Collections have long been fundamental to natural history research and education (Suarez and Tsutsui 2004). More recently, they are being incorporated into distance education curricula to serve as ex situ laboratories. Little research has focused on the educational benefits or challenges of using collections in formal educational settings, and to our knowledge, no studies to date have addressed their use in distance education. We assessed learning in face-to-face and distance entomology classes through pre- and post-course surveys and evaluated the prevalence of academic dishonesty across delivery modes. We found that end of course knowledge was equivalent in face-to-face and distance classes, suggesting that mastery of the material was not affected by delivery mode. In contrast, academic dishonesty was more likely in distance classes than in face-to-face classes. These results suggest that a distance-delivered collection-based course can provide a natural history education on par with a face-to-face class, but that cheating is more of a problem in the distance environment.

Learning Outcomes Are Equivalent

Our survey of nearly 200 students in an advanced entomology class revealed that face-to-face and distance students performed equally well on an ungraded end-of-semester insect identification assessment. The lack of difference across delivery mode suggests that distance delivery of this course material, including the focus on collection-based learning, is as effective as in face-to-face classes. This result echoes a growing body of literature that finds distance learning to be as effective as face-to-face learning (Wu 2015).

We initially focused on assessing delivery-based differences in learning gains to account for differences in student knowledge levels upon entering the course; gains were significantly higher in face-to-face classes as compared with distance classes. This result was largely the result of differences in pre-course survey scores (Table 4, Fig. 1). Specifically, distance students scored higher than face-to-face students on the pre-course survey, and as they achieved equivalent scores on the post-course survey, their learning gains were lower when compared to face-to-face students. Why did students taking the course by distance have higher scores upon entry? One possibility is that distance students in this advanced course may start the class better prepared than face-to-face students because they anticipate the rigor of the class. The sequence of courses required for most distance students results in completion of the prerequisite introductory course during the semester immediately prior to this class. Face-to-face students, on the other hand, may comprise a more diverse group, with some having taken prerequisite courses long ago. Differences in pre-course scores may also relate to the higher rate of student course withdrawals from the distance sections, where poorly performing students tend to drop the class rather than complete it with a low or failing grade. This results in the removal of the lowest scores (pre- and post-course) from the dataset. These factors may result in significant differences within the student populations grouped together here; further study of student demographics could test these theories.

Cheating Is more Prevalent in Distance Classes

Concerns about academic dishonesty transcend delivery mode, but cheating rates are widely thought to be higher in distance education than in traditional, face-to-face classes (Bell and Federman 2013). Written plagiarism has been shown to be common both in face-to-face and distance delivery (Park 2003), and text-matching software, such as Turnitin, has helped educators detect and deter this type of cheating (Heckler et al. 2013).

When collections are plagiarized, specimens are collected by someone other than the student submitting the assignment and records are falsified to suggest that specimens were collected during the appropriate time frame, by the owner of the collection, and in a believable location. To detect specimen-based plagiarism, we developed a method of marking specimens for easy identification of “recycled material” and focused on characteristics of collections that indicated material had been purchased. We found cheating to be relatively uncommon at < 2.0% of all collections, but, troublingly, collections submitted in distance classes were more than 12 times more likely to include plagiarized material than those in face-to-face classes. Neither type of cheating (specimen recycling or purchasing) was notably more common than the other; each type of cheating was detected in less < 1.0% of all student collections. In face-to-face classes, recycled specimens that had been previously submitted for a grade were detected more often than purchased specimens, whereas in distance classes, both forms of plagiarism were equally common. Despite clear warnings about what constituted plagiarism and data falsification in both face-to-face and distance sections of both courses, higher incidence of cheating was found consistently in distance sections of introductory and advanced courses. These results add to a growing body of research on cheating in distance education that suggest disciplinary “loopholes” in distance instruction unintentionally create opportunities for students to cheat (Wolverton 2016; Ubell 2017). Just as it is relatively easy for students to pay for a term paper, it is similarly possible for students to purchase specimen collections from other students or a vendor.

It is unlikely that any of the cases of plagiarism reported here would have been detected if this study of cheating prevalence had not been undertaken. Without an explicit way for instructors to detect recycled content, past students may have trafficked collection materials through social networks such as fraternities, sororities, or for profit, without consequence. Students were aware of the danger of being caught in this way because instructors have, for decades, warned students against specimen-based plagiarism by (falsely) stating that collections were marked. This study, however, was the first time that collections were actually marked and checked regularly. We expect that our detection rate of marked specimens is a reasonable approximation of specimen recycling because we exhaustively marked all specimens submitted during this time. It is possible that the first years of this study underestimated cheating if unmarked collections recycled from previous semesters went undetected. Contract cheating detection rates were probably lower, however. While we were diligent about scanning for obvious indicators of purchase or data falsification, a high-quality collection that conformed to the assignment requirements could have passed scrutiny undetected.

Does Cheating in Distance Education Influence Learning Assessments?

Juxtaposing these results, namely higher rates of cheating by distance and higher pre-course followed by equivalent post-course learning outcomes, raises an uncomfortable question about the veracity of distance survey scores. In other words, are distance learning assessments compromised by increased levels of student cheating, and how does this impact our ability to infer distance vs. face-to-face learning outcomes? While we attempted to decouple learning assessment from student grades in this study by offering an ungraded learning survey, we cannot be certain that students did not cheat on the ungraded learning assessment. We found no direct evidence of cheating on assessments in this study but acknowledge that students may have used outside materials to improve their scores. Why would a student cheat on an ungraded survey? Perhaps to mask limited knowledge, reduce embarrassment about performing poorly, or simply out of the habit to cheat when unobserved. If some groups of students are more likely to cheat, knowing more about how course delivery encourages or discourages performance and cheating could help improve learning outcomes. Answering the question, more broadly, of whether cheating artificially skews distance learning metrics is important in order to better understand and improve distance education; for now, it remains to be satisfactorily addressed.

What to Do Now?

All academic programs aspire to maintain high standards of integrity, regardless of delivery method. Nevertheless, there is a growing need for recognition that academic honesty issues in distance education are a considerable and growing challenge for educators (Bell and Federman 2013). Addressing this problem requires a combination of willingness on the part of instructors to acknowledge and deal with cheating in individual courses as well as systematic changes in institutional structures (McCabe and Pavela 2000; Park 2004). How can instructors deter cheating? Along with structuring courses and assignments to reduce the opportunities for students to cheat, raising students’ awareness of the importance of academic honesty in classes, along with clear information about consequences, can be effective in deterring cheating (Michaels and Williams 2013). These practices have universal benefits: although they may be designed to address academic integrity issues in distance learning, they also benefit students in face-to-face classes. Institutions can develop campus-wide initiatives such as honor codes (McCabe 2002; LoSchiavo and Schatz 2011) or courses to increase awareness of academic integrity (Roberts and Hai-Jew 2009), which increase community commitment to campus honesty.

Needless to say, cheating in any delivery format is problematic because it circumvents the learning process and hinders the student’s and instructor’s ability to gauge mastery over course material. We took the results of this study back to our own classes and redoubled our efforts to deter cheating. We explicitly and repeatedly reminded our students (distance and face to face) what constituted academic dishonesty and of the consequences for any student submitting a collection that included marked specimens or specimens with falsified records. Faculty members teaching collection-based classes agreed to respond uniformly to cheating by reporting any academic dishonesty to the UF Dean of Students Office, enforcing a standardized grade penalty and requiring completion of an Ethical Decision-making Seminar and Plagiarism Avoidance Workshop. The effectiveness of these measures remains to be seen.