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Contract cheating is concerning educational institutions across the globe. Current knowledge of student perspectives on contract cheating is primarily informed by student surveys. Little is known about the student experience of being suspected of contract cheating and going through a formal university process. This study reports the findings of a qualitative study at an Australian university with student participants who had faced contract cheating allegations, using semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Five key themes emerged: 1) the most challenging experience of the student's life; 2) not telling their family about the allegation and managing any financial impact themselves; 3) stress and hypervigilance around future assignment submission; 4) rumours and reputational damage including changed relationships with academics and peers; and, 5) staying on track and guiding other students to practice academic integrity. Participants perceived the formal university process as a legal one, which contributed to it being a stressful and challenging experience. This was regardless of whether they had contract cheated or not. Recommendations for academic and support staff centre around ensuring formal university contract cheating processes are primarily a learning experience, from which students can emerge and progress to complete their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract cheating happens when students outsource their assessed work to a third party. One approach that has been suggested for improving contract cheating detection is comparing students' assignment submissions with their previous work, the rationale being that changes in style may indicate a piece of work has been written by somebody else. This approach is time consuming, but recent advances in machine learning and natural language processing suggest that it may be well suited to computerization. We trialed an early alpha version of Turnitin's Authorship Investigate tool, which compares students' submissions against their previous work. Twenty-four experienced markers from five units of study were asked to make decisions about the presence of contract cheating in bundles of 20 student assignments, which included 14 legitimate assignments and six purchased from contract cheating sites. We asked markers to determine if each assignment was contract cheating, then provided them with an Authorship Investigate report and let them change their decision. Marker accuracy at detecting contract cheating increased significantly, from 48% to 59% after using the report, with no significant difference in false positives. These findings suggest that software may be an effective component of institutional strategies to address contract cheating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract cheating occurs when students outsource assessed work. In this study, we asked experienced markers from four disciplines to detect contract cheating in a set of 20 discipline-specific assignments. We then conducted a training workshop to improve their detection accuracy, and afterwards asked them to detect contract cheating in 20 new assignments. We analysed the data in terms of sensitivity (the rate at which markers spotted contract cheating) and specificity (the rate at which markers spotted real student work). Pre-workshop marker sensitivity was 58% and specificity was 83%. Post-workshop marker sensitivity was 82% and specificity was 87%. The increase in sensitivity was statistically significant, but the increase in specificity was not. These results indicate that markers can often detect contract cheating when asked to do so, and that training may be helpful in improving their accuracy. We suggest that markers' suspicions may be crucial in addressing contract cheating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract cheating is the purchasing of custom-made university assignments with the intention of submitting them. Websites providing contract cheating services often claim this form of cheating is undetectable, and no published research has examined this claim. This paper documents a pilot study where markers were paid to mark a mixture of real student work and contract cheating assignments, to establish their accuracy at detecting contract cheating. Seven experienced markers individually blind marked the same bundle of 20 second-year psychology assignments, which included 6 that were purchased from contract cheating websites. Sensitivity analyses showed markers detected contract cheating 62% of the time. Specificity analyses showed markers correctly identified real student work 96% of the time. Our results contrast with contract cheating sites’ claims that contract cheating is undetectable. However, they should be taken with caution as they are from one course unit in one discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]