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Internet-based plagiarism detection service provider Turnitin is helping private education organisation NextEd to combat actual and potential academic misconduct including the detection of AI writing tools like ChatGPT—across a cohort of 15,000 domestic and international students. Since implementing Turnitin, NextEd has seen a noticeable increase in levels of understanding of academic integrity, improvements in researching and referencing, a rise in literacy skills, and a dramatic reduction in cases of plagiarism—from 140 to less than 20 cases per year, a drop of more than 85%.

TEQSA’s Higher Education Integrity Unit has updated a database of 2,333 suspected commercial academic cheating service websites, including 579 sites specifically targeting students at Australian Higher Education institutions. This intelligence sharing will enable providers to block access to these websites from their institutional networks and is part of TEQSA’s ongoing partnership with the Higher Education sector to strengthen cultures of academic integrity.

A report from Calcutta High Court shows how the West Bengal Central School Service Commission (WBSSC) allegedly misused the Right to Information (RTI) Act to facilitate illegal recruitment. The chairman of the WBSSC had instructed the chairpersons of the five regional commissions to scan and store their signatures on the WBSSC’s application server. These were used as illegal digital signatures for over 500 fake recommendation letters, allegedly hand-delivered to undeserving candidates.

According to the “Cyber Threats Targeting the Global Education Sector” report, there has been a 20 per cent increase in cyber threats to the global education sector in the first three months of 2022. 58% of threats were targeted at Indian- based educational institutions and online platforms. The USA was the second most affected country globally with 19 recorded incidents. The databases leaked from educational institutions contain personally identifiable information of students and their families, website user records and credentials and examination results.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made teaching and organizing online examinations a difficult task in Vietnamese universities. Examiners had to introduce various methods to deal with the increase in cheating. Students are required to attend an examination on the university's systems with supervision via Zoom and have their papers recognized if they are physically present throughout the examination. If cheating is discovered, teachers have the right to suspend students.

Following the rapid transition to digital delivery that many institutions have had to navigate, there has been an increase in online services that help students cheat. A simple Google search for the term ‘assignment help’ returned 279 million results in mid-June 2020 and 302 million in early 2021. In Australia to help combat the problem, the Government has passed a law that makes it an offence to provide or advertise academic cheating services in higher education and published an academic integrity toolkit.

Following the Covid-19 confinements, there were multiple reports of misconduct in online assessments: plagiarism, use of notes, an online file-sharing service, mobile phones, or collaboration with other students. Five of the eight New Zealand universities recorded an increase in cheating in 2020 compared to 2019: 258% at the University of Canterbury, 104% at the University of Lincoln, 61% at the University of Waikato, 21% at the University of Victoria and 10% at Massey University.

The Taiwanese startup, TuringChain offers educational institutions, students, and enterprises a new way of certification and authentication with the blockchain-powered solution TuringCerts. According to its CEO, a quarter of all data on LinkedIn is fake or exaggerated, while 27% of degrees can be bought online. TuringCerts’ creates an anti-counterfeit e-portfolio for students, and educational institutions receive a digital cache, which they can use to issue certificates.TuringCerts uses Smart Identification and protects digital certificates from manipulation.

Over 90 medical students from Inha University in Incheon, west of Seoul, were found to have cheated during remote exams. They gathered at a specific location in a group of two to nine to take tests together or to compare their answers via telephone or social media platforms. To prevent its recurrence, the university demands students to submit an oath of academic honesty, use an online proctor system, and videotape themselves taking the tests. Those who are suspected of cheating could be required to take a verbal test.

Officials of a local education center and 200 Macau residents are accused of fraud, document forgery, and computer forgery. The Anti-Corruption Commission reported that residents enrolled in courses subsidized by the Education and Youth Bureau never attended the courses, simply providing their personal identification data to the education center and receiving, in exchange, 2,000 to 2,500 MOPs in cash.