Negotiating the Maze of Academic Integrity in Computing Education

Academic integrity in computing education is a source of much confusion and disagreement. Studies of student and academic approaches to academic integrity in computing indicate considerable variation in practice along with confusion as to what practices are acceptable. The difficulty appears to arise in part from perceived differences between academic practice in computing education and professional practice in the computing industry, which lead to challenges in devising a consistent and meaningful approach to academic integrity. Coding practices in industry rely heavily on teamwork and use of external resources, but when computing educators seek to model industry practice in the classroom these techniques tend to conflict with standard academic integrity policies, which focus on assessing individual achievement. We have surveyed both industry professionals and computing academics about practices relating to academic integrity, and can confirm the uncertainty and variability that permeates the field. We find clear divergence in the views of these two groups, and also a broad range of practices considered acceptable by the academics. Our findings establish a clear need to clarify academic integrity issues in the context of computing education. Educators must carefully consider how academic integrity issues relate to their learning objectives, teaching approaches, and the industry practice for which they are preparing students. To this end we propose a process that fulfils two purposes: to guide academics in the consideration of academic integrity issues when designing assessment items, and to effectively communicate the resulting guidelines to students so as to reduce confusion and improve educational practice.