What solutions should we be putting in place to identify, prevent and detect contract cheating? These slides, used as part of a webinar held for Brunel University London, overview the contract cheating field with particular reference to how the contract cheating problem has developed, the role of assessment design and the opportunities for detection.

1. Contract Cheating:
Identifying, Preventing and Detecting
Webinar presentation for Brunel University London
Wednesday 23 September 2020
Dr Thomas Lancaster
http://thomaslancaster.co.uk
@DrLancaster
#contractcheating

2. Webinar Presenter
Dr Thomas Lancaster
Senior Teaching Fellow (Student Support),
Department of Computing, Imperial College London
Computer Scientist with PhD in plagiarism
(detection)
Researcher and media commentator on academic
integrity issues
Published the first research paper referring to
contract cheating
(with the late Robert Clarke)

3. The 2006 Paper With Robert Clarke
Clarke, R. and Lancaster, T., 2006, June. Eliminating the successor to plagiarism?
Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites. In Proceedings of 2nd International
Plagiarism Conference. Northumbria Learning Press.

4. Still Researching…
Lancaster, T., 2020. Academic Discipline
Integration by Contract Cheating Services
and Essay Mills. Journal of Academic Ethics,
18, pp.115-127, doi:10.1007/s10805-019-
09357-x.
Lancaster, T., 2019. Social media enabled contract cheating. Canadian Perspectives on Academic
Integrity, 2(2), pp.7-24, doi:10.11575/cpai.v2i2.68053.
Lancaster, T., Glendinning, I., Foltýnek, T.,
Dlabolová, D. and Linkeschová, D., 2019. The
Perceptions of Higher Education Students on
Contract Cheating and Educational Corruption in
South East Europe. Journal of Educational
Thought/Revue de La Pensée Educative, 52(3),
pp.209-227, doi:doi.org/10.11575/jet.v52i3.69722.
Student experience of
contract cheating
Contract cheating
across disciplines
The wider
operation
of the
contract
cheating
industry

5. Some Questions For
Today’s Webinar
• What is contract cheating and why
does it matter?
• How are students exposed to
contract cheating providers?
• What methods are available to
make contract cheating more
difficult?
• Can contract cheating be identified
and detected?

6. Recommended
Resource

7. Contract
Cheating – An
Introduction

8. Contract Cheating
A student uses a third party to
do academic work they should
be completing for themselves
“outsourcing” “ghostwriting”

9. By contract cheating, students are…
not learning
not equipping themselves
to learn in the future
disadvantaging students
who are trying

10. The Marketing
and many dodgier tactics…

11. What Can Students Outsource?
Essays Reports
Drafts of
work
Chapters of
dissertations
Reflections
Presentation
slides
Scripts
Answers to
sample exams
Answers to
live exams
Their future
job ?

12. Why Do Students
Resort To Contract
Cheating?

13. Why Do Students Resort To Contract Cheating?
(Some Reasons – All Open To Discussion)
❑ They are convinced by the heavy advertising
❑ They can’t differentiate between university and external support
❑ They believe contract cheating is acceptable
❑ They are not engaged with their course
❑ They find the material too challenging
❑ They find the material too tedious
❑ They lack the foundational skills to succeed
❑ They have cheated before and got away with it
❑ They consider contract cheating to be a good financial decision
❑ They are lazy…

14. Not all
contract
cheating
involves the
exchange of
money…

15. Students can
be faced
with external
pressure to
cheat

16. Preventing
Contract
Cheating

17. Advisory Note
There are very few
assignment types for
which cheating is
impossible

18. The Student Decision
risk reward

19. The Student Decision
risk reward
what is the cost of failure?

20. The Trade-Offs
❑ Supervised vs Unsupervised assessment
❑ Subject Matter Freedom vs Forced
❑ Unique vs Routine
❑ Tutor Time vs Freedom

21. Advisory Note
Need to balance
designing for integrity
with designing for
engagement
Can we ensure that the deserving
students are the ones who progress?

22. Assessment Ideas To Consider
• Reports following a template
• Authentic assessments
• Presentations and vivas
• Group-based assessments
• Unseen assessments
• Videos

23. Detecting
Contract
Cheating

24. You need to be
a bit suspicious

25. Some Indicators Of Contract Cheating
• Work not reflective of usual student performance
• Too perfect layout and formatting
• Superficial content
• Old or modified references
• Unusual information in document properties
• Knowledge local students would not have
• Fabricated data
… and many more such examples

26. What Can You Do If You Suspect
Contract Cheating?
Can you viva the student?
Can you ask for evidence of how
they produced the assignment?
What is the process to instigate a
case?

27. Assessment Design
Integrity Checkpoints
• Vivas
• Staged assessments
• Exams linked to coursework

28. The Student Decision
risk reward

29. Emerging Detection Research
• Can student writing style (stylometrics) be used to identify if
the same writer has written two documents?
• What does the typing pattern say about the construction of an
assignment?
• How far can forensic computing techniques to be used to
verify authorship?

30. Closing
Thoughts

31. Are your
assignments
(or very
similar ones)
available
online?

32. Do you speak to
students about
contract cheating
and academic
integrity?

33. Are we able to
reward
students who
are acting
with integrity?

34. Questions and
Opinions Welcome

35. Connect With Me
My Email: thomas@thomaslancaster.co.uk
My Website: http://thomaslancaster.co.uk
My Blog: http://thomaslancaster.co.uk/blog
My LinkedIn:
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/thomaslancaster
My Twitter: @DrLancaster
Slide Archive:
http://www.slideshare.net/ThomasLancaster