ACADEMIC INTEGRITY, QUALITY OF EDUCATION AND QUALITY OF LIFE IN STUDENTS UNDER DISTANT LEARNING DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The study aims to examine quality of life aligned with functional difficulties among students under distant and blended learning during COVID-19 pandemic. The particular focus has been given to challenges related to academic integrity and quality of education at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The approval letter to recruit the participants through Students Union at Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University (LUVNU) was obtained from Ethical Committee at LUVNU. 554 students, females 67,4%, average age 20,93 (SD = 3,29), 74,0 % undergraduate students, 88,4 % students from humanities and social sciences were recruited. Academic Integrity Questionnaire (Schwartz, Tatum, & Hageman, 2013), and, COVID-related functional difficulties and stress associated with exposure to COVID-19 (Schiff, Zasiekina, Pat-Horenczyk, & Benbenishty, 2020) have been used.
The study applied the cross sectional, between subjects design utilizing the independent variables of health-related difficulties, learning-related difficulties and loneliness-related difficulties aligned with forced social isolation during pandemic, and fear to be infected for multiple regression analysis. The results in this study indicate that that the main students’ concern is associated with health-related difficulties. The only one independent significant predictor of students’ fear to be infected is health-related difficulties, although all dependent variables taken together (health-related difficulties, learning-related difficulties and loneliness-related difficulties) are robust predictors of students’ fear to be infected. The most acceptable situations for students in terms of dishonest behaviour are situations of collaborating on lab report when instructed not to; submitting same paper for two classes; purchasing and downloading a paper from online sources. The next study, therefore, moves on to discuss the main instruments for developing academic integrity and quality of education under distant and blended learning at HEis.