Contract Cheating in Computer Science: A Case Study

Contract cheating has recently become much more prevalent and threatens to render higher education grades meaningless. Online contract cheating services are not only easily accessible hut, most importantly, highly affordable. We report on a case study investigating how students use one particular online tutoring company to purchase solutions to their computer science assignments. Taking the perspective of a typical student, we uploaded several assignment questions and solicited solutions, looking at factors such as quality and time taken to procure the answers, and the tutoring company's diligence in acting on clear violations of their own honor code. The results show that purchasing solutions for homework questions is both easy and cheap. Solutions for questions at CS1 and CS2 levels appear to be of good quality and are delivered within short time frames. Even though the questions had clear cues to indicate that the student was trying to buy answers for a current assessed activity, the questions were neither identified nor flagged as violations of academic integrity anywhere in the process. We discuss potential measures that might counter contract cheating and conclude that a multi-pronged approach may be necessary for effective mitigation.