Exploring students’ perceptions about academic integrity: the role of disengagement in first-time plagiarism offenders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, universities were forced to adjust to an online learning format without being fully prepared. The question of student engagement and its effect on students’ learning became a primary concern of many instructors. Amidst this rapid change in pedagogy along with the physical and mental health implications of COVID-19, students have had to deal with many challenges. One issue that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic was the exponential increase of plagiarism and academic fraud cases across many campuses.

In collaboration with the Faculty of Human Sciences, the Library provides a one-hour mandatory workshop for students who have received their first sanction for academic fraud. In order to understand the correlation between plagiarism, mental health, and students’ disengagement during the COVID-19 pandemic, a research study has been carried out with the students who have committed plagiarism and attended the mandatory academic integrity workshop with a librarian. The researchers used a modified Attitudes Toward Plagiarism Questionnaire (Mavrinac et al., 2010) and University Student Engagement Inventory (Maroco et al., 2016). The results of this study offer unique insight into factors associated with students’ attitudes towards plagiarism during this pandemic.

The attendees will gain an insight into plagiarism causes during stressful times and how students’ attitudes towards plagiarism can be impacted by it. This, in turn, will offer the attendees a unique perspective on what beliefs students who have committed plagiarism hold and how to address them effectively. This can help academic librarians better recognize what roles stress and anxiety play in students’ attitudes towards plagiarism and how disengagement factors contribute to this dynamic. In addition, these findings can enable academic librarians further support their students by adjusting to their needs when it comes to dealing with plagiarism cases and gain insight into different instructional strategies that can be applied during academic integrity workshops.