VIRTUAL: Applying Education

Abstract

With the transition to online, and hybrid modes of teaching, certain problems have come to light, one of them being cheating and academic dishonesty. Around the world, post-pandemic, students are increasingly relying on outsourcing their assignments to third parties to do their graded assignments, a phenomenon known as ‘contract cheating’. Faculty and staff are at the forefront, dealing with, and preventing this practice as well as raising awareness about this new form of cheating and academic dishonesty. Using exploratory sequential mixed methods design, our study strove to explore faculty members’ perceptions of contract cheating juxtaposing it against critical theory as well as theory of social responsibility. Thematic analysis indicated that though incensed at students attempt at contract cheating, faculty members perceived their ultimate social responsibility towards their students is to mentor and help them learn as opposed to blowing the whistle on them. Findings also indicated that faculty members indicated that they perceived there was a lack of support from higher administration in terms of reporting. Several implications at various levels were provided by the participants and the authors on way to minimize this form of academic dishonesty.