Contract Cheating and Essay Mills – Findings From Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond 2017

Much of my blog is devoted to discussions around contract cheating, the area of concern to academic integrity advocates as this sees students use a third party to have work completed for them.

Sessions at the 2017 international conference on Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond ended up heavily focused on contract cheating. Having been part of contact cheating research since the term first formed part of the research literature and having recently published a series of articles marking the 10 year mark for research into contract cheating, I’m always pleased to see how the field is developing, but still have some disappointment that this wider interest took so long to emerge.

I’ve already shared my conference presentation on contract cheating in examinations and provided general collected thoughts about Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond 2017.

It is the conference findings on contract cheating that are of most interest to me. In my next series of posts, I want to share some of the main ideas that have emerged from the collective brains at the conference. Rather than presenting these thoughts linearly, I’ve grouped them into seven thematic areas, although these areas do have some overlap.

Here’s a summary of some of the main contract cheating themes I observed at the conference.

Theme Number Theme Conference Highlights
01 Academic Integrity and Contract Cheating Terminology Some of the conference discussions were challenged by a lack of awareness of contract cheating and a lack of understanding of the main ideas and termninology. Even the term exam was used to mean different things in different contexts.
02 Inside The Contract Cheating Industry Understanding the operations of the essay industry is essential to knowing how the address the issues. In particular, the conference identified the role of large numbers of international ghost-writers in keeping the industry financially viable.
03 Contract Cheating by Academics The behaviours surrounding contract cheating have begun to be observed within groups of academics, particularly where these relate to misconduct in fulfilling research publication quotas.
04 Detecting Contract Cheating Computer scientists and linguistics have been making progress in detecting work that has not been written by the student submitting it. There are many approaches here, but recent developments have focused on stylometry.
05 Emerging Issues In Contract Cheating Wider challenges surrounding educational integrity also influence how contract cheating practice could develop. These include traditional areas of student plagiarism, the use of translation and essay spinning software, as well as the risks posed by students using smart drugs.
06 Which Students Are Contract Cheating And What Does This Mean For Assessment? Recent data collection from students has helped with an understanding of which types of students may need help to avoid contract cheating temptations and which assessment modalities should be considered in place of an essay-oriented curriculum.
07 Understanding Contract Cheating From The Student Viewpoint The views of students have not previously been consistently considered as part of the movement in favour of academic integrity, but there is now much good work going on in this area, including the use of events designed to engage students in discussions regarding contract cheating.

The observations from the conference cover a wide spectrum of contract cheating areas. One overall emerging challenge that occurs to me is that we need to know more about all of the players involved in the contract cheating industry, including how they are involved with the essay industry and what their motivation is.

My own summary of ideas and reflections from the conference, from which these posts are compiled, runs to nearly 8,000 words, so that just shows how much value there was in the presentations and discussions at Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond 2017.

8 thoughts on “Contract Cheating and Essay Mills – Findings From Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond 2017”

  1. Pingback: Contract Cheating and Essay Mills 2017 Findings Part 1 – Academic Integrity and Contract Cheating Terminology | Thomas Lancaster

  2. Pingback: Contract Cheating and Essay Mills 2017 Findings Part 2 – Inside The Contract Cheating Industry | Thomas Lancaster

  3. Pingback: Contract Cheating and Essay Mills 2017 Findings Part 3 – Contract Cheating by Academics | Thomas Lancaster

  4. Pingback: Contract Cheating and Essay Mills 2017 Findings Part 4 – Detecting Contract Cheating | Thomas Lancaster

  5. Pingback: Contract Cheating and Essay Mills 2017 Findings Part 5 – Emerging Issues in Contract Cheating | Thomas Lancaster

  6. Pingback: Contract Cheating and Essay Mills 2017 Findings Part 6 – Which Students Are Contract Cheating And What Does This Mean For Assessment? | Thomas Lancaster

  7. Pingback: Contract Cheating and Essay Mills 2017 Findings Part 7 – Understanding Contract Cheating From The Student Viewpoint | Thomas Lancaster

  8. Pingback: Contract Cheating and Essay Mills – Findings From Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond 2017 | ContractCheating.com

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