Academic misconduct stemming from file-sharing websites is an increasingly prevalent challenge in tertiary education, including information technology and engineering disciplines. Current plagiarism detection methods (e.g., text matching) are largely ineffective for combatting misconduct in programming and mathematics-based assessments. For these…

Increasing pressure is being placed on governments and legislators in different countries to take action against assignment outsourcing in higher education. Global discussions focus on prohibiting commercial outsourcing providers, such as contract cheating services. Despite evidence to suggest that outsourcing behaviours by students are…

Cheating in higher education has numerous negative implications, including degrading program reputations, inflating student retention rates, and cultivating poor ethical practices, all of which have implications for what students do in the workplace after graduation. Therefore, by understanding the current student population, Generation Z, it is…

One of the main goals of assignments in the academic environment is to assess the students' knowledge and mastery of a specific topic, and it is crucial to ensure that the work is original and has been solely made by the students to assess their competence acquisition. Therefore, Text-Matching Software Products (TMSPs) are used by academic…

Many instructional methods that focus on analytical, skill, and competency development have a single or small set of appropriate answers. Best-answer assignments are popular for largeenrollment classes because of the relative ease with which scoring and feedback can be managed at scale. However, cheating is regularly confirmed at disturbingly high…

The extent and reach of commercial cheating opportunities is ever present; thousands of websites promote differing business models offering assignments in multiple languages and currencies. In addition to commercial companies, students are known to outsource their assignments from friends and family. Assignment outsourcing and contract cheating…

This study examines the phenomenon of plagiarism and impersonation in online course assignments. Technological advancements, coupled with lower costs and accessibility, have made online courses and programs a practical option for higher education students. Unfortunately, the increasing online enrollment and advancing technology have allowed an…

Although classroom cheating violates academic standards of behavior, it occurs frequently. Although the research on cheating is extensive, few researchers have interviewed students directly involved in cheating behaviors. We explore interview responses gathered from a cohort of graduate accounting students, some of whom colluded on an assignment,…

Assignment outsourcing is an intractable challenge for higher education. While various academic and legislative approaches have sought to explain/respond to this problem, recent media, community, and government concerns suggest students are increasingly outsourcing assessments. This paper reports on the qualitative findings of an international…

This paper considers characteristic views advanced in the past fifteen years that may be considered relatively sympathetic to student practices of cheating on graded assignments or exams. We detect and analyze typical fallacies that are recurrent in articles that promote a revisionist view of cheating as morally permissible. We offer a general,…

Undergraduate first-year courses are often mandatory for students in a variety of majors and degrees. Many students view these core courses as of little interest and relevance, which is associated with lack of motivation for study and can lead to cheating. Contract cheating in text-based is difficult to detect and prove. Contract cheating in…

As they navigate academic life, students must decide whether the acts of copying they encounter constitute plagiarism, and whether those acts are wrong. The present study investigated students' perceptions, evaluations, and reasoning about copying. In interviews about hypothetical scenarios involving copying, undergraduates (N = 60) reported…

Contract cheating -- outsourcing student assignments for a fee -- presents a growing threat to the integrity of higher education. As contract cheating is based on students purchasing assignments that are original (albeit not created by the student), traditional plagiarism detection tools remain insufficient to detect contract cheating. Part of the…

Contract cheating providers exist as businesses with a single shared intention, to profit on a student's inability to fulfil academic requirements for themselves. For contract cheating providers to make money, the correct market conditions are required. First, providers need to be able to offer the expertise that students request. Second, students…

This article contributes to an emerging body of research on the role of assessment design in the prevention and detection of contract cheating. Drawing on the largest contract cheating dataset gathered to date (see cheatingandassessment.edu.au), this article examines the types of assignments and exams in which students self-reported having engaged…