Cheating at Baylor

In the Fall of 2018, Baylor University announced changes to its honor code that it made in order to combat the rise of internet cheating. This thesis project is a phenomenological study, and it explores the motivations, self-justifications, and methods that Baylor students use to cheat in their classes using semi-structured interviews with current Baylor students. Through a coded analysis of the interviews, I found, among other trends, that some Baylor students believe in the mutual exclusivity of cheating and learning and that they use such a belief in order to justify behavior that their professors would likely consider to be academic integrity violations. After analyzing my findings through the lens of the current academic integrity literature, I suggest to Baylor and the Office of Academic Integrity changes to make to classroom and university policy that would work to decrease internet cheating as well as the current disillusionment with the honor code.