Executive summary: no.
Thanks to Terry Anderson for alerting me to Ison's interesting and informative paper, which suggests there is no significant difference between levels of plagiarism in doctoral dissertations/theses whether students are online or not. There are slightly different distributions - notably, students at physical institutions appear to be somewhat more prone to severe cases of plagiarism. I'd hazard a guess that this small variation has more to do with the demographic differences between online and face-to-face doctoral students rather than anything directly to do with modality. Distance learners tend to be a little older and a little more intrinsically motivated, on average, than their physically collocated counterparts.
While it is, on the face of it, disturbing that more than half of the examined dissertations at a doctoral level (where most studies have shown that by far the least amount of cheating is normally to be found) appeared to have some level of plagiarism, the results should be treated with a generous pinch of salt. A lot of this revolves around:
Whether or not the results are reliable at an individual or overall scale, the relative proportions are what is interesting here. The fact that there is little difference between levels of plagiarism for online and face to face learners is both unsurprising and heartening.
Bookmarks are a great way to share web pages you have found with others (including those on this site) and to comment on them and discuss them.
We welcome comments on public posts from members of the public. Please note, however, that all comments made on public posts must be moderated by their owners before they become visible on the site. The owner of the post (and no one else) has to do that.
If you want the full range of features and you have a login ID, log in using the links at the top of the page or at https://landing.athabascau.ca/login (logins are secure and encrypted)
Posts made here are the responsibility of their owners and may not reflect the views of Athabasca University.
We block sites that track your web browsing without your permission. If a link is greyed out, click once to enable sharing, once more to share.