Cheating and Plagiarism Among International Students in Higher Education

Assessing the Arguments Made in the Articles

Introductions:

The articles I have assigned all deal with the question of cheating and plagiarism in British, American and Canadian higher education. Their focus is on international students who have come to schools in those countries. The authors note that these students exhibit a greater likelihood of engaging in some form of cheating and discuss whether there is a cultural basis to that behavior. Under the new online teaching regimes imposed by the pandemic, this concern about cheating has recently been extended to all students.

Look at the issue and concerns as an anthropologist. Use an emic POV and apply cultural relativism, holism, and all that other good stuff you should totally understand by this point. Your task is to assess the arguments made in each of the articles, and the data used to support them. You are then to provide your own, reasoned and supported, views on whether the articles argue their positions successfully, and whether they have considered all that they should be considered to take their positions on this topic.

If you agree with their arguments, explain what social, cultural, educational and/or economic factors you believe might influence the decision of students to cheat. If you disagree with their arguments, explain what social, cultural, educational and/or economic factors you believe might underlay labeling international students, as a category, as cheaters. And if you think it’s some of both, explain how each of these stances hit or miss the mark.

Remember that you are assessing their arguments in order to make an argument of your own. Your argument and how you back it up is what interests me the most. Do not waste my time simply repeating what they said. That is not the assignment. It will cost you marks. Take a position, let me know what it is and then use the information in the articles to support it.

You will be assessed on:
1.How well you separate unsupported opinion from reasoned argument. In an academic paper, phrases like “back in the day”, “everyone says” or “because” are not appropriate. Your paper needs to be clearly reasoned and clearly sourced and your points proven or supported by the sources. 

2.How well and efficiently you summarize what you see as the important points in all the assigned articles you list in the bibliography. If you do not cite or at least refer to every article, you lose marks.

3.How well and clearly you cite each article. Are all quotes marked as such, and do you note which author or article made which point?

4.How clearly stated, organized and consistent your position is throughout the paper.

5.NOTE that simply summarizing each article in turn and then saying something vaguely related at the end does not qualify it as an essay. You need to pull stuff out and organize it in a new way that shows you thought about it. 

Format
Paper must be 900-1000 words/~ 3 pages, double spaced with a 1”/25mm margin all around, and in 12pt Times New Roman font. 
DO NOT use a title page, headers/ footers, or footnotes/endnotes. 
Upload a copy in MS Office or PDF format ONLY.

Citation
Cite ANY 4 of the sources in the ‘Required’ list, using APA bibliographic style. The choice will depend on what position or approach you decide to take at the beginning. The library guide to APA is available at: https://langara.libguides.com/c.php?g=707257 . For this course, I also require that you add the URL for the source and the date you accessed it in your bibliography.