I Didn’t Know This Was Cheating: Differences in Perceptions Between Students and Instructors About Academic Dishonesty

College instructors are oftentimes concerned with the potential for academic dishonesty both in and out of the classroom. However, academic dishonesty is not always clearly defined, leading to differences in perceptions between students and faculty members about whether or not a specific behavior violates academic rules and warrants consequences. These discrepancies may be exacerbated by new technologies that allow students to collect information from a variety of online sources (e.g. Wikipedia, online test banks, etc.) or social media outlets (e.g. Facebook) that may not be explicitly mentioned or prohibited by instructors. In order to explore said differing perceptions of academic cheating, specifically in regards to the digital world’s emerging classroom presence, we asked undergraduate students, teaching assistants, and faculty at the University of Kentucky to evaluate a variety of online behaviors that could be interpreted as academic dishonesty. Via survey, we asked participants to inspect the fine line between using and abusing digital resources at hand. We observed discrepancies between students and faculty members’ perceptions of what behaviors constitute academically dishonest behavior. Additional moderating factors will be discussed