When Does Getting Help on an Assignment Turn Into Cheating?

by Peter Hurley, Victoria University: https://theconversation.com/when-does-getting-help-on-an-assignment-turn-into-cheating-120215

Sometimes, students and teachers have different ideas about what constitutes as cheating. from shutterstock.com

Students - whether at university or school - can get help from many places. They can go to a tutor, parent, teacher, a friend or consult a textbook.

But at which point does getting help cross the line into cheating?

Sometimes it’s clear. If you use a spy camera or smartwatch in an exam, you’re clearly cheating. And you’re cheating if you get a friend to sit an exam for you or write your assignment.

At other times the line is blurry. When it’s crossed, it constitutes academic misconduct. Academic misconduct is any action or attempted action that may result in creating an unfair academic advantage for yourself or others.

What about getting someone else to read a draft of your essay? What if they do more than proofread and they alter sections of an assignment? Does that constitute academic misconduct?

Learning, teaching or cheating?

There are a wide range of activities that constitute academic misconduct. These can include:

• fabrication, which is just making things up. I could say “90 % of people admit to fabricating their assignments”, when this is not a fact but a statement I just invented
• falsification, which is manipulating data to inaccurately portray results. This can occur by taking research results out of context and drawing conclusions not supported by data
• misrepresentation, which is falsely representing yourself. Did you know I have a master’s degree from the University of Oxford on this topic? (Actually, I don’t)
• plagiarism, which is when you use other people’s ideas or words without appropriate attribution. For instance, this list came from other people’s research and it is important to reference the source.

Sometimes students and teachers have different ideas of academic misconduct. One study found around 45% of academics thought getting someone else to correct a draft could constitute academic misconduct. But only 32% of students thought the same thing.

In the same survey, most academics and students agreed having someone else like a parent or friend identify errors in a draft assignment, as opposed to correcting them, was fine.

Students and academics agree having someone else identify errors in your assignment is OK. Correcting them is another story. from shutterstock.com

Generally when a lecturer, teacher or another marker is assessing an assignment they need to establish the authenticity of the work. Authenticity means having confidence the work actually relates to the performance of the person being assessed, and not of another person.

The Australian government’s vocational education and training sector’s quality watchdog, for instance, considers authenticity as one of four so-called rules of evidence for an “effective assessment”. The rules are:

• validity, which is when the assessor is confident the student has the skills and knowledge required by the module or unit
• sufficiency, which is when the quality, quantity and relevance of the assessment evidence is enough for the assessor to make a judgement
• authenticity, where the assessor is confident the evidence presented for assessment is the learner’s own work
• currency, where the assessor is confident the evidence relates to what the student can do now instead of some time in the past.

Generally speaking, if the assessor is confident the work is the product of a student’s thoughts and where help has been provided there is proper acknowledgement, it should be fine.

Why is cheating a problem?

It’s difficult to get a handle on how big the cheating problem is. Nearly 30% of students who responded to a 2012 UK survey agreed they had “submitted work taken wholly from an internet source” as their own.

In Australia, 6% of students in a survey of 14,000 reported they had engaged in “outsourcing behaviours” such as submitting someone else’s assignment as their own, and 15% of students had bought, sold or traded notes.

Getting someone to help with your assignment might seem harmless but it can hinder the learning process. The teacher needs to understand where the student is at with their learning, and too much help from others can get in the way.

Some research describes formal education as a type of “signal”. This means educational attainment communicates important information about an individual to a third party such as an employer, a customer, or to an authority like a licensing body or government department. Academic misconduct interferes with that process.

Fewer cheaters are getting away with it. Glenn Carstens-Peters/Unsplash

How to deal with cheating

It appears fewer cheaters are getting away with it than before. Some of the world’s leading academic institutions have reported a 40% increase in academic misconduct cases over a three year period.

Technological advances mean online essay mills and “contract cheating” have become a bigger problem. This type of cheating involves outsourcing work to third parties and is concerning because it is difficult to detect.

But while technology has made cheating easier, it has also offered sophisticated systems for educators to verify the work is a person’s own. Software programs such as Turnitin can check if a student has plagiarised their assignment.

Institutions can also verify the evidence they are assessing relates to a student’s actual performance by using a range of assessment methods such as exams, oral presentations, and group assignments.

Academic misconduct can be a learning and cultural issue. Many students, particularly when they are new to higher education, are simply not aware what constitutes academic misconduct. Students can often be under enormous pressure that leads them to make poor decisions.

It is possible to deal with these issues in a constructive manner that help students learn and get the support they need. This can include providing training to students when they first enrol, offering support to assist students who may struggle, and when academic misconduct does occur, taking appropriate steps to ensure it does not happen again.

Peter Hurley, Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What is Plagiarism? And How Can I Avoid it?

by Dr Winnie Salamon, Insider Guides: https://insiderguides.com.au/plagiarism-how-to-avoid/

I was helping a student edit her upcoming assignment when she mentioned that her lecturer was obsessed with plagiarism.

“He talks about it all the time, in every single lecture,” she said. “It’s really boring.”

So maybe every lecture is a little excessive, but for anyone who teaches at an Australian educational institution, plagiarism is a huge and ongoing issue with no simple solution.

WHAT EXACTLY IS PLAGIARISM?

Plagiarism is when you take somebody else’s ideas or words and pass them off as your own. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines plagiarism as ‘literary theft’. Australian educational institutions consider plagiarism to be a serious act of ‘academic misconduct’. In other words, plagiarism is cheating.

WHAT DOES PLAGIARISM LOOK LIKE?

These are some of the most common forms of plagiarism. I have used the popular Harvard (author-date) referencing style in these examples. Use the reference style recommended by your educational institution and stick to it. Never use more than one referencing style in a single assignment.

WHOLE ESSAY PLAGIARISM

Whole essay plagiarism is when a student hands in an essay they have not written themselves. This includes essays bought from any sources that sell ready-made essays, or papers taken from the Internet, a book or a print article.

PARAPHRASING PLAGIARISM

Paraphrasing is when you write what someone else has said in your own words. There is nothing wrong with this, but you must include a reference to show that you are referring to someone else’s ideas.  

For example:

ORIGINAL SOURCE:

Commodities are things produced as articles of commerce. Not all objects are commodities, as the category of commodity lexically marks the difference between an object and an object as merchandise. A consumer society is one in which the commodity orients social activity (Lofton, 2011, p. 23).

Reference list:

Lofton, K 2011, Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles.

PLAGIARISED SOURCE:

We cannot say that all objects are commodities, as there is a difference between an object and an object as something to be sold. The definition of a consumer society is one where the commodity directs our social activity. Oprah, for example, is a commodity who influences the behaviours of her audience.

WHY IS THE PLAGIARISED SOURCE PLAGIARISM AND HOW COULD I AVOID IT?

The ‘plagiarised source’ is considered plagiarism because, even though it is written slightly differently, it draws directly from Lofton’s work without referring to her.

CORRECTLY REFERENCED VERSION:

We cannot say that all objects are commodities, as there is a difference between an object and an object as something to be sold. The definition of a consumer society is one where the commodity directs our social activity (Lofton, 2011, p. 23). Oprah, for example, is a commodity who influences the behaviours of her audience.

WORD-FOR WORD PLAGIARISM

ORIGINAL SOURCE:

Oprah is a product, but Oprah’s product is not individual objects. Her patents are not mechanical innovations or engineering improvements. She does not design fabric or copyright personal recipes. Rather, her taste is her product (Lofton, 2011, p. 24).

PLAGIARISED SOURCE:

Not all commodities come in the form of a physical object. Oprah is a product, but Oprah’s product is not individual objects. Rather, her taste is her product.

WHY IS THIS PLAGIARISM AND HOW COULD I AVOID IT?

There are no quotation marks to indicate that this phrase is a direct quote.

CORRECTLY REFERENCED VERSION:

Not all commodities come in the form of a physical object. ‘Oprah is a product, but Oprah’s product is not individual objects … Rather, her taste is her product.’ (Lofton, 2011, p. 24)

WHAT ISN’T PLAGIARISM?

Information that is considered ‘common knowledge’ to your audience is not plagiarism.

For example, facts like Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States or that the moon is around 384,400 kilometres away from Earth are considered common knowledge because most people are aware of this information.

If you’re writing for a specific audience that is very familiar with your topic, you don’t need to provide references for common knowledge.

It gets a bit trickier when you’re writing something for an audience that might not know about your topic, such as a biology paper for people who know nothing about biology. If this is the case, always credit common knowledge to the right source.

WHY IS PLAGIARISM TAKEN SO SERIOUSLY IN AUSTRALIA?

Working on an assignment is an opportunity for you to learn and grow. It is a chance to increase your understanding of a particular issue or topic, as much as it is about the grade you receive in the end. By plagiarising, you are not only cheating your lecturer or tutor, but you are also undermining your own learning. When you substitute someone else’s words as your own, you are missing out on the chance to improve your own writing skills.

WHAT ELSE CAN I DO TO AVOID PLAGIARISM?

As you can see from the examples above, most cases of plagiarism can be avoided by correctly referencing all your sources. By clearly signalling where you have used someone else’s words or ideas, you are letting your reader know that you are drawing on your external research to help formulate your own ideas.

There is nothing wrong with being inspired by the work of others. The best way to learn is to look at what others have done before us, being inspired by successes and learning from past mistakes.

NEVER STOP THINKING

Never stop thinking. You should understand your material well enough to explain its meaning in your own words. When you do quote a source directly or paraphrase what someone else has written, ensure you that you reference where the information came from every single time you refer to it.

ASK FOR HELP

Another reason students plagiarise is that they lack confidence in their own abilities. If you are struggling with your assignment, ask for help. Your tutor, or your academic services at your institution can help you edit and plan your work so that you can build confidence in your own abilities.

Remember, you are a student. Nobody expects you to write in the same way as a seasoned professional with 30 years of experience. Develop your own voice and be proud of it.

BE ORGANISED

When people are under pressure, they sometimes take short-cuts by cheating. It is hard, if not impossible, to produce strong, thoughtful and well-edited work at the last minute. Giving yourself time to take clear notes and to organise and understand your material will not only improve the quality of your work, but it will also help reduce your stress levels.

WHAT HAPPENS IF I DO GET CAUGHT PLAGIARISING?

Different institutions have their own policies regarding plagiarism, but they all consider plagiarism to be cheating.

You will not pass your assignment – and possibly the entire subject – if it is confirmed that you have plagiarised. You may also be required to attend a meeting with your Head of School to discuss the matter and you will be issued with a warning that may or may not go on your permanent record.

At the very worst, you can be expelled from your educational institution and not receive your degree.

AND FINALLY …

Your lecturer or tutor would much prefer to read an imperfect assignment by a student who has challenged themselves and worked hard to establish their own voice than a more fluent essay that is filled with someone else’s words.

It may be boring and obvious, but the more work you put in, the more you will get out of your studies in the long run. If you focus on the learning process rather than your final grades, you might be surprised by just how successful you become.

Doing Away With Essays Won't Necessarily Stop Students Cheating

by Julie Hare, University of Melbourne, The Conversation:  https://theconversation.com/doing-away-with-essays-wont-necessarily-stop-students-cheating-108995

New research shows the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design is not simply cause and effect. www.shutterstock.com

It’s never been easier for university students to cheat. We just need look to the scandal in 2015 that revealed up to 1,000 students from 16 Australian universities had hired the Sydney-based MyMaster company to ghost-write their assignments and sit online tests.

It’s known as contract cheating – when a student pays a third party to undertake their assignments which they then pass off as their own. Contract cheating isn’t new – the term was coined in 2006. But it’s becoming more commonplace because new technologies, such as the smart phone, are enablers.

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Read more: 15% of students admit to buying essays. What can universities do about it?

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Cheating is taken seriously by universities and the national regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. Much of the focus has been on changing assessment tasks to ones deemed to be harder for a third party to undertake. This is called “authentic assessment”.
This type of assessment has been widely adopted at universities. They are comprised of tasks that evaluate knowledge and skills by presenting students with real-world scenarios or problems relevant to the kinds of challenges they would face following graduation. But new research found authentic assessment may be as vulnerable to cheating as other more obvious examples, such as essays.

What the research shows

This new study was conducted by academics from six universities, led by Tracey Bretag and Rowena Harper from the University of South Australia. The research – part of the federal government’s Contract Cheating and Assessment Design project – surveyed 14,086 students and 1,147 staff.

The goal of this research was to collect and understand student’s perceptions of the likelihood of cheating on 13 different assessment tasks. The research then asked teaching staff which of the 13 tasks they used.

Unique, in-class tasks were perceived to be the hardest to cheat on. from www.shutterstock.com

The researchers have previously reported from this data set that 6% of students admitted to cheating. The purpose of the current round of analysis was not to understand the extent of cheating, but perceptions of how easily it might be done, and if that correlated with the tasks educators set.

They found, for both students and teachers, assessments with a short turnaround time and heavily weighted in the final mark were perceived as the tasks which were the most likely to attract contract cheating.

Assessments perceived as the least likely to attract contract cheating were in-class tasks, personalised and unique tasks, vivas (oral explanations of a written task) and reflections on practical placements. But these tasks were the least likely to be set by educators, presumably because they’re resource- and time-intensive.

Contract cheating and assessment design

The research confirms the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design is a complex one. There was no assessment tasks for which students reported a 0% likelihood of contract cheating. Students who engage in contract cheating both see and look for opportunities to cheat regardless of the assessment task.

For universities, that means they must assume cheating is always possible and simply changing what assessments they use will not combat the problem.

Authentic assessment might be as vulnerable to outsourcing as essays. from www.shutterstock.com

Many experts have advocated the use of supervised exams to combat cheating. But this new research adds to a growing body of evidence that exams provide universities and accrediting bodies with a false sense of security. In fact, previous data has shown students reported engaging in undetected cheating on supervised exams at higher rates than other types of cheating.

Another common approach is to use a series of small, graded tasks, such as spontaneous in-class tests, sometimes called continuous assessment. Even here, students indicated these were the third most likely form of assessment to be outsourced.

Who’s most likely to cheat?

There has been much attention, particularly during the MyMaster scandal, on international students’ use of contract cheating. The new research suggests both international students and domestic students from non-English speaking backgrounds are more likely to engage in contract cheating than other students.

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Read more: Don't assume online students are more likely to cheat. The evidence is murky

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The research also found business and commerce degrees were more likely be perceived as attracting contract cheating. Engineering was also particularly vulnerable to cheating.
Students from non-English speaking backgrounds hypothesised cheating would be most likely to occur in assessments that required research, analysis and thinking skills (essays), heavily weighted assignments and assessments with short turnaround times.

Students were still likely to cheat on supervised exams. from www.shutterstock.com

Perhaps unsurprisingly, students who indicated they were satisfied with the quality of teaching were less likely to think breaches of academic integrity were likely. In other words, this confirms previous research which showed students dissatisfied with their educational experience are more likely to cheat.

So what do we do about it?

This research provides yet more compelling evidence that curriculum and changes to teaching strategies and early intervention must be employed to support students’ academic endeavours.

The researchers also point out high levels of cheating risks undermining the reputation and quality of Australia’s A$34 billion export sector in international education.

The data demonstrates assessment tasks designed to develop relevant professional skills, which teachers are highly likely to set, were perceived by students as tasks that can easily be cheated on. These might include asking accounting students to write memorandums, reports or other communication groups to stakeholders, such as shareholders. In fact, among students from a non-English speaking background, the risks of cheating might actually increase for these tasks. This means authentic assessment might run the increasing risk of being outsourced.

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Read more: Assessment design won’t stop cheating, but our relationships with students might

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This research shows the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design is not a simple product of cause and effect. In fact, the nature of the task itself may be less relevant to the prevalence of cheating than other factors such as a student’s from non-English speaking background’s status, perceived opportunities to cheat or satisfaction with the teaching and learning environment.

All educators must remain vigilant about cheating. Teachers must be properly resourced by their universities to ensure they can create rich learning environments which uphold the integrity of the higher education system.

Burdened with large debts and facing a precarious job market after graduation, it’s perhaps unsurprising some students, particularly those who are struggling academically, take a transactional approach to their education. This new research provides more clear evidence contract cheating is a systemic problem that requires a sector-wide response.

Julie Hare, Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

15% of Students Admit to Buying Essays: What Can Universities Do About It?

by Jedidiah Evans, Australian Catholic University, The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/15-of-students-admit-to-buying-essays-what-can-universities-do-about-it-103101

Certain students are more likely to buy essays, and they may not even know it’s wrong. from www.shutterstock.com

New research on plagiarism at university has revealed students are surprisingly unconcerned about a practice known as “contract cheating”.

The term “contract cheating” was coined in 2006, and describes students paying for completed assessments. At that time, concerns over the outsourcing of assessments were in their infancy, but today, contract cheating is big business.

In 2017 alone, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported more than 20,000 students had bought professionally written essays from the country’s two largest essay-writing services.

According to a 2018 study, as many as 31 million university students worldwide are paying third parties to complete their assessments. This staggering figure was drawn by reviewing 65 studies on contract cheating. Since 2014, as many as 15.7% of surveyed students admitted to outsourcing their assignments and essays.

The growth in contract cheating speaks volumes about the modern view of education as a commodity.

Who’s cheating?

A recent survey, led by the University of South Australia, found international students demonstrated proportionately higher cheating behaviours. So did students who spoke a language other than English at home.

In 2013, a large online survey on academic honesty at six Australian universities found international students were significantly less aware of academic integrity processes, and much less confident about how to avoid academic integrity breaches.

A 2015 study of US student demand for commercially produced assignments found students with English as their first language who liked taking risks were about as likely to buy an assessment as students who were reluctant risk-takers, but who spoke English as a second language.

It’s no surprise that students whom we aggressively court for their higher fees and who are working in a less familiar language environment are turning to these services at higher rates.

A recent study on contract cheating in Australia concluded that the over-representation of non-native English speaking students in cheating surveys is linked to the failure of universities to provide support for language and learning development. Students are tasked with completing assessments for which they lack the basic English language skills.

Perhaps it’s time to move on from the essay format of assessment. Shutterstock.com

What’s being done about it?

Widely used plagiarism-detection companies, such as Turnitin, can detect similarities to material that already exists. But essay-writing companies loudly promote the fact their product is original.

In February this year, Turnitin announced plans to crack down on contract cheating. Its proposed solution, authorship investigation, hopes to automate a process familiar to any human marker: detecting major shifts in individual students’ writing style that may point to help from a third party.

But despite these technological advancements, students who are turning to such services have reasons far more complicated than laziness or disregard for personal responsibility.

Is it worth it?

Despite the moral panic over grades for cash, there’s some evidence to suggest students turning to essay mill services are not getting what they pay for. A 2014 mystery shopping exercise in the UK revealed the astonishingly low standard of commissioned work produced by essay mills. Of all the essays purchased, none received the requested grade, and many fell dramatically short of expected academic standards.

Rather than buying top grades, desperate students are being exploited by companies that take advantage of the very shortcomings (lower literacy and an ignorance of plagiarism protocols) students are hoping to mitigate.

One less obvious aspect of contract cheating that can’t be fixed by intelligent software is the predatory nature of essay mill companies. According to a 2017 study on cheating websites, commercial providers rely on persuasive marketing techniques. They often repackage an unethical choice in the guise of professional help for students who are weighed down by a demanding workload.

How can we discourage it?

In recent years, several scholars have explored the legality of contract cheating, along with the possibilities of defining a new offence under criminal law of providing or advertising contract cheating.

In 2011, for example, a law was introduced in New Zealand that makes it a criminal offence to provide or advertise cheating services. Yet the criminalisation of such services leads inevitably to the prosecution of cheating students, something the legal system has so far been reluctant to do.

But even discounting the possibility of legal action, plagiarism has hefty consequences for university students under misconduct policies, including revoking course credits, expulsion, and a permanent record of cheating.

Redesigning assessments is the primary way to tackle the growing problem of contract cheating. Recent suggestions focus on the development of authentic assessments: tasks that more closely mirror the real-world demands students will face after they graduate from university.

Rather than simply completing an essay, for example, a history student might be tasked with interviewing a local non-profit organisation, and producing a podcast episode.

Teachers who use authentic assessments hope to reduce cheating by tying learning to student’s hopes for their futures, but one obvious benefit is the difficulty of cheating in such individualised tasks. One key problem for overhauling assessment design is the troubling proliferation of casual labour in universities. The development of assessments is rarely, if ever, accounted for in casual teaching rates.

Turnitin works to reduce students’ work into patterns and algorithms, weeding out supposed cheats and frauds. But a more considered response must take into account the complex reasons students turn to these services in the first place.

Understanding why students are willing to pay for assessments might also illuminate a problem at the heart of tertiary education – one that is related to our present repackaging of knowledge as a resource to be bought, rather than an ennobling pursuit that is worthy of all the energy, time, and attention teachers and students can devote to it.

Jedidiah Evans, Sessional Academic in English, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Three Ways to Stop Students Using Ghost Writers

Group work may be a solution (AstroStar/shutterstock.com)

by Bejan Analoui, University of Huddersfield, The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/three-ways-to-stop-students-using-ghost-writers-60678

You might not believe in ghosts but you should believe in ghost writers.

According to recent research, many students have only a sketchy understanding of what plagiarism actually is. Some engage in dishonest practices to get their work done.

A quick internet search reveals a number of opportunities to procure essays on a range of topics, and at reasonable prices. But when students take credit for work that is not their own it devalues academic qualifications and reduces the confidence we can have in the ability of graduates.

A 2010 study by the business lecturer Bob Perry examined the extent and reasons for academic misconduct among 355 undergraduate and 122 postgraduate students at one school in one academic institution. It found that 14% of undergraduates and 6% of postgraduates in the study admitted that they had looked for essays online, and seven students admitted purchasing and submitting these essays. While this was clear evidence of the use of ghost writers in one department, a sector wide examination would be necessary to determine the full extent of the problem.

I’m not convinced university lecturers can always detect the ghosts. Commonly used software such as Turnitin looks for similarities to other published sources and so cannot “catch” bespoke written pieces produced by someone who is not the credited author. The notion of a lecturer challenging a student who they suspect may have used a ghost writer is good at first glance, but it is not always practical.

It’s possible that the lecturer may judge a submitted piece to exceed a student’s capability or demonstrate a fluency in the English language that is not apparent in their verbal communications - and suspect them of plagiarism or employing a ghost writer. But when these concerns are communicated to a student, no matter how they are expressed, they may sound a lot like “I didn’t think you were that smart”, or worse “I thought you were stupid”. Those are not things I want to say to my students.

So if we believe some students use ghost writers but we can’t determine whether they have or not, then what can we realistically do about it? Here are three suggestions.

1. Preventative measures

First, adopt methods that help ensure the authorship of the work. The time-honoured tradition of the oral examination in which the student demonstrates their understanding of the content of their work may catch out those who have paid for an essay. But it would take a significant amount of time to organise and then mark the performance of hundreds of oral examinations, making this solution largely impractical for those who teach large cohorts.

Alternatively, as Perry suggested, university lecturers could design the ability to use a ghost writer out of their assessments. I can envisage this taking a number of forms. For example, greater use of practical projects could be made, in which students undertake relevant tasks, such as designing and running a charity event as part of a business module. But there may not always be sufficient time, opportunity or resources available for all taught material to be engaged with in this manner.

2. Do away with traditional essays

Second, stop using individual written assignments altogether and replace them with assessment methods that are less amenable to ghostly assistance. Group assignments in which students work collaboratively to produce an essay, report or other output may be a viable choice - the hope being that the social pressure to conform would discourage students from using ghost writers.

The students' goals also play a role. Research I have been involved in has found that students who said they were most interested in learning favoured being put into a group with students they did not know, while those who were primarily interested in getting high marks wanted to pick those they knew. With that in mind we might be able to dissuade students from using ghost writers by convincing them that the best way to learn and gain high marks is to work together in the production of their assignments.

Still, written examinations may be the best alternative to stop cheating - although some students struggle with exams, and research has shown that students’ performance in coursework can be significantly better than in unseen exams. So swapping coursework for exams may put some students at a disadvantage.

3. Student and teacher collaboration

Third, and this is my preferred option, teachers could take a more hands-on approach to the production of students’ work. They could design assessments so that students’ work is a collaborative co-construction of the student and educator.

A good example would be a final dissertation or research project that students produce under the supervision and guidance of their tutors. If lecturers spend time helping students to develop their ideas, construct their arguments, and direct their research then they can also have some assurance that the final piece is the result of a joint effort between the lecturer and student. The obvious difficulty would be finding the time to make this work.

These solutions aren’t perfect, and some may be more appropriate in different contexts than others. But the ghosts are already in the machine, and if universities want to be confident in the credibility of their graduates then they’re going to have to do something about it.

Bejan Analoui, Senior Lecturer in Leadership, People, Management and Organisations, The Business School, University of Huddersfield

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Policing Won’t Be Enough to Prevent Pay-For Plagiarism

Differences between plagiarism and copyright (Wikipedia)

by Phillip Dawson, Deakin University, The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/policing-wont-be-enough-to-prevent-pay-for-plagiarism-42999

Buying and selling high-stakes assessments is bad for education. It undermines community confidence because we can’t be sure if a grade was earned or bought.

Plagiarism hurts plagiarists too, because they miss out on the learning opportunities that the assessment was supposed to provide.

Tensions around plagiarism may be part of a culture of distrust between teachers and students.

Recently, it was revealed that high school students in NSW are buying essays made-to-order online for little more than A$100. University assignments can be more expensive, costing up to $1000 from the controversial (and now-defunct) MyMaster website.

With the recent media attention, we could be fooled into thinking pay-for plagiarism is a modern, high-tech invention. However, the internet merely supports the logistics. Pay-for plagiarism is much older than computers - many of your favorite books were “ghostwritten”.

The difficulties in policing

The problem is that pay-for plagiarism is very difficult to police. Unlike “copy-paste” plagiarism or using an assignment that a previous student submitted, each pay-for assignment is made-to-order. We can’t just compare student work against a database of sources because each assignment is a bespoke creation.

Identifying exactly who wrote a particular piece of text is a hard problem. Disputes about authorship date back to biblical times - even the bible itself has books with disputed authorship. New technology may help discern if a student wrote a particular piece, but it is far from perfect, and far from application in a mass education context.

As anti-plagiarism enforcement gets smarter, so do the plagiarists. While we may be able to spot a ghostwritten university-level essay submitted by a struggling high school student, this is a rookie pay-for plagiarism mistake. Smart plagiarists rework the essays they pay for, or even employ techniques like “back-translation” by running plagiarised text through tools like Google Translate.

Some high-end services will even produce a tailored assignment just for you, based on analysis of your previous writing style. Techniques like these make it difficult to detect plagiarised work.

The possible way forward

Policing pay-for plagiarism may work to some extent, but it won’t completely solve the problem. So, what are our alternatives? How can we complement an enforcement approach?

NSW Teachers Federation president Maurie Mulheron favours requiring students to complete all assessments in class. Students can’t pay for someone else to do their work for them if the teacher is watching.

However, this approach creates further problems. The classroom environment is not an “authentic” environment for some of the tasks teachers set students. Consider an in-class essay versus a take-home essay assignment. Even in disciplines like history where an essay might be a true representation of what professional practitioners do, a stressful classroom and time limit can lead to students producing different work.

Mulheron’s approach would tell us much about what students are capable of within a classroom environment, but surely we want to know what they can do in the real world too.

Clever assessment design may be another part of the solution. Assessment that builds on the student’s own experiences, classwork, prior drafts and feedback is more challenging to ghostwrite. We can also build sequences of tasks that have a small mandatory supervised component. This is commonly implemented at universities as an exam that needs to be passed to pass a unit.

Above all else, we should examine the root causes of pay-for plagiarism. One study into the reasons higher education students plagiarise - the study was not restricted to pay-for plagiarism - found a variety of factors that we can learn from. One of these factors was pressure: time pressure, stress, pressure from family, and pressure from society.

This may be a factor for students paying for HSC assignments as well. For example, students at one school were apparently told they would be kicked out if their work was not good enough. Perceptions that poor performance will be punished, rather than addressed with support, may make pay-for plagiarism an attractive option.

Other issues in the study included teaching and learning issues (ranging from workload to bad teaching), laziness or convenience, and - my favourite - “pride in plagiarising”. Better detection of ghostwriting will not completely address these issues.

Solving the pay-for plagiarism problem requires us to understand why paying $1000 seems like a better choice than completing a particular assignment. Cheating students are definitely in the wrong, but when placed in a high-stakes, high-stress environment, they may feel like they have few other options. We need to change this.


Phillip Dawson is Associate Professor and Associate Director, Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Casualisation of the Academic Workforce: Once More, With Feeling

slideshare.net

by Kate Bowles, CASA: https://actualcasuals.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/once-more-with-feeling/

 

Last night, the ABC’s Four Corners ran a much anticipated piece on student recruitment and the management of academic standards in Australian universities, particularly as these issues relate to the international students on whom the sector depends.

 

Degrees of Deception can be watched online, if you missed it, and has prompted this response from an experienced casual academic with a work history at several institutions (this contributor has asked to remain anonymous, so as not to associate these sector-wide issues with one university in particular).

During the program broadcast, several comments noted on Twitter that casualisation of teaching is key to this issue, and noted in particular the courage of sessional academic staff who agreed to be interviewed. And a cheer from CASA to reporter Linton Besser and producer Peter Cronau for the fact that the program itself made clear that casualisation is a serious factor.

Nevertheless, this morning The Conversation has put out a follow-up piece which does not mention casualisation at all. The ICAC NSW report covered by Four Corners doesn’t address this directly either. Both treat universities as staffed only by “academics” without any consideration of how more than half are paid, or why this is relevant - Karina & Kate.

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I have quite a bit to say about sessional/casual academics and student academic misconduct. First things first.

Last night’s piece mentioned text-matching software as an important tool for maintaining standards of academic integrity. Although some providers are better than others, text-matching software will only ever catch some plagiarism - the pretty obvious and lazy cases (direct copy-paste from public, digitised sources, and matches to previous work in the system).

Text-matching software isn’t particularly effective at identifying where students have used a thesaurus to swap out a few words, or where they’ve rearranged a sentence/passage. It’s not going to catch shifts in tense, tone, vocabulary, citation style, argument or even formatting that can indicate dodgy work. It’s not going to catch where the student has pulled passages out of books that haven’t been digitised. It’s not going to identify mis/misleading/false attributions, or suspiciously marked changes in quality of argument or written expression.

Identifying those instances of plagiarism and academic misconduct requires a person, and this person is now very likely to be an academic casual paid by the hour.

Detecting plagiarism/academic misconduct is a skill, and like any it takes time and practice to get good at it. Casual academics may or may not have the opportunity to hone that skill. Me? I’ve had a lot of experience, and I’ve always had a slightly disturbing natural aptitude for spotting it. It’s a dubious talent, but a talent nonetheless.

Despite my experience and natural aptitude, I have spent many unpaid hours, days - probably weeks, over the years - investigating and documenting plagiarism and academic misconduct. Like many aspects of sessional employment, getting the job done properly depends on me being willing to donate my labour for free, well beyond the hours that I’m paid.

When a casual academic suspects plagiarism/academic misconduct, they have three options.

1. Ignore it (as we heard from the Four Corners report, this may be tacitly encouraged in some departments/institutions).
2. Painstakingly build a case (work that is very likely to be unpaid, time-consuming, frustrating and difficult) and give the evidence to the course convenor. At many institutions, casual academics do not have the power to file an academic misconduct claim, pursue it, or make decisions about it - only contract/permanent course convenors can. So they hand off the evidence to the course convenor, who may have had little (or no) contact with the student to date.
3. Notify the course convenor without building a case, and just flagging it as a possible problem. The problem here is that the casual worker, by virtue of having had more direct contact with students and with their work, is often in the best position to interrogate potential problems. Course convenors, even with the best of intentions, may not see what a casual saw, and may not pursue it any further or may require the casual to weigh in on the process and advise them, attend meetings with the student, etc. (again, this work is very likely to be unpaid).

As Four Corners explained, pursuing plagiarism/academic misconduct cases can be arduous, unclear, and time-consuming. University level academic standards aren’t treated lightly, and universities have developed labyrinthine processes to defend themselves against risk. So many academics instead choose to give unofficial warnings to students rather than follow official procedure.

This means that a student might receive countless, undocumented warnings (even unseen warnings, if they are merely written on an assignment that may never be collected) before their misconduct comes to the attention of someone willing and able to follow procedure.

So, at a typical university in a typical course, it will be casuals who identify and flag/document plagiarism, but the process of formal investigation, reporting, decision making and referral upwards is left to course convenors, who are also trying to manage increasing workloads.

This is despite the fact that the course convenor may not know the student from a blurred face behind a laptop in a packed lecture hall, and that the casual is generally in a much better position to judge whether the plagiarism/academic misconduct was undertaken with the intent to deceive, or accidental due to poor research, writing and referencing skills, or due to a student struggling with their work, panic or personal issues: language issues, family problems, health, work-life balance issues.

Casuals may also be in the best position to get an honest answer from a student about what happened, as they are more likely to have an existing relationship with them, and to make constructive recommendations through the official process about a case.

Does the student need foundational skill development? Do they need to consider adjusting their course load? Do they need to seek additional forms of support? Would resubmitting (for no higher than a pass grade) be helpful and appropriate? Are more serious consequences warranted?

In other words, casualisation divides the person who identified the plagiarism/misconduct, who has arguably the most informed perspective on a given case and given student, from the outcome, while at the same time relying on their unpaid time to make the case in the first place. Of course the increased rate of casualisation is going to have an impact on academic integrity.

Finally, and I could write a whole other post on this point alone: rising levels of plagiarism/academic misconduct may indicate a pedagogical, curriculum, or structural problem. Guess which academics are in the best position to identify and address those problems? Casuals. Guess who are typically excluded from those discussions? CASUALS.

Once more with feeling: casualisation divides folk with the best understanding of the teaching needs of a cohort from decision making about teaching. And so we cannot address the problem of academic integrity in Australian universities without talking with the frontline academics we expect to manage it, in their own unpaid time.