Anyone who has ever taught knows that students sometimes cheat. With the increasing prevalence of online classes, there has been some fear that cheating would shoot through the roof—it's a lot harder to spot answer-sharing on tests when it's all online, after all. A new study, however, suggests that cheating is actually less common among students in virtual classrooms, though limitations in this study mean that further research is needed before declaring a winner between online and traditional classes.

The study, titled "Point, Click, and Cheat: Frequency and Type of Academic Dishonesty in the Virtual Classroom," acknowledges previous reports stating that students who have a close relationship with their professors tend to be more honest—a belief that feeds into the idea that virtual classrooms invite more cheating. "Both students and faculty perceive that cheating occurs more frequently in virtual classrooms because online students are often believed to be more savvy at utilizing online resources than their on ground counterparts, or are less likely to be caught by faculty who are unfamiliar with online detection techniques," wrote the researchers.

However, when they surveyed 225 students at Friends University in Wichita, KS, they found that students appeared to be much more willing to engage in some form of cheating when "on the ground" versus a virtual classroom. Almost three times as many students admitted to engaging in any form of cheating while on campus compared to an online environment—this included cheating on tests, plagiarizing, fabrication of facts, somehow achieving an unfair advantage, aiding/abetting, falsification of records, and gaining unauthorized access to materials. In all instances, these activities occurred less frequently online than in real life, and in some cases (such as falsification of records and unauthorized access), it didn't occur at all online.

Among those who did engage in academic dishonesty in the online classroom, the largest percentage admitted to aiding and abetting—that is, helping someone else cheat by letting them copy answers or a paper. The researchers also noted that students who admitted to cheating in high school were also more likely to admit to cheating in college, and "only a small percentage of students in both samples reported getting caught." Though they acknowledge that going into the reasons why students cheat is beyond this study, the researchers theorize that students on the ground may be more compelled to engage in "panic cheating."

Of course, there are numerous caveats to taking a study like this at face value. Since the results were taken via self-reported survey, we can only count on the results from students who were willing to admit to cheating both on and off campus—a group that may not include everyone who has cheated in either situation. The sample size is also relatively small and only includes students from a single university, and the report notes that instructors may have anticipated more cheating in an online environment, therefore crafting class materials to be more challenging and involved than they would have otherwise.

Despite these limitations, the researchers believe that their findings are a good starting point for further studies on cheating in a virtual environment. One suggestion that sparks our interest is a study looking at the personality traits of students who choose to take online classes and whether those students are more motivated than the traditional campus student. Even if that were the case, however, the researchers acknowledge that a lingering concern over distance and disengagement remains: "Thus, the need for colleges and universities to search for ways to increase online students’ connectedness to the online community cannot be over stated. As online learning becomes more accepted as a means to an educational end and available to more people, it is likely that the prevalence of academic dishonesty will increase."