Frankly, I get ill thinking about this stuff. If it’s what it seems to be, it’s like paying someone to exercise for you, or to watch a movie for you, or to be married for you. The only thing that makes such absurdities attractive in school is that students, in cooperation with the whole sorry system, see the work they’re assigned as completely detachable from assessment, credit, learning, etc. etc. How this can be is just beyond me, but I see it every day. As a colleague said to me yesterday, “I think students come to school to finish.” Edupunk isn’t going to make a dent in that, I’m sorry to say. But faculty might.

It’s for a CompSci course, where students are learning to program algorithms. I don’t believe the goal is to produce code, but to understand the process of designing an algorithm and then implementing and testing it – things that aren’t really possible if you just copy/paste a prefab solution.

For evaluation in this case, students have to demonstrate the working code and answer questions about it – so they’re evaluated on understanding and comprehension.

Or if the problem is “I have work to do that I don’t want to do,” then the student appears to be doing what people with money have always done to excuse themselves from personal responsibility: buy a proxy.

Interesting post.

Having been in CPSC – cheating on such a project is only going to set them up for more harm as later assignments nearly always assume you completed/know the previous assignment.

That said this is cheating full stop. If it was a blog or a forum phrased about asking for help? No – but please do this for me on a site made for people to pay other people to write them something? It’s not their own work.