I Explain, You Collaborate, He Cheats: An Empirical Study with Social Network Analysis of Study Groups in a Computer Programming Subject

Students interact with each other in order to solve computer science programming assignments. Group work is encouraged because it has been proven to be beneficial to the learning process. However, sometimes, collaboration might be confused with dishonest behaviours. This article aimed to quantitativ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied sciences Vol. 11; no. 19; p. 9328
Main Authors: Barros, Beatriz, Conejo, Ricardo, Ruiz-Sepulveda, Amparo, Triguero-Ruiz, Francisco
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2021
Subjects:
Behavior
Cheating
Classrooms
Collaboration
Communication
Computer programming
dishonest behaviour
Dishonesty
Distance learning
groups collaborative learning
higher education
Knowledge
knowledge sharing
Literature reviews
Online instruction
Plagiarism
Social network analysis
Social networks
source-code similarity
Students
Teachers
ISSN:2076-3417, 2076-3417
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Students interact with each other in order to solve computer science programming assignments. Group work is encouraged because it has been proven to be beneficial to the learning process. However, sometimes, collaboration might be confused with dishonest behaviours. This article aimed to quantitatively discern between both cases. We collected code similarity measures from students over four academic years and analysed them using statistical and social network analyses. Three studies were carried out: an analysis of the knowledge flow to identify dishonest behaviour, an analysis of the structure of the social organisation of study groups and an assessment of the relationship between successful students and social behaviour. Continuous dishonest behaviour in students is not as alarming as many studies suggest, probably due to the strict control, automatic plagiarism detection and high penalties for unethical behaviour. The boundary between both is given by the amount of similar content and regularity along the course. Three types of study groups were identified. We also found that the best performing groups were not made up of the best individual students but of students with different levels of knowledge and stronger relationships. The best students were usually the central nodes of those groups.
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ISSN:2076-3417
2076-3417
DOI:10.3390/app11199328