Academic honesty in online courses

Abstract: Academic dishonesty is an issue of concern for teachers, students, and institutions of higher education. It is often perceived that because students and faculty do not interact directly in web-based classes, cheating will be more abundant than that which would be observed in a traditional classroom setting. In this paper we provide initial evidence of the magnitude of cheating in online courses. To estimate cheating in a single online class, we merge data from a student randomized response survey on cheating behavior with class-specific information provided by faculty. For our sample of students in a large public university, we find evidence that academic dishonesty in a single online class is no more pervasive than in traditional classrooms. We attribute this finding to the way online courses are designed, which may reduce the need for cheating, and that panic cheating, a typical form of cheating found in traditional classes, is less likely to occur in online classes