Diversity of Students' Unethical Behaviors in Online Learning Amid COVID-19 Pandemic: An Exploratory Analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic and the proliferation of online learning have made preventing unethical behaviors an additional task for many teachers. This article investigates the specificity of unethical behavior in online learning and formulates proposals for actions to eliminate this phenomenon. The authors assume that the Internet, as a tool for finding information and communication, enables students to engage in unethical behavior, especially at the stage of assessing the acquired knowledge. The article presents a spectrum of unethical behaviors in online learning carried out via electronic media. The historical perspective of the development of online education in connection with the development of the Internet is presented. The research was carried out using the method of a designed survey among full-time and part-time undergraduate and graduate students of selected universities in northern Poland. A set of ten most common unethical behaviors is determined, then the frequency of their occurrence is examined, and the relationships between them are defined. The article ends with the classification of students' unethical behaviors in online learning, proposed on the basis of the conducted research.