Brenda M. Stoesz – författare

This edited volume—the first book devoted to the topic of contract cheating—brings together the perspectives of leading scholars presenting novel research. Contract cheating describes the outsourcing of students’ assessments to third parties such that the assignments or exams students submit are not their own work. While research in this area has grown over the past five years, the phenomenon has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Themes addressed in this book include the definition of contract cheating, its prevalence in higher education, and what motivates students to engage in it. Chapter authors also consider various interventions that can be used to address contract cheating’s threat to academic integrity in higher education including: assessment practice, education, detection strategies, policy design, and legal interventions.

Academic Integrity in Vocational and Polytechnic Education addresses educative approaches to support academic integrity in hands-on and applied learning environments with a focus on practitioner experiences. Building on systems theory, the book documents multi-stakeholder perspectives of institutional leaders, department specialists, and individual champions of academic integrity. Readers will be introduced to the 4M framework, which views academic integrity as a responsibility at all levels of the institution and connects to the broader community and professional industries. Each chapter is set in an applied context and lends to the philosophy of a shared responsibility in growing the institutional culture of academic integrity.

This book offers insights from the perspectives of leaders, faculty, and support staff, as authors describe challenges and solutions to upholding academic integrity in short term programming geared toward employment readiness. Although the work is about vocational and polytechnic education written by members of this community, it has a wider appeal across higher education due to shifting pedagogical methods that are becoming more applied and personalized. In an age of information ubiquity, where traditional learning activities such as rote memorization and essay writing do not sufficiently assess learning or prepare the learner for the workplace, educators will find unique insights from the vocational and polytechnic sector to supporting academic integrity in a changing academic landscape.