Using Learning Analytics for Preserving Academic Integrity

This paper presents the results of integrating learning analytics into the assessment process to enhance academic integrity in the e-learning environment. The goal of this research is to evaluate the computational-based approach to academic integrity. The machine-learning based framework learns students’ patterns of language use from data, providing an accessible and non-invasive validation of student identities and student-produced content. To assess the performance of the proposed approach, we conducted a series of experiments using written assignments of graduate students. The proposed method yielded a mean accuracy of 93%, exceeding the baseline of human performance that yielded a mean accuracy rate of 12%. The results suggest a promising potential for developing automated tools that promote accountability and simplify the provision of academic integrity in the e-learning environment.

International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning