This paper provides a systematic and critical review of the existing literature on the phenomenon of 'commercial contract cheating' (CCC). Unlike some existing systematic reviews generally on CCC, this paper focuses on the potential causes and suggested preventative measures specifically, intending to develop effective interventions on the basis…

Due to COVID-19, universities with limited expertise with the digital environment had to rapidly transition to online teaching and assessment. This transition did not create a new problem but has offered more opportunities for contract cheating and diversified the types of such services. While universities and lecturers were adjusting to the new…

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…

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…

Purpose: The goal of this session is to provide an in-depth account of the history and development of contract cheating in Canada over the past 50+ years. You will also learn about the one and only (failed) attempt at legislation to make ghostwritten essays and exams illegal in Canada. Method: The content of this session is drawn from Eaton's book…

Contract cheating, or students outsourcing their assignments to be completed by others, has emerged as a significant threat to academic integrity in higher education institutions around the world. During the COVID-19, when traditional face-to-face instruction became unsustainable, the number of contract cheating students increased dramatically.…

The use of essay mills and other online sites to buy academic work is a global industry estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The practice is known as "contract cheating" (Clarke & Lancaster, 2006), and it occurs when a student engages with a third party to complete academic work on their behalf. Canada lags behind…

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…

Recent Australian media scandals suggest that university students are increasingly outsourcing their assessments to third parties -- a behaviour known as 'contract cheating'. This paper reports on findings from a large survey of students from eight Australian universities (n = 14,086) which sought to explore students' experiences with and…