Do Online Exams Facilitate Cheating? An Experiment Designed to Separate Possible Cheating from the Effect of the Online Test Taking Environment

Despite recent growth in distance education, there has been relatively little research on whether online examinations facilitate student cheating. The present paper utilizes an experimental design to assess the difference in student performance between students taking a traditional, proctored exam and those taking an online, unproctored exam. This difference in performance is examined in a manner which considers both the effect of the different physical test environments and the possible effect of a difference in the opportunity for students to cheat. This study, utilizing regression models that also account for relevant control variables, examines 44 undergraduate statistics students, finds evidence that the difference in the testing environment creates a disadvantage to students taking the online exam which somewhat offsets the advantage that the unproctored students gain from greater opportunities to cheat.