Contract cheating is where a student commissions or seeks to commission another party - either paid or unpaid - that is offering its services to produce academic work on the student's behalf. These days, there are many online contract cheating sites that try to attract students to behave dishonestly.
Contract cheating may occur when a student seeks help with their assessment tasks through:
- an online company specialising in producing work for a fee for students
- an un-authorised editing service advertised via social media or on campus
- another student or non-student who has offered to help
The work commissioned is most commonly in the form of essays or reports, but can also include all kinds of assessment work, including those involving lab-work, computer code or any other technical subject material.
All work submitted for assessment must be your own work. Any outsourced work submitted for assessment, whether paid or unpaid, is considered contract cheating.
Avoiding Contract Cheating
Avoiding contract cheating begins and ends with your honest approach to your learning experience and your own work on assessment tasks.
Be careful about being drawn into websites that claim to be in support of student learning but are actually providing students with an unfair advantage.
Consequences of Contract Cheating
Contract cheating is one of the most serious forms of academic misconduct. A student found to have outsourced their work may not only receive a fail for the assessment task, but may be suspended from their studies or even expelled from the University.