Abstract: It is common for faculty to believe that academic dishonesty is easier and more prevalent in online courses because of the lack of direct contact with students. This paper examines research into academic dishonesty in online courses, how to prevent cheating when online testing is done, how to detect and prevent plagiarism, how to design online courses to minimize academic dishonesty, and introduces several products and educational practices for preventing dishonesty in the online environment. To date, research into academic dishonesty in online courses has been somewhat limited. In 1998, Ridley and Husband studied student records at Christopher Newport University in an attempt to prove these three hypotheses: 1. Students who enroll in both online and traditional classroom courses will earn higher grades in online courses. 2. Students who enroll in on-line courses through two or more semesters will improve their performance over time.

When we speak to colleagues across campus and across the country, almost everyone who teaches online tells the same stories. An increasing number of students spend considerable energy seeking, finding, and negotiating loopholes in online course assignments. While this behavior is not new or shocking, the anonymous, self-driven nature of online classes may exacerbate the tendency (Kennedy et al. 2000). Rather than the exception, this behavior is becoming the rule. Social trends and changes in national education policy have combined with technology to influence today's students in ways that educators often do not understand. Some observers have called millennials (those born since 1980) the "helicopter generation, " referring to the way many parents hover above even their adult children, involving themselves in the day-to-day business of learning and even intervening on their behalf. Where past students were largely on their own when handling academic issues, today it is common for a parent to e-mail administrators and professors for explanations about a child's poor performance in class (White 2005). This sort of intervention often moves the focus away from the student's performance to a negotiation among multiple parties about grades. National education policy contributes to these trends with the recent emphasis on high-stakes testing in the K-12 public school environment (Goldberg 2005). High school teachers, in particular, complain about feeling