Technology as a double edged sword: a promise yet to be fulfilled or a vehicle for cheating?

The purpose of the present chapter is to illustrate and discuss relationships between academic integrity, technology, plagiarism, and deception. Academic integrity raises conduct issues. A prevalent idea is that the purpose of the Academy is to educate students to become independent, critical thinkers. A promise of technology is that it can support the qualification, socialization, and subjectification of students. With the advent of digital technology however, it is the cheating, plagiarizing, and colluding student who is attracting increasing attention. He/she is considered to defeat the purpose of higher education and is often regarded as one of the consequences of digital technology. Technology may thus be considered a threat. History demonstrates that what is considered a threat today, may very well be regarded as a valuable aid tomorrow. How technology is seen today may be different tomorrow, some practices perhaps even made obsolete or replaced as a result of new technologies, among other factors. This uneven development of academic ethos and practice is bound to create tensions between the Academy’s ideas of academic integrity and its use of technology – thereby causing both to change.