For any learning community to succeed, members must trust each other and the teacher, and all community/class members must act ethically at all times. Students should be encouraged to collaborate on group projects or even research for individual projects, but assignments made to individuals must be independently completed. Everyone must understand that original work is of paramount importance and that any use of outside sources must be clearly and thoroughly documented.

A thorny problem in all educational programs is honesty. The common focus is plagiarism, although other forms of academic honesty should be spelled out in a syllabus and other institutional literature, like the course catalog. Ethics and honesty are often labeled “academic integrity.”

Many academic institutions state their academic honesty, integrity, or ethics statements at a central location on the university’s or college’s Web site. The statement then might be copied into each individual course site. A good ethics statement should deal with plagiarism.

Summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting texts or graphics, both online and hardcopy, should be explained. This task may fall to individual teachers, because lengthy examples and instruction are beyond the scope of an ethics or academic honesty statement. In addition to reviewing the mechanics of citing sources appropriately and using a specific citation style, such as Modern Language Association (MLA) or American Psychological Association (APA), teachers may need to explain the rationale behind the process of citing reference information. That plagiarism is cheating by stealing others’ ideas and claiming them as one’s own should be explained as the serious offence it is. The institutional policies for dealing with plagiarism need to be detailed, and the consequences for plagiarizing information must be spelled out and enforced. As a deterrent, you may encourage or require learners to use plagiarism-checking software before they submit assignments to you for evaluation. The software must be used by learners and monitored by teachers for the system to work effectively.

Honesty is another ethical concern. Dealing with class members and the teacher honestly and fairly should be expected of all learners. Doing one’s own work is imperative. Written communication that does not mislead others, by omission of information or deliberately misstating data, should be discouraged, and penalties enforced. “Fairness” also should reflect unbiased dealings with everyone. Discrimination should not be tolerated. These elements of an academic ethics or integrity statement must be defined and explained effectively. Some examples of good policies can be found in the table of academic institutions’ Web sites. The titles of the information indicate the focus of the policy. Although a majority use Academic Honesty, some emphasize the problem of plagiarism and others focus on appropriate conduct. You can also learn a lot about the institution’s emphasis on the policy by how many times a site search for “academic honesty,” for example, reveals several Web pages. Some institutions place their statements on the home page, but others link users to student handbooks, groups of policies, and the library (presumably for research policies). As new elements need to be added to academic policies, the statements are updated in the institutional Web pages as well at individual course sites.

Educational concerns about honesty take many forms. The following four issues highlight educators’ concerns about online education:

1. Learners must do their own work.

Whether it is an assignment or a test, learners need to do their own work, without an unreasonable amount of assistance from the teacher, other learners, and people outside the class (e.g., tutors, family members, employers, purchased papers from the Web).

2. Learners must document the sources of information they use in assignments.

Most institutions suggest a reference style for learners to use in documenting their research, such as MLA or APA style. Learners must be able to document their work accurately and adequately, and they should be penalized for plagiarizing information.

3. Learners must complete all course requirements fairly, from class participation and attendance to academic activities.

Learners have to participate in the class themselves, even if the activity requires attending an on-site lecture or reviewing materials on a Web site. Although this requirement is difficult to enforce, you can make the use of stand-ins less likely if the course site requires a password. You may not be able to verify identity without being able to see class members face to face, but you can monitor consistency in the way learners express themselves in all formats for written communication.

4. Learners have to abide by confidentiality agreements.

Some information must remain confidential, whether it is the content of a test for the class or a corporate trade secret. Learners are expected, and sometimes legally bound, to keep confidential information private.

You should assume that your learners are honest, ethical people. They may be unaware of ways to document sources, for example, but they basically want to do their work fairly and correctly. Academic dishonesty is often hard to prove, whether you teach on site or online. How can you be sure that each learner wrote a paper on his or her own? How can you tell if each source in a research assignment is accurately documented or simply made up? How do you know if learners interviewed experts as they said they did, or that the information they provide from their company is OK for anyone to know? These types of questions are difficult to answer in all courses, not just those online.

Of course, online education probably comes under closer scrutiny because most teachers cannot see their learners at all. They rely on printouts in a common font, without the possibility of individual handwriting. Even in a chat room, there is no sure way of telling whether the real John Doe is making an insightful comment, or if it is another learner or someone else. Those teachers who see and hear learners during two-way conversations still cannot watch while learners complete every assignment. The responsibility for honesty is the individual learner’s, and teachers should assume the best about their learners.

Nevertheless, there are some spot checks you can make to satisfy any requirements about tests for academic honesty in your classroom. Let us look at the four areas of concern mentioned previously and ways to show that learners are, indeed, being scrupulously honest in your course.