This paper explores contract cheating from the perspectives of researchers at three post-secondary institutions in Alberta, Canada, describing their efforts to develop and advance awareness of, interventions against, and responses to contract cheating at their respective institutions. Contract cheating is when a third party produces or completes academic work for a student, and the student then presents the work as their own. The student might have personal connections to the third party, or the student might pay a fee and outsource (...) the academic work to the third party. All three institutions are experiencing an increase in the incidence of contract cheating, which is consistent with trends at colleges and universities across Canada and the world. Contract cheating is not a new phenomenon, but it is a growing one, due in part to students having access to thousands of online companies offering to help them with their academic work. This paper examines personal narratives from four researchers and identifies five key themes: types of contract cheating, students, awareness, evidence and policy implications, and educational development. (shrink)

This article presents results from a self-report survey of misconduct behaviours and the stress students (n = 916) experienced at one Canadian community college. Results showed that students engaged in a variety of contract cheating behaviours, and experienced a myriad of stressors both in and outside the college context, including traumatic life events. Those who engaged in commercial contract cheating and inappropriate sharing behaviours experienced significantly higher levels of stress. This result differed by type of stress suggesting that not all (...) stress may lead to violation behaviour. Results also suggest that some students are exposed to more stress than others, which could put them at higher risk for engaging in contract cheating. Understanding contract cheating using the stress process framework draws our attention to how a student’s location in the social institutions of work, family, and school, how their positions of advantage or disadvantage, and their involvement in social relationships may produce stress which we have found to be associated with contract cheating. Seeing stress in this way allows post-secondary institutions to address the structural conditions which lead to stress through the development of policy, procedure, and supports for students as they navigate academic integrity throughout their programs. (shrink)

Student stress and mental health continue to be a concern for higher education institutions following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting campus closures and emergency remote teaching. Research has shown that elevated stress levels negatively impact student mental health and academic performance. Community colleges providing 8-to-24-month certificate and diploma programs, accessible through a variety of delivery modalities, attract a diverse student body with complex stress experiences. The stressors students experience in their everyday lives can also be critical motivators (...) for engaging in academic misconduct.Reducing stress to support mental health and academic integrity requires critically assessing the fabric of our organizations. In this chapter, we argue that the structure of community colleges may heighten student and instructor stress and pose significant barriers to creating supportive academic integrity communities. We propose that locating academic misconduct within the theoretical model of the stress process shifts attention from stress as an individual problem to how student stress can be understood in the context of the structural environment. The chapter concludes with recommendations for how community colleges may address stress and mental health using the 4M framework and apply principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with consideration of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) toward creating healthy, supportive, and ethical spaces for learning. (shrink)