The Spike in Cheating Raises Issues During the Pandemic, Easy Group/Easy EDU Stipulates Zero Tolerance for Cheating

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With the pandemic still ongoing, maintaining academic integrity has become extraordinarily difficult in the 2019-2020 academic year. According to the Provost's Annual Report on Cases of Academic Discipline, the number of U of T students who committed an academic offence increased from 1,590 to 2,140 in the 2019-2020 academic year - An increase of around 35 percent.

In April, a study in the International Journal of Educational Integrity found that the number of students asking “questions” online increased by nearly 200 percent during the epidemic. And the Quality Assurance Agency reports that Covid-19 has "accelerated" contract cheating, with 904 known "essay mills" offering ghostwriting services in the UK. According to the survey, insiders at sites specializing in ghostwriting revealed that their sales increased by 30 percent during the pandemic as most students switched to distance learning. As a generation growing up in the digital age, some students do not consider themselves to be cheating by submitting a question for an expert to quickly answer, or by searching a database of previous answers.

"As the educational environment and methods change, some unauthorized cheating services are posing a huge potential risk to students.” Charles Wang, CEO of Easy Education said that, “And we have to adopt stronger regulations and rules to regulate students' academic behavior. In our daily teaching process, we are constantly reminding students not to touch the boundaries of academic violations. To this end, we have specifically updated the academic code and the honor code for the use of teaching tools. all students who choose Easy Group and related products for course tutoring must know and promise that they will not use our service and teaching aids to cheat."

"Easy Group has zero tolerance regarding any academic violation.” He also added, “We will ensure that academic integrity is well followed in Easy Group through many segments, such as comprehensive tutors background check, regular training and assessment, signing a commitment to practice, etc. We are education practitioners, and our ultimate expectation is to help students succeed in their studies, not to push them into the abyss of being punished or even expelled.”

For more information, please visit: https://www.easygroup.ca/