Exploring drivers of academic integrity violation in e-assessments by students during the emergency remote teaching

Abstract

The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic has suddenly driven higher education institutions towards emergency remote teaching (ERT) to save academic programmes. Despite the benefits brought by remote teaching, it has the potential to bring negative consequences such as compromised academic integrity resulting from the use of e-assessments in environments lacking sufficient pandemic response readiness and mechanisms. A few studies have been conducted on the academic integrity challenges of e-assessments during ERT in universities from a developing country perspective. This quantitative study aimed to examine challenges to the academic integrity of e-assessments during ERT through a literature survey and an online survey questionnaire, collecting and analysing data from a randomly selected sample of 201 students in a South African university. Through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), findings revealed that individual and institutional factors negatively impact the lack of academic integrity when doing e-assessments. However, technological factors do not impact the academic integrity of students using e-assessments. Gender differences caused significantly different findings, but age differences did not. The study concludes with recommendations for improving policy and research around the academic integrity of e-assessments. This work reveals how university communities can be assisted to improve their understanding of academic integrity challenges and adopt measures to solve them.