When considering a paradigm shift in higher education, it is imperative to focus on removing obstacles against maintaining integrity in academia. One such obstacle is contract cheating sites that have mushroomed disproportionately during the 18 months of emergency distance learning threatening graduate quality and university reputations (McKie,…

As a result of the pandemic, many physics courses moved online. Alongside, the popularity of Internet-based problem-solving sites and forums rose. With the emergence of large language models, another shift occurred. One year into the public availability of these models, how has online help-seeking behavior among introductory physics students…

Drawing on a survey of over 4000 students and 1300 faculty members at the University of Maryland Global Campus, we find evidence for a reconceptualization of the use of commercialized websites offering access to "tutors" or "study help" as a type of collaborative cheating. Past studies have examined this behavior as an…

Students are using file sharing sites to breach academic integrity in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper analyses the use of one such site, Chegg, which offers "homework help" and other academic services to students. Chegg is often presented as a file sharing site in the academic literature, but that is just one of many ways in…

Academic integrity is important to universities and students must abide by codes of academic conduct around assessment. Students are, however, subject to multiple pressures around assessment, some of which can push them to cheat. Modern contract cheating websites are the fronts for sophisticated, commercial operations that offer individually…

Contract cheating occurs when a student outsources their assessment to a third party, regardless of the third party's relationship with the student, or whether money is exchanged. In higher education, there is a widespread belief that assessment design is a solution to the problem of contract cheating and that authentic assessment tasks are…

While there is growing awareness of the existence and activities of Academic Custom Writing websites, which form a small part of the contract cheating industry, how they work remains poorly understood. Very little research has been done on these sites, probably because it has been assumed that it is impossible to see behind their firewalls and…

Contract cheating sites advertise that they provide high quality, undetectable, bespoke work delivered in a timely manner to students purchasing their assignments. This paper tests contract cheating sites' promises about the products they sell. We built on previous reported research examining contract cheating sites' persuasive features which were…

A large body of research has indicated international students in the United States (U.S.) and abroad experience difficulties understanding what academic integrity is and how to avoid academic misconduct (Bista "To Improve The Academy," 30(1), 159-172 2011; Brown & Howell, 2001; Gullifer and Tyson "Studies in Higher…

The purpose of this article was to gain an understanding of the definitions of plagiarism, and cheating that are used in the literature, in institutions, and by students. The information was gathered from a literature review, from university and college websites, and from an informal sampling of students from five different first-year classes. The…

A casual comment by a student alerted the authors to the existence and prevalence of Internet-based paraphrasing tools. A subsequent quick Google search highlighted the broad range and availability of online paraphrasing tools which offer free 'services' to paraphrase large sections of text ranging from sentences, paragraphs, whole articles, book…

Contract cheating is currently a concern for universities and the higher education (HE) sector. It has been brought into the spotlight in recent years through the growth of online essay mills, where students can easily commission and purchase written assessment responses. This study contributes to the wider literature on academic integrity in HE…

In this ethnographic study, I will show that students at Czech university departments employ copying strategies as part of the dominant educational practices centred on the "replication" of authoritative knowledge. In the teaching/learning situations that we observed, teachers "transmit" knowledge to students, who are expected…

Contract cheating is the process whereby students auction off the opportunity for others to complete assignments for them. It is an apparently widespread yet under-researched problem. One suggested strategy to prevent contract cheating is to shorten the turnaround time between the release of assignment details and the submission date, thus making…

This paper is a case study of the genesis, operation and, in particular, the educational effects of a participatory website established and run by students of one of the largest universities in the Czech Republic, the purpose of which is to enable students to share study materials, essays and evaluations of staff and courses. We study the rise of…