As the number of online courses being offered at universities has increased dramatically over the last few decades, many questions have arisen dealing with the issue of academic cheating. Studies have shown that students and faculty continue to perceive that cheating occurs more frequently in the online environment because of technological advances, however, studies that compare actual cheating behaviors in these two environments are less conclusive. Given these contrasting views, this paper adds to the literature by looking at how student attitudes or beliefs about the acceptability of cheating behaviors in different environments relates to the frequency of cheating. Using survey data from 328 undergraduate students at a small suburban college in the United States, this paper finds that the perceived level of seriousness of various cheating behaviors differs between the physical and online environment. Out of fifteen comparable behaviors, one cheating behavior was perceived to be more serious in the physical environment and six behaviors were perceived to be more serious in the online environment. Findings from this study also confirmed that students with online experience tend to rank cheating behaviors in the online environment as more serious than those students without experience taking online courses. When looking at the actual frequency of cheating behaviors, results also suggest that students who rank behaviors as more unacceptable, tend to self-report those behaviors less often in both environments. Finally, with the release of the virtual assistant ChatGPT from OpenAI, many educators have expressed concern over the potential consequences for education. By including this type of cheating behavior in the analysis, this study provides a first look at how students perceive the seriousness of using AI for homework assignments and writing papers. Descriptive data reveals that about half the students in this survey do not consider AI usage for homework to be a serious form of cheating and about 35 percent do not consider it to be a serious cheating behavior for writing assignments. In terms of frequency, about 52 percent of students reported using AI for homework at least once in the physical classroom and 58 percent reported this behavior at least once for the online environment. About 28 percent of students report using AI technology at least once for writing a paper in the physical environment and 33 percent self-report this behavior in the online environment.

Keywords: Education, Online Cheating, Traditional Face-to-Face Cheating, Academic Dishonesty, Artificial Intelligence.