Abstract:

Academic dishonesty is a manifold problem in academic communities. The term 'academic dishonesty' has a semantic field that allows for different interpretations, and members of the academic community may not always share views on academic dishonesty. Faculty members are the bearers and reproducers of academic culture; it is their activities and attitudes that shape students' academic knowledge and values, including knowledge about academic dishonesty and ethical dispositions. Previous research has shown that teaching staff not taking action when discovering academic fraud, due to either their workload or lack of awareness of how to respond, has enabled fraud to become widespread. Faculty members may not always sense their responsibility in preventing academic dishonesty and communicating ethical values. However, it is clear that teaching staff's role in preventing and noticing academic dishonesty, dealing with situations that arise and guiding students in the field of ethics is great within the academic community. Due to this, it is important to investigate their experiences of academic dishonesty.

Based on the aforementioned, the objective was set to find out faculty members perceptions of academic dishonesty, and how they respond when discovering a case of dishonesty and how and to what extent these experiences influence their occupational ethics, attitudes and activities, in their own opinions.

Faculty member’s perceptions about academic dishonesty and their experiences with it were researched using a qualitative method. Data was gathered via semi-structured interviews with 10 staff members. The data was analysed using the method of qualitative content analysis.

The results showed that faculty members mostly understand academic dishonesty in terms of plagiarism and cheating. They consider a prompt response, talking to the student and giving them another chance the most important aspects in dealing with cases of academic dishonesty, as the fraud concerns a study situation. The main reasons for academic dishonesty are believed to be students' lack of awareness of the nature of academic dishonesty and lack of citing skills. The faculty members interviewed described negative emotions (such as anger, disappointment, feeling ashamed of the students and a feeling of being used) when dealing with cases of academic dishonesty. The fraud cases that had come to light were experienced by the faculty members as their duty to prove fraud, rather than the students' duty to explain themselves. In their experience, dealing with such cases is a waste of precious time that could be used to give thorough feedback to students. Discussions with colleagues help faculty members face negative emotions, while attention to professional ethics is considered the most important result of such experiences, e.g. more attention is paid to correctly citing resources when preparing presentations and lecture materials. The independent work given to students is also restructured so that there are fewer chances to commit academic fraud, as some major reasons for fraud are thought to be study tasks that do not favour an individual approach, are not motivating and focus on checking factual knowledge.

Keywords:

Academic dishonesty, plagiarism, faculty members.