlands.

  2. Peter-Paul Verbeek is associated with the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences, University of Twente, Netherlands. Latest publication with Jan Peter Bergen - Bergen, J.P., Verbeek, P. To-Do Is to Be: Foucault, Levinas, and Technologically Mediated Subjectivation. Philos. Technol. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-019-00390-7

  3. There are numerous academic integrity issues including the “late assignment category” which can be associated with: fake doctors notes, inexplicable and ‘sudden’ illnesses, the second death of grandparents, Internet failures, hardware and software failures, employment traumas to dogs eating the homework.

  4. Exemplary Academic Integrity Project (EAIP): Embedding and extending exemplary academic integrity policy and support frameworks across the higher education sector (2013), Academic Integrity Policy Toolkit, Office for Learning and Teaching Strategic Commissioned Project 2012 2013, https://www.unisa.edu.au/EAIP

  5. Gardner and Davis (2013) spend an entire chapter on questioning and defining a generation – Unpacking the generations: From biology to culture to technology.

  6. Gardner and Davis (2013) purposely capitalise the T in technology to recognise its complex, pervasive and influential role in our social worlds. It is a force, power and structuring agent in our world.

  7. See Kroes and Verbeek, Chapter 1 Introduction: The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts, 2014, pp 1-10.

  8. A key compendium covering the different views is found in Peter Kroes and Peter-Paul Verbeek’s edited book, The Moral status of technical artefacts (2014).

  9. Or the continuance of this argument is bullets kill people.

  10. You and Bebeau (2013) describe and test the four components of ethical judgement (sensitivity, reasoning, motivation an implementation). Their research established that these components are distinct but cumulatively impactful.

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Acknowledgement

The author is indebted to many academics who have supported the thinking in this paper. In particular Dr Sharn Donnison, USC Academic Integrity Unit, whose support and keen insights greatly improved this paper. In addition, Professor Jen Carter, Social Science and Professor Jay Sanderson, Law and Criminology at USC offered critical feedback and encouragement. Lastly, special gratitude for the two peer reviewers who generously gave their time, expertise and helped to clarify and focus this paper. Thank you. No new data was collected or analysed for this project.

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  1. School of Law and Society, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Queensland, Australia

    Theresa Ashford

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Correspondence to Theresa Ashford.

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Ashford, T. App-centric Students and Academic Integrity: A Proposal for Assembling Socio-technical Responsibility. J Acad Ethics 19, 35–48 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-020-09387-w

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