Abstract
The Reddit platform offers users access to more than two million discussion forums as of 2021, each known as subreddits. The subreddits include discussions aimed at university staff and at students. The role of question-and-answer subreddits in an academic integrity setting has not been explored within the research literature, but their availability potentially provides students with the ability to commit academic misconduct.
This chapter considers how Reddit is being used by students to access contract cheating providers who are offering students unauthorised help with homework questions. The wide range of questions being asked are considered. Many homework style questions on Reddit are seen to have a mathematical base to them. An analysis of 141,136 homework help requests shows peak requests to match typical student deadlines with a spike in requests matching the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The chapter concludes by noting that other question-and-answer sites exist and are being misused by students. The chapter recommends further exploration and the use of machine learning techniques to aid in large scale data processing in the academic integrity field. A warning is also provided to be passed on to students about the risks associated with contract cheating using question-and-answer sites, including the scams in operation and the chance of being detected.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Amigud, A., & Dawson, P. (2020). The law and the outlaw: Is legal prohibition a viable solution to the contract cheating problem? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education., 45(1), 98–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1612851
Amigud, A., & Lancaster, T. (2019). 246 reasons to cheat: An analysis of students’ reasons for seeking to outsource academic work. Computers & Education, 134, 98–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.01.017
Amigud, A., & Lancaster, T. (2020). I will pay someone to do my assignment: An analysis of market demand for contract cheating services on twitter. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45(4), 541–553. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1670780
Barnes, E. (1904). Student honor: A study in cheating. The International Journal of Ethics, 14, 481–488.
Bretag, T., Harper, R., Burton, M., Ellis, C., Newton, P., Rozenberg, P., Saddiqui, S., & van Haeringen, K. (2019). Contract cheating: A survey of Australian university students. Studies in Higher Education, 44, 1837–1856. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2018.1462788
Carmichael, J., & Weiss, M. (2019). Digital warfare: Machine learning and contract cheating. In, ISPIM conference proceedings, the International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM). 1–19.
Clarke, R., & Lancaster, T. (2006, June 19–21). Eliminating the successor to plagiarism? Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites. Proceedings of 2nd international plagiarism conference, Newcastle. United Kingdom.
Clarke, R., & Lancaster, T. (2007, July 26–27). Establishing a systematic six-stage process for detecting contract cheating. Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on pervasive computing and applications (pp. 342–347). Birmingham. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPCA.2007.4365466.
Crown, D., & Spiller, M. (1998). Learning from the literature on collegiate cheating: A review of empirical research. Journal of Business Ethics, 17, 683–700.
Dawson, P., Sutherland-Smith, W., & Ricksen, M. (2020). Can software improve marker accuracy at detecting contract cheating? A pilot study of the Turnitin authorship investigate alpha. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45, 473–482. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1662884
Draper, M., & Newton, P. (2017). A legal approach to tackling contract cheating? International Journal for Educational Integrity, 13(11). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-017-0022-5
Draper, M., Lancaster, T., Dann, S., Crockett, R., & Glendinning, I. (2021). Essay mills and other contract cheating services: To buy or not to buy and the consequences of students changing their minds. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 17(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-021-00081-x
Ison, D. (2020). Detection of online contract cheating through stylometry: A pilot study. Online Learning, 24. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i2.2096
Johnson, C., & Davies, R. (2020). Using digital forensic techniques to identify contract cheating: A case study. Journal of Academic Ethics, 18, 105–113. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-019-09358-w
Jordan, A. (2001). College student cheating: The role of motivation, perceived norms, attitudes, and knowledge of institutional policy. Ethics & Behavior, 11, 233–247. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327019EB1103_3
Kauffman, Y., & Young, M. (2015). Digital plagiarism: An experimental study of the effect of instructional goals and copy-and-paste affordance. Computers & Education, 83, 44–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.12.016
Kremmer, M., Brimble, M., & Stevenson-Clarke, P. (2007). Investigating the probability of student cheating: The relevance of student characteristics, assessment items, perceptions of prevalence and history of engagement. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.21913/IJEI.v3i2.162
Lancaster, T. (2019a). Profiling the international academic ghost writers who are providing low-cost essays and assignments for the contract cheating industry. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society., 17(1), 72–86. https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-04-2018-0040
Lancaster, T. (2019b). Social media enabled contract cheating. Canadian Perspectives on Academic Integrity, 2, 7–24. https://doi.org/10.11575/cpai.v2i2.68053
Lancaster, T., & Clarke, R. (2016). Contract cheating: The outsourcing of assessed student work. In T. Bretag (Ed.), Handbook of academic integrity (pp. 639–654). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_17
Lancaster, T., & Cotarlan, C. (2021). Contract cheating by STEM students through a file sharing website: A Covid-19 pandemic perspective. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 17(3). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-021-00070-0
Lancaster, T., & Gupta, R. (2021a, June 9–11). Contract cheating and unauthorised homework assistance through Reddit communities [conference presentation]. European Conference on Academic Integrity and Plagiarism 2021. https://academicintegrity.eu/conference/
Lancaster, T., & Gupta, R. (2021b, January 28). Who’s scamming who? Exploring the dark side of the contract cheating marketplace on Reddit [conference presentation]. Advance HE STEM Conference 2021. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/programmes-events/conferences/stem-conference-2021
Newstead, S., Franklyn-Stokes, A., & Armstead, P. (1996). Individual differences in student cheating. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(2), 229–241. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.88.2.229
Newton, P. (2018). How common is commercial contract cheating in higher education and is it increasing? A systematic review. Frontiers in Education, 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2018.00067
Rogerson, A. (2017). Detecting contract cheating in essay and report submissions: Process, patterns, clues and conversations. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 13(10). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-017-0021-6
Rogerson, A., & Basanta, G. (2016). Peer-to-peer file sharing and academic integrity in the internet age. In T. Bretag (Ed.), Handbook of academic integrity (pp. 273–285). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_55
Seeland, J., Stoesz, B., & Vogt, L. (2020). Preventing online shopping for completed assessments: Protecting students by blocking access to contract cheating websites on institutional networks. Canadian Perspectives on Academic Integrity, 3, 55–69. https://doi.org/10.11575/cpai.v3i1.70256
Stott, L. (1976). Integrity in public education. The Journal of Educational Thought (JET)/Revue de la Pensée Educative. 132–141. https://doi.org/10.11575/jet.v10i2.43865.
Sutherland-Smith, W., & Dullaghan, K. (2019). You don’t always get what you pay for: User experiences of engaging with contract cheating sites. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44, 1148–1162. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1576028
Thompson, K. (2014). “No one cares, apostolate” what social cheating reveals. Games and Culture, 9(6), 491–502. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412014552521
Yorke, J., Sefcik, L., & Veeran-Colton, T. (2020). Contract cheating and blackmail: A risky business? Studies in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1730313
Acknowledgements
The student partner’s contribution to this research was supported by the Imperial College London Department of Computing’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lancaster, T., Gupta, R. (2022). The Role of Reddit Communities in Enabling Contract Cheating. In: Bjelobaba, S., Foltýnek, T., Glendinning, I., Krásničan, V., Dlabolová, D.H. (eds) Academic Integrity: Broadening Practices, Technologies, and the Role of Students. Ethics and Integrity in Educational Contexts, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16976-2_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16976-2_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-16975-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16976-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)