Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
12-2020
Publication Title
Applied Economics Teaching Resources
Department
Agriculture
College/School
Hutson School of Agriculture
Abstract
Online higher education is growing at a rapid pace. Although beneficial in many regards, many studies find greater opportunity for student dishonesty. Unethical practices facilitated by e-learning include copying answers, trading solutions, or students taking turns as first mover on assignments to obtain and distribute question details or even solutions to their peers. However, if an incentive structure existed in which a student could be enticed to anonymously betray his or her peers and collaborate with the instructor, it seems reasonable that cheating could be reduced substantially. This framework resembles Prisoner’s Dilemma. The objective of this study is to stylize the Prisoner’s Dilemma game in the digital classroom context and propose instructor applications to set up an effective incentive structure. It is shown that a generous grade lift is a theoretically sufficient incentive to tip students toward defecting from collusion with their peers.
Recommended Citation
Young, Jeffrey S., 2020. "No Honor Among Cheaters: A “Prisoner’s Dilemma” Approach to Reduce Cheating in Online Classes," Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 2(5), December.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Comments
©2020 APPLIED ECONOMICS TEACHING RESOURCES. Copyright is governed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Articles may be reproduced or electronically distributed as long as attribution to the authors, Applied Economics Teaching Resources and the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association is maintained. Applied Economics Teaching Resources submissions and other information can be found at: https://www.aaea.org/publications/applied-economics-teaching-resources.