[wdevanny]

Are you prepared on the basis of a student not successfully making the change to fail that student and/or expel them from their university? Sure you can invite them in for an interview, but what happens if the student just denies any accusations.

I am also skeptical you could find appropriate trivial changes to request. Students, and particularly beginner students, may write very unconventional code that may not be as easily modified as a well-thought-out solution.

[jdsully]

If its something like modifying a string literal then I can’t see the problem. If the program is too obtuse to permit that then its a major concern on its own.

[jgwil2]

If it's just modifying a string literal I suspect most would just search for that string and have little trouble even if the work is outsourced. Perhaps within a certain set of requirements there are modifications you could ask for that are not trivial and could be done in fifteen minutes but I think this is pretty hard in the general case and depends a lot on code quality.

[saagarjha]

I guess you could take those students and review their cases personally by taking to them.