Whether you're new to online teaching or an "old pro," a frequent concern is whether the person submitting course work is actually the learner who enrolled in the course. As the number of distance education offerings increase, issues surrounding student identity grow as well. The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 is a comprehensive bill dealing with higher education costs, fraudulent issues in students' financial aid, and  institutional reporting responsibilities. A 2008 briefing paper from WCET (a division of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education) discussed concerns about student authentication in distance education and includes strategies that promote academic integrity in online courses. You may not be involved in discussions surrounding this bill and its impact at the institutional level, but most of you are or will start to feel the impact of its implementation. In the meantime, your practical concern is: "just who is submitting assignments and tests in my online course?"

There are many learning situations in which you want learners to collaborate, review their notes and other resources, and discuss issues freely. Those activities are the backbones of education, online or face-to-face; however, you must assess accurately how well individuals achieve mastery of learning outcomes in order to fairly assign grades. Those are the times when it is important that you are confident that the individual writing papers, completing assignments, discussing topics, and taking tests is the learner who enrolled in your course.

It really doesn't matter whether the overall tendency is toward more or less cheating. The problem is when your student cheats. In the following pages, we will explore some options for authenticating student identity and discouraging fraudulent activity.