“Transformational eLearning: Academic Integrity in Online Education” provides a much needed outline for empowering students and educators to reduce the instances of academic dishonesty in the online classroom.  As GCU has over 70,000 online students, this is a very pertinent issue.  

There are several instances where citations either appear to be missing, or would be needed to support the author’s arguments:

--Discussion, paragraph 1, line 4: “…lack of leadership and accountability will inevitably result in academic dishonesty…”  

--Motivations for academic dishonesty, paragraph 1, line 1: “The reasons for academic dishonesty include opportunity, culture, and desperation…”

--Transformational leadership and transactional distance, paragraph 2, line 10:  The citation from Moore is given a date of 1997, and then cited in the next sentence with a 1993 date.  

--Academic integrity and student success in eLearning, paragraph 1, lines 5-7: “…emphasizing the intrinsic rewards of learning promises to develop both qualitative and quantitative outcomes ranging from community and engagement to retention and job placement.”

--Academic integrity and student success in eLearning, paragraph 1, line 8: “Students motivated by purely instrumental rewards are less likely to succeed and more likely to engage in academic dishonesty.”

--Academic integrity and student success in eLearning, paragraph 3, line 3: “Instructors are likely to feel wronged by lapses of academic integrity; however, poorly designed courses, assignments, and assessments can put undue pressure on students and increase the likelihood of academic dishonesty.”

The author makes many good points connecting academic dishonesty with appropriate changes to courses, empowering educators, and shaping academic dishonesty to the context of each individual class.  However, the major issue and irony with the entire manuscript is that it appears to be a largely reprinted version of the author’s previously published piece, “Encouraging Academic Integrity in Online Education,” published 12/6/2016 on the website edCircuit https://www.edcircuit.com/encouraging-academic-integrity-in-online-education/

I would highly recommend this manuscript not be considered for publication in the JIR, and strongly suggest the author remove it from further consideration, as much of his verbatim contents have already been previously published.

A review on the paper “Transformational eLearning” by Judson S. Garrett. Completely agree from teaching over 15 years that most students resist being academic dishonest when writing assignment papers and discussion boards. I relay information to students about choosing the correct topic of their choice pertaining to the subject matter. Students that feel comfortable with their subject matter topic will not even think about being academic dishonest. Students can write their discussion boards and assignment papers on something they already know a lot about regarding any assignment requirements with confidence. Students can embrace and connect to the material better that way.

In the middle of the Some issues pertaining to the posted critical thinking assignment paper by Judson S. Garrett are as follows:

Page 1: His title page needs a date and instructor’s name on it for full credit that was not found here. 

Page 2: The abstract section should be 60 up to 120 words and no more. This page exceeds that limit.

Page 3: Paragraph one, second sentence needs to be broken up into two sentences. There are way too many thoughts going on there. 

Page 3: Paragraph two, last sentence should be rewritten with some question marks.

Page 3: Moving on to the subtopic section on “Motivations for Academic Dishonesty” mentions variables on opportunity, culture and desperation. I’m not seeing how desperation fits in with opportunity and culture. I think a different choice word variable should be selected in this section of the paper.

Page 4: First paragraph, last sentence ending with the word internalize is an incomplete sentence. His thought needs to be completed there.

Page 4: Second paragraph, starting with the word Establishing ends with the word however. Please try to start a sentence with however instead of ending a sentence with however.

Page 4: It would’ve been nice to read about what the technological tools and academic standards are about by relaying various examples supporting this information. This can be found on the second paragraph of the paper where the sentence starts with Administrators. 

Page 5: Second paragraph, author Moore has the incorrect year of 1997 which should be 1993.

Page 6: First paragraph, last sentence ending with the word learning is an incomplete thought and needs to explain more points there.

Page 6: Defined in paragraph two a discussion on extrinsic measures. It would’ve also been nice to read about intrinsic measures as well.

Page 7: Paragraph one, starting with the sentence understanding and ending with the word disqualifiers needs to be broken up into two sentences. There was a sentence right after that starting with therefore and ending with alike. Alike what? 

Page 8: In the section on conclusion and future study was a sentence that starts off with the digital classroom and ends with independence. How does a digital classroom require leadership? I think more explanation needs to be explained there. I would understand that if faculty teaching in a digital classroom would be able to handle leadership by utilizing models of integrity in developing independence for students in higher education. This would make more sense to me.

Page 9: The reference page for the length of this paper of 6 pages should have at least 3 to 5 or 4 to 6 references at least for this assignment. 

Judson does a fairly okay job embracing the content for this paper assignment. I took the time to do a quick search on Google regarding the paper’s contents and found matching cases of this paper published somewhere else. He should keep in mind that if a paper is published somewhere else then it’s not original information. I believe this paper has merit. I think more work needs to be done on this paper to improve its viability and originality regarding the high standards of this journal. At this time, I would not advise this manuscript to be published but would strongly embrace Judson on the previous recommendations and seek a complete revision of the whole paper regarding originality and uniqueness.

Thank you for submitting your paper for review and discussion here. Your paper, “Transformational eLearning: Academic Integrity in Online Education,” brings to light the excellent point of needing the presence of leadership in online classroom to empower learners.  While I found the content interesting and the author passionate about the topic, the paper would be more convincing with the addition of evidence from peer-based studies or reports.  Mechanically speaking, this appears to be written in APA format. If so, there are a few formatting issues present: running head should be all caps, no header immediately after the title, abstract slightly too long. There are a few areas of grammatical concern as well. For example, page 3 – potential and potentially are used in the same sentence; also on page 3 appears to be a run-on sentence.

I would recommend strong revisions followed by resubmission for publication.

RE: "Transformational eLearning: Academic Integrity in Online Education"

Revision in wording is recommended.  The abstract is difficult to follow and at times does not seem to follow the body of the text.  Simplify the language so the paper flows smoother.  

Maintain focus by using subtitles.

Provide more than two sources.  I would recommend at least five (5) different sources, such as; three (3) hardcopy book or magazine, one (1) article, and one (1) electronic source. 

Use transition words and provide concrete examples and details.  

A few recommendations to assist in avoiding plagiarism may be useful, such as the use of Paper rater, a software program that can electronically check the integrity of a students paper.  

The motive behind this paper I feel is a valid concern.  

Here is a suggestion for a research project that might work with this content.

The hypothesis is that greater relationships between students and professors, even in online courses, combined with the use of expert/referential authority as opposed to legitimate/reward authority, results in diminished academic dishonesty.

The COT attempts to create a community by use of the Covenant, and residencies. One way students at GCU practice academic dishonesty without detection by lopezwrite or turnitin is by non-authoritative cites and citing academic journals which do not address the point made. Could a research design be developed to see if the College of Theology has the same academic dishonesty as other programs at the same level? Could one check student submissions of those who have and have not attended residency? There would certainly be numerous lurking variables, but it would be interesting.

I agree with most of the reviewer’s feedback and believe the recommended edits need to be completed prior to publication. One issue is that there are not many sources used. The sources listed are from 1978 and 1993, which are outdated. In the last several years, there have been other articles written that would be more relevant to strengthen the content of this paper; below, I have provide examples.

Brinthaupt, T., Fisher, L., Gardner, J., Raffo, D., & Woodward, J. (2011). What the best online teachers do. Journal

of Online Learning and Teaching, 7(4), 515-524.

Keengwe, J., & Kidd, T. T. (2010). Towards best practices in online learning and teaching in higher education. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 6, 533-541.

Shindler, J. (2010). Transformative classroom management: Positive strategies to engage all students and promote a psychology of success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sibbernsen, K. (2008). Online Academic Integrity. Astronomy Education Review, 7(2), 98-102. doi:10.3847/aer2008024

Taylor, E. W. (2012). The handbook of transformative learning: Theory, research, and practice. S.l.: S.n.

Thank you for sharing your work! As mentioned above by others, the intent of the paper is what? Is it to share scholarly work? Or an opinion piece? If the intent is to share research-then there needs to be timely, relevant, scholarly sources to substantiate your thoughts such as the paragraphs related to motivations for academic dishonesty. There are facts stated but no citations to indicate who or where it is supported from. Under the same paragraph-what are types of academic integrity; explain with sources. Under the transformational leadership paragraph there are facts stated that needed citing to substantiate your thoughts. Your concepts are solid-but support your work with scholarly sources.