Contract cheating

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contract cheating is a form of academic dishonesty, in which students get others to complete their coursework for them by putting it out to tender.[1][2][3][4]

The term was coined in a 2006 study[5] by Thomas Lancaster[6] and Robert Clarke[7] at the University of Central England in Birmingham.

Contents

[edit] Extent of contract cheating

The first published material detailing the extent of contract cheating is a study by Robert Clarke and Thomas Lancaster.[5] The study presented three main findings:

  1. Over 12 per cent of postings on a popular website for outsourcing computer contract work are actually bid requests from students looking to attempt contract cheating.
  2. Contract cheaters posted an average of 2-7 requests, suggesting that habitual use is made of such services by these students.
  3. A smaller number of users have posted over 50 bid requests, including examples from multiple institutions. This suggests that these are agencies subcontracting work, not students who are directly making use of the services.

Whereas the quality of solutions to assignments sold by essay mill has been questioned, a study by Jenkins and Helmore showed that work obtained though the use of an auction site was of sufficent quality to gain good marks and remain undetected by the module tutor. [8]

A more recent study examined over 900 examples of contract cheating by students studying computing subjects. The published results categorise the assignment types (eg Programming, Database, Web Design) and are analysed by country. One new concern identified by this study was the number of major projects (both final year undergraduate and postgraduate) being posted onto auction sites.[9]

[edit] Dealing with contract cheating

Approaches for dealing with the problem recognise the distinction between it and "plagiarism" (uncited copying from books, web etc) and "collusion" (copying of the work of other students in the same cohort).[10]

A range of approaches are necessary:[citation needed]

  • Do not re-use assignments: Too easy for students to copy from a previous year; common assignments appear on "essay mill" sites.
  • Individualise assignments: Harder for students to collude; easier to identify which student posted the assignment.
  • Vivas and tests to contribute to marks: Makes "outsourcing" a less easy option to pass a module; provides evidence for "non-originality".
  • Monitor known sites: And tell students that you are doing so; look for trends in the characteristics of contract cheating
  • Change academic regulations: Existing regulations only recognise plagiarism and collusion; types of evidence needed in contract cheating cases are different.

A formal model for a semi-automated way of notifying lecturers that their students are involved in contract cheating has 6 stages - Publication; Collection; Identification; Attribution; Notification and Investigation.[11]

[edit] Resources

The Contract Cheating Information Centre at BCU contains a limited selection of anti-cheating and plagiarism resources for academic staff, see http://hebe.cie.uce.ac.uk/soc/InfoC/CCheatInfoC.nsf

The first workshop on Contract Cheating was organised jointly by the Higher Education Academy Centre for ICS and Birmingham City University on 7th March 2008. Details of the programme and copies of material presented are available at http://bsstudents.bcu.ac.uk/sdrive/Bob_Clarke/Contract%20Cheating/index.htm

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Student cheats contract out work", BBC/bbc.com, 2006-06-12. Retrieved on 2006-06-14. 
  2. ^ Liz Lightfoot. "Cheating students put assignments out to tender on the internet", Telegraph/telegraph.co.uk, 2006-06-13. Retrieved on 2006-06-14. 
  3. ^ "Cheating students put homework to tender on Internet", Daily Mail/dailymail.co.uk, 2006-06-13. Retrieved on 2006-06-14. 
  4. ^ "The cybercheats making a small fortune", Daily Mail/dailymail.co.uk, 2006-06-17. Retrieved on 2007-11-05. 
  5. ^ a b Robert Clarke & Thomas Lancaster (2006-06-19). Eliminating the successor to plagiarism? Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites. Retrieved on 2007-05-23.
  6. ^ Thomas Lancaster bio
  7. ^ Robert Clarke bio
  8. ^ T. Jenkins and S. Helmore "Coursework for cash: the threat from on-line plagiarism", in Proceedings of 7th Annual Conference for Information and Computer Science, Dublin. Higher Education Academy pp121-126 (August 2006).
  9. ^ Lancaster & Clarke (2007-08-30). Assessing Contract Cheating Through Auction Sites – A Computing Perspective. Retrieved on 2007-09-13.
  10. ^ Lancaster, T and Clarke, R “The Phenomena of Contract Cheating”, in Student Plagiarism in an Online World: Problems and solutions, T. S Roberts, Ed., Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA: Idea Group Inc, 2007 http://www.igi-pub.com/reference/details.asp?id=7031
  11. ^ Clarke & Lancaster, (July 2007) Establishing a Systematic Six-Stage Process for Detecting Contract Cheating. ICPCA07 Conference Proceedings: IEEE Catalog Number: 07EX1679, ISBN: 1-4244-0970-5 pages 342-347