TEQSA has worked with Australia’s leading academic integrity experts to develop a self-directed masterclass that can be done at your own pace to assist Australian higher education institutions in strengthening staff skills to detect and deter commercial academic cheating, also known as contract cheating.
The 8 online modules and accompanying situational judgment test will build participants’ baseline knowledge about academic integrity issues and available techniques and practices for deterring and detecting contract cheating.
Face-to-face workshops will be held around the country for participants who have completed the course. This will enable participants to further explore the topics and exchange knowledge and best practice with peers from across the sector.
This Masterclass builds on TEQSA’s partnership approach with the sector to address the integrity risk posed by commercial academic cheating and adds to their suite of co-developed resources such as the Academic Integrity Toolkit.
Academic integrity issues continue to be a core compliance focus for TEQSA in 2023. In addition to the development of this training to support institutions, they are also continuing to take action against illegal cheating websites, with a further round of enforcement action imminent against websites that advertise cheating services to students that study at an Australian higher education institution.
Analysis of website traffic shows TEQSA’s work to disrupt illegal cheating websites is effective, with Australian traffic to academic cheating websites down 50 per cent in semester 2 (September-November) 2022 compared to the same time in 2021.
TEQSA acknowledges the project team, co-lead by Professor Cath Ellis (UNSW) and Mr Kane Murdoch (Macquarie University), for their work with TEQSA in developing this Masterclass.
Details on how to enrol and the workshop dates are available at teqsa.gov.au/detectionmasterclass
