Commercial aspects of contract cheating

Clarke, Robert B.; Lancaster, Thomas

doi:10.1145/2462476.2462497

Cited by 42 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Other sites highlight that rudimentary paraphrasing tools are highly inaccurate but promote their paid services to correct the output-i.e. a process that could be interpreted as another form of contracted plagiarism (Clarke & Lancaster, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Internet based paraphrasing tools: Original work, patchwriting or facilitated plagiarism?

2017

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A casual comment by a student alerted the authors to the existence and prevalence of Internet-based paraphrasing tools. A subsequent quick Google search highlighted the broad range and availability of online paraphrasing tools which offer free 'services' to paraphrase large sections of text ranging from sentences, paragraphs, whole articles, book chapters or previously written assignments. The ease of access to online paraphrasing tools provides the potential for students to submit work they have not directly written themselves, or in the case of academics and other authors, to rewrite previously published materials to sidestep self-plagiarism. Students placing trust in online paraphrasing tools as an easy way of complying with the requirement for originality in submissions are at risk in terms of the quality of the output generated and possibly of not achieving the learning outcomes as they may not fully understand the information they have compiled. There are further risks relating to the legitimacy of the outputs in terms of academic integrity and plagiarism. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the existence, development, use and detection of use of Internet based paraphrasing tools. To demonstrate the dangers in using paraphrasing tools an experiment was conducted using some easily accessible Internet-based paraphrasing tools to process part of an existing publication. Two sites are compared to demonstrate the types of differences that exist in the quality of the output from certain paraphrasing algorithms, and the present poor performance of online originality checking services such as Turnitin® to identify and link material processed via machine based paraphrasing tools. The implications for student skills in paraphrasing, academic integrity and the clues to assist staff in identifying the use of online paraphrasing tools are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Internet based paraphrasing tools: Original work, patchwriting or facilitated plagiarism?

2017

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“…Research has demonstrated it is relatively inexpensive to purchase contract cheating pieces (Clarke & Lancaster, 2013;Sivasubramaniam, Kostelidou, & Ramachandran, 2016), requests for assignments can be completed very quickly and for every contractor awarded a job, there are an average of 10 others offering to complete it (Wallace & Newton, 2014). Recent research from Australia has also indicated that purchased assignments can also be of high quality, with a sample of purchased assignments being scored marks ranging from 71% to 89% when marked by unsuspecting academics (Lines, 2016).…”

Section: Implications Of These Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can we detect contract cheating using existing assessment data? Applying crime prevention theory to an academic integrity issue

2017

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Objectives: Building on what is known about the non-random nature of crime problems and the explanatory capacity of opportunity theories of crime, this study explores the utility of using existing university administrative data to detect unusual patterns of performance consistent with a student having engaged in contract cheating (paying a third-party to produce unsupervised work on their behalf). Methods: Results from an Australian university were analysed (N = 3798 results, N = 1459 students). Performances on unsupervised and supervised assessment items were converted to percentages and percentage point differences analysed at the academic discipline-, unit-, and student-level, looking for non-random patterns of unusually large differences. Results: Non-random, unusual patterns, consistent with contract cheating, were found at the academic discipline-, unit-, and student-level, with approximately 2.1% of students producing multiple unusual patterns. Conclusions: These findings suggest it may be possible to use existing administrative data to identify assessment items that provide suitable opportunities for contract cheating. This approach could be used in conjunction with targeted problem-prevention strategies (based on situational crime prevention) to reduce the vulnerability of academic assessment items to contract cheating. This approach is worthy of additional research as it has the potential to help academic institutions around the world manage contract cheating; a problem that currently threatens the validity and integrity of tertiary qualifications.

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“…A study of the site EssayBay.com [24], a site that is now defunct in its original form, saw 627 attempts by students to cheat, most commonly from the Business Studies discipline [25]. Over $1 million of contract cheating work per year has been estimated to run through agency websites [26]. These figures suggest that contract cheating is now a substantial business, both for the students requiring work, the workers supplying it and the companies who are facilitating this provision in return for a commission.…”

Section: The Existing Research Base On Plagiarism and Contract Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some work has been undertaken on the detection of contract cheating [27.28], which is most commonly done using a manual role of a detective [26]. A six-stage model has been proposed, where work placed on known agency sites is scraped and then analysed to see if it represents contract cheating [19].…”

Section: The Existing Research Base On Plagiarism and Contract Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, a student could have use the services of a friend stood outside of the view from the webcam. This friend would then verbally provide the student being tested with the correct answers Some of the current work into tracking student writing styles through stylometrics may show promise [26,32]. This would assess the writing style of the student across a series of written assignments or online tests.…”

Section: Addressing the Challenges To Educaton Posed By Contract mentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Observational Analysis of the Range and Extent of Contract Cheating from Online Courses Found on Agency Websites

Lancaster

Clarke

2014

2014 Eighth International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems

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-Although online courses can provide access to higher education through e-learning systems which would not otherwise be available for students, they also pose challenges for academic integrity. Paramount to this is contract cheating, where students have been observed paying other people to complete work for them to complete their online courses. This paper analyses attempts by students at contract cheating using Transtutors.com, which is a billed as a site for homework support. A sample of 174 online assignments found on Transtutors.com are analysed and traced back to 17 online universities. Assignments from online institutions are demonstrated to be a particular problem for contract cheating detectives, since notifying staff at those institutions of attempts by their students to cheat has proved to be difficult or impossible. The paper concludes by looking at the wider issues posed by online contract cheating and the opportunities for automated detection within this field.

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Commercial aspects of contract cheating

Cited by 42 publications

References 2 publications

Using Internet based paraphrasing tools: Original work, patchwriting or facilitated plagiarism?

Using Internet based paraphrasing tools: Original work, patchwriting or facilitated plagiarism?

Can we detect contract cheating using existing assessment data? Applying crime prevention theory to an academic integrity issue

An Observational Analysis of the Range and Extent of Contract Cheating from Online Courses Found on Agency Websites

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