Are college students more likely to cheat in an online class than in a traditional classroom setting?
As technology continues to play a larger and larger role in education in the 21st century, the question regarding college students’ online cheating habits is raised time and time again.
One would think that students taking online courses would be more likely to cheat because they’re not being monitored as closely as students in a live classroom.
See Also: Students Cheating with Cell Phones Statistics [Infographic]
Then again, should using a resource that college graduates have virtually unlimited access to, the internet, really be considered cheating anyway?
An infographic (posted below) was recently published by OnlineCollege.org that compares the cheating habits and prevalence of online college students to college students attending live classes held in a traditional classroom.
Surprisingly, the final results were very similar for both online students and traditional students.
Keep in mind though, this infographic was published by an organization that specializes in online classes so they may have been a bit biased when reporting the results. The sources, however, are listed at the bottom of the infographic and seem to be rather legitimate.
Students Cheating in Online Classes Statisitics Infographic Highlights:
- More than 77% of college presidents say their institution offers online courses.
- 55% of college presidents say that plagiarism has increased in recent years – most likely due to students’ increased access to online resources.
- 51% of college presidents feel that online courses offer value equal to courses administered in a classroom.
- 32.7% of students admitted to cheating in an online course compared to the 32.1% of students that admitted to cheating in a traditional college course.
- 4.9% of students were caught cheating in a classroom while only 2.1% were caught cheating online (more than 2X as much in a traditional setting).
- 33.2% of students taking traditional classes admitted to receiving answer from a student who had previously taken it compared to only 20.3% of online students.
