Towards an Holistic Framework to Mitigate and Detect Contract Cheating within an Academic Institute—A Proposal

Abstract

There has been a growing number of contract cheating incidents recorded in Australia’s higher education system. Such activities create a significant threat to the validity and integrity of qualifications obtained by students. This paper introduces a conceptual framework to combat contract cheating by compiling the findings on domain analysis, institute-wide policy analysis, and by applying self-efficacy theories. The literature review on domain analysis lays out two state-of-the-art strategies to combat contract cheating: detect and mitigate the opportunities. Policy document analysis sheds some light on existing operating mechanisms for handling contract cheating cases and the gaps need to be addressed. The proposed framework has three tiers: Awareness, Monitoring and Evaluation. At the awareness level, students’ awareness concerning contract cheating is enhanced by several activities, and staff skills are strengthened by professional activities. At the monitoring level, student activities associated with assessments are recorded using a Pre-Designed Template (PDT) and are monitored by analysing the data in three databases; Monitoring database, Academic Integrity breach database, software analysis data. At the evaluation level, the institutional policies, procedures and services related to contract cheating are evaluated and revised on a regular basis, using feedback mechanisms. This holistic approach may discourage contract cheating by increasing the awareness among students, developing professional skills of staff and organising continuous course-wide student monitoring using various databases. Finally, the proposed approach fills the gaps in the existing system by utilising a systematic process to evaluate an institute’s policies, procedures and services.