Both the traditional student and the online student are faced with daily challenges to be ethical. The traditional student may be more inclined to follow proper ethical behaviors because of the limited temptation to copy and paste for papers. The traditional student also is unable to test with a book present because of strict proctoring during the testing procedure. An online student may be more likely to behave in an unethical manner due to the high temptation to copy and paste information. In addition, with the help of copyright checkers, the online student may not get caught. The online student may be more prone to cheating because of a lack of proctoring during test or a slacker level of proctoring.
Ethics is the foundation of education. Without proper ethics, a student may not feel the need to learn the educational material since cheating can be done. A lack of ethics during the educational process can lead to a lack of ethics in the work force. This can lead to law suits and dangerous practices. Learning ethics begins in the educational process and learning to resist the temptation to cheat or cut corners is essential to becoming an ethical individual.
Online professors are challenged to find better ways to teach online students the importance of ethics and identifying unethical behavior. Most of the online students never meet their teachers and this can make it difficult for the teachers to make an impression on the students. It is important that the teachers run their online students' papers through a copyright checker that will identify the chances of copy and pasted papers. Online professors are also encouraged to discuss ethics in their lessons regularly as well.
A student may hire or request a friend who is more proficient in a task to complete the assignment for the student. This is difficult to prevent for a distance educator. The most effective method of prevention is to create assignments that require the student to have read the course material and to provide log-ons and passwords that constantly change, making it essential for the student to complete the work rather than steal the work.
With online unethical behavior becoming a serious concern, teachers are being required to rotate their course material in a manner as to make it different each year. This makes it more difficult for previous students to sell their work to new students. Keeping a record of each paper and assignment sent in for comparison will also help to prevent selling and will help to identify stolen or sold papers.