Contract cheating by STEM students through a file sharing website: a Covid-19 pandemic perspective

International Journal for Educational Integrity - 2021
Thomas Lancaster1, Codrin Cotarlan1
1Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, UK

Tóm tắt

AbstractStudents 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 which it can be used. As this paper demonstrates, Chegg can and is used for contract cheating This is despite the apparent existence of an Honour Code on Chegg which asks students not to breach academic integrity. With pandemic led safety considerations leading to increased online teaching and assessment, the paper analyses data relating to how Chegg is used by students in five STEM subjects, namely Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics and Chemistry. The results show that students are using Chegg to request exam style questions. They demonstrate that contract cheating requests can be put live and answered within the short duration of an examination. The number of student requests posted for these five subjects increased by 196.25% comparing the time period April 2019 to August 2019 with the period April 2020 to August 2020. This increase corresponds with the time when many courses moved to be delivered and assessed online. The growing number of requests indicates that students are using Chegg for assessment and exam help frequently and in a way that is not considered permissible by universities. The paper concludes by recommending that academic institutions put interventions in place to minimise the risk to educational standards posed by sites such as Chegg, particularly since increased online teaching and assessment may continue after the pandemic.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

Ardid M, Gómez-Tejedor J, Meseguer-Dueñas J, Riera J, Vidaurre A (2015) Online exams for blended assessment. Study of different application methodologies. Comput Educ 81:296–303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.10.010

Bretag T, Harper R, Burton M, Ellis C, Newton P, Rozenberg P, van Haeringen K (2019) Contract cheating: a survey of Australian university students. Stud High Educ 44(11):1837–1856. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2018.1462788

Chegg (2020). Get 24/7 homework help. http://chegg.com/ Accessed 22 Nov 2020

Clark T, Callam C, Paul N, Stoltzfus M, Turner D (2020) Testing in the time of Covid-19: a sudden transition to unproctored online exams. J Chem Educ 97(9):3413–3417

Clarke R, Lancaster T (2006) Eliminating the successor to plagiarism? Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites. Proceedings of 2nd international plagiarism conference. Newcastle, United Kingdom

Cluskey G Jr, Ehlen C, Raiborn M (2011) Thwarting online exam cheating without proctor supervision. J Acad Business Ethics 4(1):1–7

Dixon Z, George K (2020) Monitoring uncharted communities of Crowdsourced plagiarism. J Acad Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-020-09381-2

Eaton S, Turner K (2020) Exploring academic integrity and mental health during COVID-19: rapid review. J Contemporary Educ Theory Res 4(2):35–41. https://zenodo.org/record/4256825#.X6gXr5NKhm8

Ellis C, Zucker I, Randall D (2018) The infernal business of contract cheating: understanding the business processes and models of academic custom writing sites. Int J Educ Integr 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-017-0024-3

Gelles, D. (2020). For online learning, business has never been better The New York Times June 12 2020

Grams M (2011a) Cramster: Friend or foe? Phys Teach 49(4):225–227. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.3566032

Grams M (2011b) The Cramster conclusion. Phys Teach 49(5):291–294. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.3578424

Course Hero (2020). Make every study hour count. http://coursehero.com/. Accessed 22 Nov 2020

ICAI (2020). ICAI IDOA student group panel kickoff “newscast”. Twenty Live in 20 -- Global Conversations about Contract Cheating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V-DDhYnksM. Accessed 22 Nov 2020

King C, Guyette R Jr, Piotrowski C (2009) Online exams and cheating: an empirical analysis of business students' views. J Educ Online 6(1):1–11

Lancaster T (2020a) Academic discipline integration by contract cheating services and essay mills. J Acad Ethics 18:115–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-019-09357-x

Lancaster T (2020b) Commercial contract cheating provision through micro-outsourcing web sites. Int J Educ Integrity 16(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-020-00053-7

Lancaster, T and Clarke, R (2014). An observational analysis of the range and extent of contract cheating from online courses found on agency websites. In: Proceedings of 2014 Eighth International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems (CISIS): 56–63. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/CISIS.2014.9

Lancaster, T and Clarke, R (2017) Rethinking assessment by examination in the age of contract cheating. In: Glendinning, I, Foltýnek, T, Rybička, J (eds) Proceedings of Plagiarism across Europe and Beyond 2017. Brno, Czechia: 215–228

Murdoch, K (2020). Twitter. https://twitter.com/CC___Raider/status/1296628611210866690. Accessed 22 Nov 2020

Nizam N, Gao S, Li M, Mohamed H, Wang G (2020) Scheme for cheating prevention in online exams during social distancing

OneClass (2020). Personalized courses, study materials and homework help. http://oneclass.com. Accessed 22 Nov 2020

Reddit (2020). PSA: Here’s the information Chegg will give an official investigation. https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/g1jiob/psa_heres_the_information_chegg_will_give_you. Accessed 22 Nov 2020

Rogerson A, Basanta G (2016) Peer-to-peer file sharing and academic integrity in the internet age. In: Bretag (ed) Handbook of Academic Integrity. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_55

Rogerson AM (2017) Detecting contract cheating in essay and report submissions: process, patterns, clues and conversations. Int J Educ Integr 13(1):10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-017-0021-6

Thinkswap (2020). Handpicked study resources for students. http://thinkswap.com/ Accessed 22 Nov 2020

Van de Sande, C (2011). How are students’ problems being solved? The quality of worked solutions on a popular open, online, mathematics, help forum, In: Spada, H, Stahl G, Miyake, N, Law, N (eds) Proceedings of International Conference of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL 2011). Hong Kong: 280–287

Wallace MJ, Newton PM (2014) Turnaround time and market capacity in contract cheating. Educ Stud 40(2):233–236, https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2014.889597

Yorke J, Sefcik L, Veeran-Colton T (2020) Contract cheating and blackmail: a risky business? Studies in Higher Education: 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1730313

Thông tin
Thông tin xuất bản

International Journal for Educational Integrity

Thông tin tác giả