Online Delivery and Assessment during COVID-19: Safeguarding Academic Integrity
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting paper but at the moment it does not seem to hang together very well to create a coherent piece. In particular:
- The introduction tries to comment on all levels of education but most of what follows is just about HE so it might be better to focus on this from the start. That might also avoid comments which imply that the student-teacher relationship is only important at primary level or that high stakes benchmark exams are not used before GCSE, which is not the case everywhere.
- The ordering of individual sentences is often odd. For example, in the opening paragraph library access is commented on after graduate employment - the narrative is not there at the moment.
- I am not sure if Figure 1 did not render well but it did not add to anything in the text so I would suggest removing it or amending it to be more informative.
- Through the manuscript selected countries or institutions are included and it is not clear why these have been chosen. Is this convenience sampling or because they are particularly important e.g. for academic excellence. If this were an experimental paper it would be important to explain and justify inclusion or exclusion so it would be helpful to understand the authors choice here.
- Before Section 1.3 there was quite a broad discussion of academic integrity but then it narrows to focus more on plagiarism. It would help the reader to see an explicit comment explaining why plagiarism is worthy of specific focus even if this is just, it is the one element that software/policy has focused on. A similar link for assessment security would be helpful.
- I am not convinced by the difference between take home exams and open book exams, given that both can have time constraints. This could need some clarification.
- Quite a few universities introduced a non-detriment or safety net policy but this is not really included (it is hinted at in the exam from the second university in the pass/fail section). I am not clear why this would not be included given the pass fail option was.
- The section titled Lack of support to student due to remote delivery is not really about student support but rather understanding of integrity so this could be renamed.
I think Sections 4 and 5 are strong but could be more concise.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This article describes approaches to ensure academic integrity in a COVID-19 world. While the purpose seems somewhat clear, the article tries to do too much. It is impractical, e.g., in this type of article to attempt to document pre-COVID academic integrity issues across multiple disciplines, countries, universities/colleges, etc., and as a result, the present article is both incomplete and disjointed. It would be far better to describe pre-/post-COVID strategies within a specific discipline or country. As a result of the wide diversity of educational systems approaches surveyed here, a “one-size-fits-all” approach to academic integrity will likely not succeed, which the authors seem to realize, but nonetheless fail to address.
Some specific criticisms….
- The authors criticize “Turnitin” and related text matching software as a means to detect plagiarism. However, it is recognized at our institution that such software is not foolproof, and it is used only to identify potentially problematic cases, which are then reviewed and addressed. This point should be clearly made, as there is a diversity of how these programs are being used.
- Figure 1 – this doesn’t speak much to the reader. Try putting the actual names of the pillars into the figure, that might help.
- Avoid direct use of references in the text. For example, line 148: “[14] further states…” should be rewritten as “Further, it has been stated….. .[14]”. References don’t “state” anything.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
A very interesting essay about remote online assessment and her challenges, particularly safeguarding academic integrity and for example, cheating.
It could be improved with a more scheduled methodology (clarifying how authors access to data).
But a very interesting essay.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
This study examines online delivery and assessment during covid19 in order to safeguard academic integrity. The research agenda is interesting and could contribute to the literature on academic integrity, covid19, remote learning, remote teaching. I think it is a very well article. The only drawback of this study is that the classic presentation is not fond; I mean introduction, literature review, results and discussion but it is much more discursive. There is also no part that explains the methodology of the research.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I am happy that the authors have revised the manuscript to address the original concerns raised. It could still be made more concise but this is not a matter of quality or validity so I do not think further amendments are needed if the editor is happy with the length.
