While technology is changing the information environment, the transactional nature of information interactions and knowledge flow still has to underpin learning. A major challenge for education is to enable and facilitate the creation or generation of new knowledge via an appropriate information environment, to facilitate integration of new concepts within each person’s existing knowledge structure.
In this context the phenomenon of academic dishonesty has attracted much interest over the years – and the challenges and strategies for maintaining quality assurance is often addressed by policies, coupled with an investigation of new strategies for assessing the ‘iGeneration’. I live this experience in the higher education sector, and my strong believe is that the issue is what we teach and how we teach it – or rather, what learning environments we create for our students.
I acknowledge that policy is needed, but many of the draconian strategies still employed are not necessarily the right producing the ‘fix’ that we want. In this context, the story of our journey in creating learning in a participatory networked learning culture provides some insights and alternatives that just might help drive better learning as well as improve academic integrity.
Long story short – a paper written for a conference has finally made it into the ‘open’. May not be polished, but it’s authentic – these things really happened and continue to happen!
O’Connell, J. (2016). Networked participatory online learning and challenges for academic integrity in higher education. International Journal for Educational Integrity. 12:4
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