Dishonesty in Online Learning: Tertiary-Level Students’ Moral Evaluations

Online learning has become essential in today’s education. While it offers numerous advantages, online learning is susceptible to academic dishonesty. Previous studies have shown a positive link between students’ engagement and their moral evaluations of acts of academic dishonesty in face-to-face settings. However, few studies have focused specifically on the students’ evaluations of academic dishonesty in the context of online learning, even though it is a significant topic in its own right. This study aimed to address that gap by determining students’ evaluations of various acts of academic dishonesty in the context of online learning. A total of 1,547 tertiary-level students from one of the private higher education institutions in the Philippines were surveyed. Descriptive statistics were utilized to determine respondents' moral evaluation of acts of academic dishonesty in online learning. The Mann-Whitney U Test was employed to determine whether respondents' moral evaluations of acts of academic dishonesty differed based on sex. On the other hand, the Kruskal-Wallis Test was used to determine whether there were significant differences in respondents' moral evaluation when grouped according to their school and year level. The results indicated that students generally consider acts of academic dishonesty in online learning to be morally wrong. However, mixed results were observed regarding significant differences in students’ evaluations of cheating, contract cheating, and plagiarism when grouped according to demographic profiles. Academic institutions should continue their efforts to educate students about the various forms of cheating, contract cheating, and plagiarism in online learning. Serious attention should also be given to providing consistent information. Moreover, effective strategies to raise awareness of academic dishonesty and enhance academic integrity should be uniformly implemented.