Understanding how and why students use academic file-sharing and homework-help websites: implications for academic integrity

ABSTRACT

In the past decade, extra-institutional file-sharing and homework-help websites have gone from being small-scale operations to large corporate businesses. File-sharing and homework-help websites threaten academic integrity when students use assessment work sourced from these sites as if it were their own. However, little is known about how students use these websites, what motivates students’ use, and whether students are aware of the risks of using these sites. In an international survey of 1000 students, nearly half had heard of, or used, file-sharing and homework-help websites, and 377 completed a longer follow-up survey. We also undertook qualitative analysis of social media posts related to file-sharing and homework-help websites. Students indicate that they used the websites to obtain material to study for and/or complete assessments, and they exchanged assessment and study materials for altruistic reasons as well as for personal benefit. Students were mostly aware of academic integrity risks in using the websites but were typically unaware of their own institutions’ position or policies regarding the use of these sites. It is recommended that higher education institutions develop policies and educate students regarding unaffiliated file-sharing and homework-help websites to promote academic integrity.

KEYWORDS:

• File-sharing
• homework-help
• academic integrity
• higher education
• informal learning

Introduction

Contract cheating is the outsourcing of students’ educational assessment work, which they should personally complete, to third parties, often for payment (Bretag et al., 2019; Curtis et al., 2022a). Research into contract cheating has examined students’ use of ghostwriters, who complete bespoke assignments on demand (e.g., Clarke & Lancaster, 2006; Eaton et al., 2022; Newton, 2018). Yet Curtis et al. (2022c) found that it is more common for students to download, lightly edit, and then submit assessments written by other students that they obtain from file-sharing websites. Other recent research showed a nearly 200% increase in internet traffic to a homework-help website within the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic (Lancaster & Cotarian, 2021). Yet, with rare exceptions (e.g., Rogerson, 2022, 2023), little attention has been paid to students’ use of file-sharing and homework-help websites, and the potential impact on academic integrity.

This paper reports on a research project that investigated how students use file-sharing and homework-help online services, and their motivation in undertaking these transactional practices. On these platforms, we know that students share examples of examination preparation notes and even completed assessment tasks, and use the ‘tutoring’ and ‘homework help’ functions to rapidly source solutions to assessments in progress, e.g., unproctored online quizzes (Rogerson, 2023; Rogerson & Basanta, 2016). Nonetheless, as the following review of the current literature reveals, there are numerous gaps in our knowledge of how students interact with and think about these services.

The ‘Buy, sell, trade’ business model

In general, academic file-sharing websites operate by allowing students to upload materials such as their notes and assessment items (essays, reports, tests), and, in return, they receive ‘unlocks’ that allow them to download a lesser number of files than they have uploaded (Eaton, 2021; Rogerson & Basanta, 2016). Alternatively, students can pay a subscription fee to access (or unlock) a certain number of items in the period of their subscription. Homework-help websites allow students to post questions and receive answers, and they may also provide access to answers that have already been provided to other students (Lancaster & Cotarian, 2021). Some websites provide both file-sharing and homework-help functions, while others just provide one. Thus, depending on the website, students may pay and/or upload materials to download files and/or get answers to questions.

The business model of file-sharing and homework-help websites is such that they can be used both legitimately as a study aid by students or potentially to cheat on higher education assessments (Eaton, 2021; Rogerson, 2022). Recent evidence suggests that over 1 in 10 Australian students submit work that was principally written by other students, which they obtained from file-sharing websites (Curtis et al., 2022c). In addition, the ability to rapidly get ‘expert’ answers to questions allows students to obtain third party written solutions to assessment items and submit these under their own name. Concerns about such use and promotion of homework-help websites were recently articulated by the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency in Australia because such actions would breach new laws against providing cheating services (Ross, 2023).

Literature review

Although the research on contract cheating per se has grown substantially in recent years (Lancaster, 2022), there is much less research about file-sharing and homework-help websites. In 2016, Rogerson and Basanta recognised the growing use of file-sharing websites amongst students and the ethical ambiguity that existed in deciding what practices are legitimate. They noted that these websites are popular with students because they are often free to use, or low cost, easy to access, and perceived as time-savers and grade-improvers, with little chance of illegitimate use being caught by institutions. They also noted legal implications of how the websites operate e.g., potentially breaching copyright, intellectual property, and institutional policies. There is acute concern that academic file-sharing sites are being used to swap material created and/or owned by students’ teachers and institutions (Rogerson, 2022).

Some researchers have gauged students’ use by looking at internet usage data. One study tracked document usage on the file-sharing site CourseHero.com and noted an increase in documents added to that site over the 90-day course of their study (Dixon & George, 2021). Lancaster and Cotarian (2021), focused on services (e.g., homework solutions, textbook answers, and exam questions) provided by the website Chegg.com, and its ‘experts’ who answer questions posted by engineering and science students. over a one-year period. Results indicated that multiple assessment questions were posted and answered every day, suggesting ‘that about 2.6 million questions were answered … in 2018-2019’ and ‘about 4.8 million … in 2019-2020’ (Lancaster & Cotarian, 2021, p. 13). Such studies cannot show that such usage is nefariously employed by students to cheat. Other studies establish connections between ‘buy, sell, trade’ websites and academic misconduct.

Bretag et al. (2019) undertook a nationwide survey in Australia of over 14,000 students examining their outsourcing behaviours, which included buying, selling, or trading notes. They found that sharing behaviours were common, undertaken by about 15% of student respondents, and students more often shared completed assessments rather than notes. The study showed that students who engaged in contract cheating were twice as likely as those who did not, to buy, trade, or sell notes. Moreover, students who cheated were more likely than students who did not cheat, to use file-sharing websites.

The connection between cheating and ‘buy, sell, trade’ behaviours is not just evident among Australian students. In an American study, Smith et al. (2021) found that students’ intentions to access and use these websites were related both to personality traits (e.g., psychopathy, Machiavellianism) and situational characteristics (e.g., opportunities) that other research reliably links with contract cheating (e.g., Clare et al., 2017; Curtis et al., 2022b; Rundle et al., 2019). Emerson and Smith (2022) found evidence of students accessing answers to online quiz questions from fee-based homework-help websites, with students performing better on tests when such sites were accessible than when they were prohibited. Work by Awdry (2020) about assignment outsourcing surveyed students in a range of different countries. Respondents self-reported that the most common outsourcing of assessment tasks was from friends, family, or peer-sharing websites.

All the above evidence suggests that the use of file-sharing and homework-help sites has grown in recent years and that students accessing these websites may be doing so to cheat on assessments. Therefore, it is little surprise that a large survey of students and academic staff recently found that both groups associate ‘buy, sell, trade’ file-sharing and homework-help websites with cheating (Harrison et al., 2021).

There are various reasons why students may use file-sharing and homework-help websites. We have already mentioned the legitimate use for study and the illegitimate use to facilitate cheating. Some authors suggest that motivations may include the generational norm of online sharing (e.g., image sharing in social media), altruism, ‘showing off’ their good work, reciprocation, necessity, and even coercion (Eaton, 2021; Rogerson, 2022, 2023). However, most of the literature to date has not examined students’ perspectives directly as to why they use ‘buy, sell, trade’ websites, what they do in their interactions with these sites, and how they perceive these behaviours. Moreover, it is unclear whether students are aware of institutional policies that guide or limit their use of these websites, or whether they are aware of potential risks associated with these sites, such as breaching copyright laws or academic integrity rules. Thus, there is still so much that is not understood about students’ use of file-sharing and homework-help websites. Under-research about these online ‘buy, sell, trade’ file-sharing/tutoring/study services makes devising appropriate institutional responses difficult. Therefore, it is urgent that we further investigate these practices.

The current study

We undertook the study in three parts to develop a fuller picture of how and why students use ‘buy, sell, trade’ file-sharing and homework-help websites. First, an initial screener survey identified students who were aware of, or who had used, relevant websites. Second, a longer follow-up survey was sent to the students who had used these websites to upload materials, download materials, or pay for access to the sites. Third, we undertook an automated search of popular social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube) for posts related to these file-sharing and homework-help websites.

Materials and methods

Survey

Participants and procedure

Ethics approval to undertake this research was obtained from the University of Queensland 2021/HE001604. We recruited students to participate in the online survey using the research recruitment platform Prolific.¹ Previous research suggested that a small minority of students had actively used academic file-sharing sites (Bretag et al., 2019). To recruit students who had experience with active use of file-sharing and homework-help websites, we undertook recruitment in two parts. First, we surveyed 1000 students (500 male, 500 female) from English-speaking countries in a very brief survey asking whether they had heard of, or used (uploaded to, downloaded from, or paid to use) any ‘of the following file-sharing or homework help sites’ that were not provided by their university/college: CourseHero, Chegg, Studocu, StudentVIP, Thinkswap, OneClass, Other (write in). The first five of the six named academic file-sharing sites used in the survey were the most frequently named file-sharing sites in an email survey, conducted by the first author, of members of an academic integrity professional interest group. The participants were compensated £0.13 for their time. Of the 1000 students, 495 who indicated that they had used file-sharing/homework-help websites were invited to participate in the follow-up online survey via Prolific.

Of the students invited from the screening survey, 454 completed the follow-up survey. These participants were compensated £1.50 for their time. Of these students, 379 had uploaded to, downloaded from, or paid to use a file-sharing or homework-help website from those listed in the survey. Fifty-seven students indicated that they had used an ‘Other’ site. The students who indicated using another site for file-sharing or homework help mostly listed their university learning management system, with some listing general file storage sites like Dropbox or contract cheating websites that provide bespoke assignments. Because the students who listed another site may not have fitted the intent of the study, we omitted them from further analysis. In addition, two more students who provided mostly incomplete surveys were removed, leaving a total of 377 usable responses.

As shown in Figure 1., most of the students who completed the survey (84.4%) downloaded material from file-sharing or homework-help websites. Additionally, just under half of the students (49.3%) used file-sharing and/or homework-help websites in two or three ways (downloading, uploading, and/or paid access). The students who completed the survey had a mean age of 25.39 years (SD = 5.24, min = 18, max = 50). The final sample included 200 female, 175 male students, with 1 other gender and 1 not reported. Most students (73.5%) had English as their first language, and most were domestic (90.2%), rather than international (9.8%) students. Students majored in a wide range of academic disciplines and represented various levels of study (see Supplementary Materials). Students mostly studied in a mix of on-campus and online modes (52.5%), rather than online only (28.4%) or on-campus only (19.1%). Most students in the sample were South African (72.7%), with the United States (10.6%), Canada (6.9%), and the United Kingdom (5.8%) accounting for most of the remaining students.

Figure 1. How students in this study used file-sharing and homework-help sites.

Survey instrument and procedure

The survey instrument was mostly designed for this study by the research team and drew questions from an existing measure (see Supplementary Materials). The survey was deployed in the Qualtrics survey system, and both skip logic and display logic options were used to display relevant questions to students based on their answers. For example, only students who indicated that they uploaded files to file-sharing websites were asked further questions about uploading.

The survey initially asked whether students had heard of and/or used file-sharing or homework-help websites, repeating the screener survey. Next, they were asked how they heard about these websites. Additionally, we asked whether they had used various social media websites to obtain study help. After this, students who had uploaded materials were asked about their uploading behaviour and students who had downloaded materials were asked about their downloading behaviour. Students were then asked if they had used question-and-answer services or tutoring within homework-help websites. The survey then asked students whether they considered the websites to be helpful in achieving academic success. Next, students were asked whether they had considered the risks of using file-sharing and homework-help websites and how serious they considered the risks to be. Finally, within the questionnaire designed for the study, we asked students if they knew whether their higher education institution had a policy regarding file-sharing websites and what they thought their institution’s position was on students using these sites.

To assess students’ perceptions of the support they receive from their educators, the survey included four items about student support adapted from Bretag et al.’s (2019) survey on contract cheating and one item devised for this survey. The items are all included in Table 4, and responses were made on a scale of 1 ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 ‘strongly agree’. The survey concluded with demographic questions. Students completed the survey in an average time of 11 minutes.

Social media data collection and analysis

Social media scraping is a relatively new digital data collection avenue that relies on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), a method increasingly restricted by the corporations in charge of social media platforms (Perriam et al., 2020). APIs allow the extraction of data from the social media website to facilitate analyses. Analysis of social media posts has previously been used to provide insights into contract cheating behaviours (e.g., Amigud & Lancaster, 2019). In this project we sought to gain insight into students’ use and perceptions of file-sharing services as access into the inner working of these sites is opaque to an outside audience (Dixon & George, 2021).

Preliminary investigation of the public conversation in social media regarding the use of student file-sharing sites by the third author showed profit-motivated accounts in the surrounding ecosystem e.g., selling ‘unlocks’ of content on sharing sites. A small volume of discussion was observed of students on UK-centric public platforms. Anecdotally, the researchers were also aware that most discussion about this topic (especially in the context of academic integrity) was likely to be in private or offline e.g., small private Facebook groups, Discord, group chats, or in-person. Based on these assumptions, the scope of the research’s social media data collection focused on three globally used social media platforms: Twitter (now called X), YouTube, and Reddit. Initial investigation showed that while the three sites have relatively simple structures there was a reasonable volume of discussion to drive the project’s data collection and analysis.

Given the exploratory nature of our research project, we focused on extracting a point-in-time snapshot of content collected over a previous month. The snapshot approach was preferred due to expecting a high level of content turnover and account deletions/rotations, given the ethically questionable nature of the file-share sites. Additionally, file-sharing sites also change over time – content from even two years ago may not inform current practice.

A social media ‘scraping’ service was engaged to collect data relevant to file-sharing and homework-help websites. Data were collected from 1 June 2022–30 June 2022, after the completion of the service provider procurement and design of suitable collection processes. Search terms contained the names of the most accessed homework-help and file-sharing websites that were included in our survey: ‘chegg’, ‘thinkswap’, ‘course hero’, ‘studocu’, and ‘studentvip’. The search yielded 43,580 items on Twitter, 2534 on YouTube, and 1810 on Reddit. Once collected, these posts were aggregated and deidentified by the social media scraping service before being supplied to the researchers for analysis.

A preliminary analysis of the data suggested that posts on Twitter and YouTube that included the file-sharing site names mostly consisted of promotion or advertising for the websites. Reddit contained the most helpful data, with posts, replies, and discussions about websites that provide insights into how students used, interacted with, and thought about these sites. Because of this, we limited our analysis of the social media content to the data obtained from Reddit.

Results

Survey analysis approach

Our results are primarily descriptive (percentages, means, etc.). Data from the survey were checked for missing responses and statistical assumptions, where appropriate. For items that had to be completed by all participants, < 0.01% of responses were missing completely at random (Little's MCAR test: Chi-Square = 17.333, DF = 12, Sig. = .137). For the inferential analysis using one-way ANOVA comparing perceptions of student support with data from Bretag et al.’s (2019) survey, all statistical assumptions were satisfied.

File-sharing and homework-help website use

The percentage of students using file-sharing and homework-help websites overall in our survey is reported in Figure 1. Use of specific websites is summarised in Table 1.

Table 1. Awareness and use of academic file-sharing and homework-help sites.

	CourseHero	Chegg	Studocu	StudentVIP	Thinkswap	OneClass
Heard of site	244	219	183	156	166	174
Uploaded to the site	73	38	55	27	26	20
Downloaded from the site	179	118	118	66	40	54
Paid to access the site	40	73	19	15	11	9

Students’ main means of discovering these file-sharing websites were internet searches (76.7%) and other students (63.7%). Some students learnt about the websites through online (21.2%) and/or on-campus advertising (9%). Remarkably, nearly one in five students reported finding out about these non-university-affiliated file-sharing and homework-help sites from their teacher/lecturer (18.8%). In addition to file-sharing and homework-help websites, students in our survey used a range of social media platforms to seek or obtain study help. Most students (90.2%) reported using YouTube for study help. Smaller percentages of students used: Facebook groups (34.2%), Reddit (31.3%), Twitter (20.4%), Discord (15.9%), TikTok (14.9%), Instagram (12.7%), or WeChat (4.5%).

Uploading and downloading behaviour

As shown in Table 2 over half of the students who uploaded materials to file-sharing websites shared their lecture notes and/or personal study notes. Over half of the students who downloaded materials obtained lecture or class notes. Interestingly, although only around a quarter of the students who uploaded material shared test or exam answers, over half of the students who downloaded materials accessed test or exam answers. Many of the downloaders, however, also on-shared the material they accessed, but not via file-sharing sites. Specifically, 71.4% of students who downloaded materials indicated that they shared these with other students and friends.

Table 2. Types of materials uploaded and downloaded, and percentages of uploaders and downloaders who shared or accessed these materials.

	Uploaded (N = 168) %	Downloaded (N = 318) %
Lecture notes	54.8	64.2
Class, tutorial, or lab notes	46.4	55.7
Personal study notes	54.2	44.7
Assignment guides or information	40.4	48.4
Assignment outlines or drafts	31.5	29.2
Completed assignments	42.3	34.3
Test questions	40.4	56.3
Test answers	27.4	55.7
Exam questions	37.5	55.7
Exam answers	23.8	51.6

As shown in Figure 2 just over half of the uploaders indicated that they altruistically uploaded materials to help other students and nearly half felt they were reciprocating help that they had received.

Figure 2. Reasons for uploading material to file-sharing sites.

In contrast, however, a slim majority of students also indicated that uploading provided them with credit to download materials. Over a quarter of students also reported uploading material for financial compensation. Just over a quarter of uploaders in the survey indicated that they uploaded materials to get credit to access ‘question and answer’ or tutoring services. In total, 68.4% of students in the survey sample accessed ‘question and answer’ or tutoring services. As this figure exceeds the percentage of students who uploaded material to access these ‘question and answer’ or tutoring services, it suggests that many accessed these services for either payment or via free trials.

As shown in Figure 3 most downloaders indicated that they accessed file-sharing sites to get material for assessment-related study. Interestingly, although just over half of downloaders indicated that they accessed test or exam answers, most indicated that they accessed materials to study for tests or exams, whereas just under half indicated that they were specifically seeking answers. This suggests that at least some students are seeking materials to learn their course content rather than to use pre-answered questions to cheat. For students who had used file-sharing or homework-help sites, 88.1% believed that it ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ helped them to achieve success in their course.

Figure 3. Reasons for downloading material to file-sharing sites.

Students’ perceptions of the risks of file-sharing and homework-help sites

Students were asked whether they had considered various potential risks of using file-sharing and homework-help websites, and how concerned they were about these risks, see Table 3. Most students (>85%) had considered that other students’ notes may be inaccurate and that using file-sharing and homework-help websites may lead to allegations of academic misconduct for plagiarism or cheating. Just over half of the students were very concerned that using file-sharing and homework-help websites may lead to allegations of academic misconduct. Just over half of the students had considered their use of file-sharing websites may breach copyright or intellectual property rights, but most considered this to be only a little concerning or not concerning at all. In contrast, students had mostly not considered it a risk that they may be supplying their work, or others’ work, for free to a profit-making business.

Table 3. Consideration of, and concern about, risks of using file-sharing and homework-help sites.

	Yes, considered %	Very concerned %	Somewhat concerned %	A little concerned %	Not concerned %
Others’ notes may be incorrect	89.8	35.0	35.5	22.1	7.4
Being accused of misconduct	86.2	50.6	18.9	16.3	14.2
Breaching university copyright	75.4	32.9	28.0	19.8	19.2
Misusing others’ IP	58.5	22.3	22.3	24.3	31.2
Privacy	55.3	24.0	19.6	22.5	33.9
Providing free content for others’ profit	42.4	12.8	16.5	24.6	46.1

Although file-sharing websites can misuse copyrighted work and intellectual property, facilitate academic misconduct, or profit off students’ free labour, students in our survey were generally unaware if their institution had a policy regarding students’ use of such sites. Just under a third of students (32.1%) thought their institution had a relevant policy, while most were unsure (59.4%) and some thought their institution did not have a policy (8.5%). This lack of awareness of policy was reflected in most students indicating either that they did not know how their institution feels about these sites (44.3%), or believed their intuition was unaware of these sites (17.5%). Only a little over a quarter of the students thought that the use of file-sharing and homework-help sites was discouraged by their institution (26.3%), whereas 11.9% of students thought their institution was happy for them to use the sites.

Perceptions of institutional support for learning

We asked students to rate five items relating to the support they received from their educators.

In Table 4 we compared the ratings of four of these items in our survey with the ratings of these items from Bretag et al.’s (2019) study, and the ratings for students in that study who had ‘bought, sold, or traded’ notes. Interestingly, although in Bretag et al.’s (2019) study students who bought, sold, or traded notes were less satisfied with the educational support they received, the file-sharing and homework-help users in our study were generally happier with the support they received from educators. This suggests that file-sharing and homework-help outsourcing may not be as much of a reaction to dissatisfaction with the learning and teaching environment, as was the case when Bretag et al. (2019) collected their data in 2016 (6 years earlier than our study). This may reflect a growing normalisation of using these websites. Indeed, in our study, beginning with 1000 students, we found 37.9% had used well-known commercial file-sharing sites. In contrast, only 15.3% of students in Bretag et al.’s study said that they had ever ‘bought, traded or sold notes’, and only 3.3% did this through a file-sharing site.

Table 4. Perceptions of student support.

	This study M (SD)	Bretag et al. (2019) M (SD)	Bretag et al. (2019) – file-sharing users M (SD)
I have opportunities to approach my teachers/professors for assistance when needed.	4.27a (.81)	4.10b (.85)	3.92c (.92)
My teachers/professors ensure that I understand what is required in assignments.	3.88a (.94)	3.76a (.98)	3.48c (1.03)
My teachers/professors spend class time teaching me how to engage in scholarship in my discipline (i.e., research, read, critically analyse and discuss discipline material).	3.59a (1.04)	3.23b (1.16)	3.11c (1.18)
I receive sufficient feedback to ensure that I learn from the work I do.	3.76a (.99)	3.35b (1.11)	3.06c (1.12)
My teachers/professors provide me with sufficient resources (e.g., notes, readings) to complete my assessments.	3.80 (.98)

Social media analysis

As stated earlier, Reddit was the most fruitful source of social media data about students’ behaviour regarding file-sharing websites. The most referred-to website in the data we analysed was Chegg. Thematic analysis revealed that the Reddit posts were principally divided between two categories; those that focused on ‘Helping Others’ and those that focused on ‘Seeking Help’. However, there was overlap between these categories, for example, help was often offered in response to a help-seeking post.

In the ‘Helping Others’ category there were 56 posts, with four sub-themes representing four sources of help: 1. Advertising help sites (n = 43), 2. Educator (n = 2); 3. Graduate help (n = 2), 4. Other offers of help (n = 9). Within the Advertising of help sites subtheme, 23 posts relate to Chegg. Many of these posts offered free or individual answers from Chegg via the messaging application Discord. A further 17 messages in this subtheme referred to an online short-term text storage tool called Pastebin. Replies to ‘Seeking Help’ posts asked for answers provided on Chegg to be shared on this platform. For example: ‘Hi currently doing coursework and if anyone can reply with or message me the Chegg answers for the questions in the Pastebin I will be eternally grateful’.

There were 86 posts in the ‘Seeking Help’ category. There were 11 sub-themes within this category, with the largest being: Requests to remove answers from Chegg (n = 33); help-seeking for specific subjects (n = 17); and seeking ‘unlocks’ of file-sharing content or homework-help answers (n = 11). ‘Requests to remove answers from Chegg’ were posts where answers from Chegg had been posted to Reddit and removed by Reddit moderators. It is unclear where the removal requests came from, e.g., Chegg seeking to remove its content from Reddit as a third-party website versus students seeking to remove evidence of answers that they obtained from Chegg via Reddit and used in their assessments. Requests to unlock content included both requests, e.g., ‘Can anyone with Chegg access show me the answers to this please?’ and offers to pay.

As our study focus was the potential role of file-sharing and homework-help websites in academic misconduct, posts related to cheating were of particular interest. Within the ‘Seeking Help’ category, there were five posts from students accused of cheating by their higher education institutions related to their use of file-sharing and homework-help sites. These posts were seeking help in managing these misconduct allegations. At the same time, there were two posts from students seeking ghostwriters for their work. Outside of the overarching ‘Helping Others’ and ‘Seeking Help’ categories, from our search of file-sharing and homework-help website names, we also identified five posts expressing views about cheating. In one of these posts the author shared, in great detail, that they had cheated throughout their degree, including use of the two websites most used by students in our survey, e.g., ‘Discovering how easy it was to cheat during covid … I cheated my way through my higher level stat classes using Chegg, and since my stat classes had unproctored exams, most of the exam questions were on CourseHero so they were ‘easy’ A's’.

Discussion

How and why students use ‘buy, sell, trade’ websites

Our initial screening survey found that over a third of students had made use of file-sharing or homework-help websites, more than 10 times the proportion of students engaging with these sites in Bretag et al.’s (2019) pre-pandemic Australian study. These results correspond with other data suggesting increased use of these sites by students, especially since 2020 (Lancaster & Cotarian, 2021).

In our survey, downloaders significantly outnumbered uploaders. This pattern of downloaders outnumbering uploaders and, seemingly, relying on a small number of uploaders to share content, is consistent with patterns of illegal media file-sharing (Rogerson, 2022). The biggest discrepancy between downloaders and uploaders was for test and exam answers. Patterns suggest that students sought material needed to complete assessments rather than material to study their subjects more generally.

Our survey showed that students primarily find out about file-sharing and homework-help websites from advertising and word-of-mouth. Still, nearly one in five students reported being told about these sites by their teachers. These websites are usually unsanctioned by higher education institutions and may even be considered a threat to their copyright and intellectual property. Because of this, it is curious why teachers would refer students to these sites. One possibility is that the websites are engaging in various tactics to be accepted as legitimate or mainstream services supporting higher education students. For example, there is evidence of these websites seeking to gain institutional acceptance by ‘partnering’ with students and academic staff (Newton, 2022).

Students reported mostly uploading personal notes and lecture notes. It may be the case, however, that some of what students consider to be ‘lecture notes’ are copies of lecture slides provided by teachers, that may be subject to copyright and/or are not students’ intellectual property. Uploaders’ principal reasons for adding materials to file-sharing sites were altruistic (to help other students), or reciprocal (to trade for access to other materials or to return help given to them). These reasons for uploading material are consistent with the results from our qualitative social media analysis, where discussions concerning file-sharing and homework-help websites focused mainly on either seeking or providing help. Nonetheless, in the survey, over a third of respondents felt uploading content was a norm, and over a quarter sought to obtain either payment or access to question-and-answer services. These results provide support for arguments that altruism and reciprocation often motivate student file-sharing (Eaton, 2021; Rogerson, 2022, 2023). Our survey did not specifically ask students whether they shared files because of coercion or to ‘show off’ (Eaton, 2021), and posts on social media did not provide any evidence that students uploaded files for these reasons.

Although it has been argued that students may use extra-institutional file-sharing websites out of necessity (Eaton, 2021), this is not supported by our results. Even though we found much higher use of file-sharing and homework-help websites than Bretag et al. (2019), the students in our survey also reported that they felt significantly better supported by their teachers than did the students surveyed in that study. Thus, these results suggest that the uptake of file-sharing websites may be more of a developing norm among students rather than a necessary support for their learning. Still, even though these websites may not be a vital support for learning, most students in our survey (nearly 90%) felt that these sites helped them achieve success in their courses. Nevertheless, a large majority of students also recognised that there was a risk that other students’ notes obtained from file-sharing websites may be inaccurate, which is discordant with the prospect of others’ notes being useful study aids.

An interesting additional finding of our study was that social media posts indicate that some file-sharing and homework-help site subscribers are engaging in economic behaviour akin to subletting. Many file-sharing and homework-help websites provide a certain number of answers to questions or content ‘unlocks’ within a set period to paid subscribers. The posts advertising ‘free answers’, individually paid answers, or one-off content access, suggest that some people who pay for a regular subscription are selling some of the benefits of those subscriptions or using them to solicit ‘hits’, for example, adding new subscribers to Discord channels. This expansion of access to subscriptions found in the social media analysis seems to be consistent with the finding in the survey that most students who downloaded from file-sharing websites shared what they had downloaded with other students. Taken together, these findings suggest that information such as the volume of internet traffic to these websites (e.g., Lancaster & Cotarian, 2021) may underrepresent students’ access to, and use of, material obtained from these sites.

Implications for academic integrity

Various findings from our survey and social media analysis point to the use of these websites in academic misconduct. First, as noted, the pattern of use suggests that students generally sought test/exam answers and previous assignments rather than general study materials from these websites. Although such materials can be used for revision, they potentially provide ready opportunities to cheat in situations where assignment questions and tests are unchanged in a course from year to year. Criminological perspectives particularly emphasise the role of opportunity in cheating (e.g., Clare et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2021). Thus, there is, at the least, an increased likelihood of cheating related to the opportunities created by these websites giving students access to tests, exams, and past assignments.

Over 80% of students who responded to our survey worried about the risk of being accused of academic misconduct because of their use of file-sharing and homework-help websites. Yet, most students also reported that either their institution did not have a policy position about file-sharing sites, or they were unaware if such a policy existed. It is reasonable to ask why students would be worried about getting into trouble for doing something that, as far as they know, does not breach a policy. It is possible that although students may be unaware of whether there is a policy at their institution regarding file-sharing websites, they may be aware of academic integrity policies. If students’ use of file-sharing and homework-help websites includes obtaining and submitting assessments or answers written by other people, this may underlie their concerns about being accused of misconduct.

Concerns that using file-sharing and homework-help websites could be considered cheating were found among posts that we analysed from Reddit. These posts included discussions of whether obtaining and submitting answers from websites like Chegg.com constituted cheating and examples of students who were facing allegations of cheating for undertaking this behaviour. These findings are consistent with the academic staff and student perceptions reported by Harrison et al. (2021), that the use of such websites is ‘collaborative cheating’.

As noted, we also found a student who admitted to using multiple file-sharing and homework-help websites to cheat in unproctored online assessments during the COVID-19 pandemic. This admission, albeit anecdotal, is consistent with Lancaster and Cotarian’s (2021) suggestion that cheating would have occurred because of the pandemic-related increase in the use of such websites.

Limitations

The platform that we used for recruitment to our survey provided an international sample, however, nearly three-quarters of the participants were from one country (South Africa). Because of this, some caution must be exercised in generalising our findings to students in all higher education systems, where various differences in institutional policies, internet access, and educational practices may influence students’ understanding of, and engagement with, file-sharing and homework-help sites.

Combining social media data collection with other forms of data collection enables researchers to ‘address new types of questions and shed light on existing research problems from a different angle’ (McCay-Peet & Quan-Haase, 2017). Yet, there are limitations of data collection from social media, some of which may be due technical restrictions, ethical challenges, or changes in the chosen platform/s’ accessibility. Other limitations are in the hands of the researchers to consider, such as any bias from the obtained data set and the implications for analysis (Mayr & Weller, 2017).

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that the use of file-sharing and homework-help websites among students is becoming normalised, resembling the usage of peer-to-peer music file-sharing (Rogerson, 2022), with a small number of uploaders providing material to a larger number of downloaders, who further on-share materials. In general, students seem to be using the websites more to obtain assessment assistance and answers than as a general aid in studying for their courses, providing opportunities to cheat, with evidence that students are taking these opportunities. Therefore, it is important that higher education institutions develop an awareness of, and policies regarding, external file-sharing and homework-help websites, and communicate these with their staff and students. Moreover, higher education institutions need to be aware that their assessment materials can and will be shared, and therefore take action accordingly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia grants scheme.

Notes

1 For readers who are unfamiliar with the Prolific participant recruitment platform, more information is provided in the Supplementary Materials found at https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:863b569