Recent Australian media scandals suggest that university students are increasingly outsourcing their assessments to third parties-a behaviour known as 'contract cheating'. This paper reports on findings from a large survey of students from eight Australian universities (n=14,086) which sought to explore students' experiences with and attitudes towards contract cheating, and the contextual factors that may influence this behavior. A spectrum of seven outsourcing behaviours were investigated, and three significant variables were found to be associated with contract cheating: dissatisfaction with the teaching and learning environment, a perception that there are 'lots of opportunities to cheat', and speaking a Language Other than English (LOTE) at home. To minimise contract cheating, our evidence suggests that universities need to support the development of teaching and learning environments which nurture strong student-teacher relationships, reduce opportunities to cheat through curriculum and assessment design, and address the well-recognised language and learning needs of LOTE students.

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This paper argues that the role that assessment could play within a learning analytics strategy is both significant and, as yet, underdeveloped and underexplored. It proposes that assessment analytics has the potential to make a valuable contribution to the field of learning and academic analytics by both broadening its scope and increasing its usefulness. In doing so it considers issues of operationalization and then moves on to define what we might understand as assessment analytics. It then speculates as to why assessment analytics is underexplored and then evaluates some of the tools available for assessment data mining. This paper concludes by offering some ideas for beginning work in the area of assessment analytics but emphasises that this be driven by pedagogical rather than statistical or technical motives. This paper proposes that asking the question 'why assess?' is a productive point of departure for this process and outlines some initial suggestions as to how we might go about doing this in practice.

While there is growing awareness of the existence and activities of Academic Custom Writing websites, which form a small part of the contract cheating industry, how they work remains poorly understood. Very little research has been done on these sites, probably because it has been assumed that it is impossible to see behind their firewalls and password protection. We have found that, with some close scrutiny, it is indeed possible to find some 'cracks' in these sites through which we can look to gain insights into the business processes that operate within them. We have reverse engineered the business processes that operate within some of these sites. From this we have also been able to identify three different business models that are supported by these sites. Our analysis supports important findings about how these sites operate that can be used to inform future strategies to detect and deter contract cheating.

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This paper reports on one aspect of a nationally funded research project on contract cheating in Australian higher education. The project explored students' and educators' experiences of contract cheating, and the contextual factors that may influence it. This paper reports the key findings from non-university higher education providers (NUHEPs). It compares survey responses from 961 students and 91 educators at four NUHEPs with previously reported findings from eight universities (14,086 students and 1,147 staff). NUHEP and university students report engaging in contract cheating in similar ways. However, while NUHEP educators spend more time teaching academic literacies and discussing contract cheating, NUHEP students are 12 times more likely than university students to report use of a professional academic writing service. Both NUHEP and university educators require systematic professional development regarding the relationship between the teaching and learning environment and students' contract cheating behaviour. NUHEPs need to be cognisant of students' vulnerability to commercial contract cheating services, and ensure they have access to timely academic and social support.

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