![… it is about burden of proof. Now, if it is plagiarism, and you use Turnitin
and you've got [matched] sources, that's relatively easy to capture. Contract
cheating, and, as I understand it, most of the works are originally produced,
would not be flagged up in any way, so it almost feels like our word against
their word and if there's no deniability it's a difficult situation.
Lecturer D](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/calgarypresentationcontractcheating-190423125239/85/A-question-of-trust-Educator-s-views-of-contract-cheating-18-320.jpg)
![But as [a] lecturer, following these procedures partly depends on whether
you think you will be supported by line management or not. Ultimately it goes
to management and they make the decision with the academic procedure.
And as a lecturer you have to trust [management]…
Lecturer C](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/calgarypresentationcontractcheating-190423125239/85/A-question-of-trust-Educator-s-views-of-contract-cheating-19-320.jpg)
A question of trust? Educator's views of 'contract cheating'
- 1. A QUESTION OF TRUST? EDUCATOR’S VIEWS OF ‘CONTRACT CHEATING’ James Blackburn @ajamesblackburn
- 2. Who’s this guy? • Former Lecturer and Learning Designer (HE & FE) • Head of UX at PebblePad • Became interested in contract cheating after hearing a radio documentary • I thought “What would my colleagues think of this? Would we even know?” • Completed MA (Ed.) dissertation on educator’s perceptions of contract cheating at The University of Derby
- 5. Why look at Educators? • Lot’s of research emerging on: • Definition • Extent of contract cheating problem • Quality of essays • Methods of detection • Why students were cheating • Little research on what educators think until Harper et al. study (2018)
- 6. Aims & Objectives Find out whether educators within a Higher Education Institution have an awareness of ‘contract cheating’, and whether they effectively detect and/or deter this pseudepigraphical practice. • To explore staff perceptions of the contract cheating problem within the institution. • To examine the techniques used by teaching staff to detect and deter contract cheating.
- 7. “when a student submits work that has been completed for them by a third party, irrespective of the third party’s relationship with the student, and whether they are paid or unpaid.” (Harper et al., 2018, p. 1).
- 8. Methodology/Approach • Study conducted in a mid-size, post -1992, UK University • 6 educators from Faculty of Education participated • Semi- structured in-depth interviews • Struggled to recruit participants for the study A very small scale study!
- 9. An example of a purchased essay • Could not assume that educator’s had seen a purchased essay before • Wanted participants to have an additional stimuli in the interview (Dowling and Brown, 2010, Törrönen, 2002).
- 10. An example of a purchased essay • Type of document: Essay • Subject area: Education • Topic: Digital Education • Turnaround time: 10 days (standard) • Number of pages required: 4 • Standard: 2:1 • Referencing Style: Harvard • Description: Essay outlining the digital capabilities of students in higher education • The essay cost £69.71 GBP/ $122.45 CAD inclusive of Tax.
- 11. Areas discussed in interviews • Defining ”contract cheating” • The essay industry • Detection • Institutional culture • The student and educator relationship • Deterrence and prevention • Causal factors • Experiences and suspicions of contract cheating • The cheated essay
- 12. Findings • Participants were able to define contract cheating relative to widely accepted definitions but always referred to payment. • Educators’ knowledge of the essay industry is varied, each participant had different experiences relating to student cheating and the essay industry. • All participants indicated that they believed the practice of both selling and procuring an assignment was wrong
- 13. Participant Estimated cost of essay Lecturer A £20–£40 Lecturer B ~£200 Lecturer C - Lecturer D £50 Lecturer E £50–£60 Lecturer F £600 Findings Estimated cost of a purchased paper
- 14. I've been very alarmed by the fact that around the corner from me there's an office which has got big advertising boards outside which says ‘come to us if you want your assignments writing’! And I actually think, I don't know what the law says on that, but that sounds extremely dodgy legally, to be honest ... ... It's like somebody dealing in drugs or what have you and knowing they can get away with it ... Lecturer F
- 15. Findings • Detection methods employed by educators are manual, rudimentary and difficult to implement when operating at scale. • Other quality measures adopted by some programmes at the may impede the detectability of contract cheating.
- 16. Troubling finding… Educators have a distrust in university regulations and the managers who help to enforce them. Many participants discussed a ‘burden of proof’ that they have to produce in order to effectively make their case to managers when they suspect that contract cheating has taken place.
- 17. Harper et al. (2018), p. 5
- 18. … it is about burden of proof. Now, if it is plagiarism, and you use Turnitin and you've got [matched] sources, that's relatively easy to capture. Contract cheating, and, as I understand it, most of the works are originally produced, would not be flagged up in any way, so it almost feels like our word against their word and if there's no deniability it's a difficult situation. Lecturer D
- 19. But as [a] lecturer, following these procedures partly depends on whether you think you will be supported by line management or not. Ultimately it goes to management and they make the decision with the academic procedure. And as a lecturer you have to trust [management]… Lecturer C
- 20. We have a small cohort and I know where all my students are on placement. But I know them well enough to know what their general life experiences are. I think, I think the more, more sort of personal nature of our assignments makes it harder for somebody to pass across information. Lecturer E
- 21. Many of the assignments that we developed require people to reflect very much on their experiences … and so it would be quite hard I think for a contracted person to replicate that without having actually had the experiences that the learner had. So, we'd kind of spot that, I think … Lecturer F
- 22. The four assessment tasks that were perceived by students to be the least likely to prompt contract cheating were in-class tasks, personalised and unique tasks, vivas and reflections on practical placements. Assessments with short turnaround times and those that are heavily weighted were perceived to be the most likely. Bretag et al. (2019) p. 685
- 23. Recommendations • Adopt a whistle-blowing-type procedure for staff and students to raise suspicions of contract cheating anonymously without the need for any definitive proof. • Upskill educators’ detection techniques and keep up to date on essay writing industry trends. • Employ or redeploy staff to act as investigators for cases of contract cheating to ensure that staff retain the trust of students. • Share good assessment design across the institution • Reconsider blind marking as a quality measure.
- 25. Final thoughts… Are we too concerned with products of assessment rather than the learning process? Is it right that a stranger can complete (and pass) an assessment after never setting foot on campus, let alone in a lecture or seminar? Have we been institutionalised? Is it time we ditched the essay? i.e. Are we just assessing our students the way we were assessed?
- 26. Final thoughts… Would staff training time be better spent on coming up with new assessment methods or investigation techniques? Is it one or the other? Would we find similar results talking to managers and support staff?
- 27. Questions?
- 28. References Tracey Bretag, Rowena Harper, Michael Burton, Cath Ellis, Philip Newton, Karen van Haeringen, Sonia Saddiqui & Pearl Rozenberg (2019) Contract cheating and assessment design: exploring the relationship, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44:5, 676-691. Dowling, P. and Brown, A. (2010) Doing Research/reading Research: Re-interrogating Education. Routledge. Harper, R., Bretag, T., Ellis, C., Newton, P., Rozenberg, P., Saddiqui, S. and van Haeringen, K. (2018) 'Contract cheating: a survey of Australian university staff', Studies in Higher Education, pp. 1-17. Törrönen, J. (2002) 'Semiotic theory on qualitative interviewing using stimulus texts', Qualitative Research, 2(3), pp. 343-362.
- 29. DISCUSSION • If you were engaging colleagues in your institution in similar conversations what do you think they would they say about one of the following: 1. Their existing knowledge of contract cheating 2. Their abilities to detect and deter the practice 3. Their confidence in academic integrity procedures within the institution Spend a couple of minutes discussing this with the people around you.
Editor's Notes
- #5: Work with 100s of institutions worldwide providing them with a learning journey platform. One of the really cool things about my job is I see assessment and learning design from a variety of institutions and territories.
- #6: At the time. Harper study came out during writing stages with more detail in this area and findings were similar
- #11: Did have an ethical restriction that I wouldn’t use a company that stated in tsandcs that you can’t submit.
- #13: When discussing point 3. Participants never mentioned the educator or institutional wrongdoing.
- #15: The attention is often on the company selling the essay. Not the student or the institution. I found that interesting Often seems to be related to a crime. I wish I had asked the question ”who is the victim?”
- #17: Many spoke about gut feeling
- #18: (57.1%, n = 129/226)
- #19: Caution in relying on a Turnitin style solution. It is likely the industry will adopt methods for finding ways around detection methods.
- #21: Dangerous?
- #22: Indeed studies have shown assignment providers are not quite as good at reflective pieces or those involving structure
- #25: Talk more about Canada.. Feedback from my submission was to relate to a Canadian context. We work with institutions in Australia, The UK, US and Canada. In the few years I have been looking into this I have seen conversation grow. You can relate this to your indivisual contexts but if you get anything from this presentation it’s to engage staff at all levels within an institution.
- #26: Would our efforts be better spent thinking of, new, innovative assessment techniques that help assess not just what our students have retained from lecturers or read, but how they have grown and developed. Tracy’s research is showing that other assessment methods may have less cheaters. It would be good to look at the quality of the non-essay assignments.
- #27: Would our efforts be better spent thinking of, new, innovative assessment techniques that help assess not just what our students have retained from lecturers or read, but how they have grown and developed.