Cheating soft essay regimes

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Professor Kennedy, Jul 28, 2003.

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  1. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    The coming "continuous assessment" scandal comes closer and threatens DL - it is already rampant in campus degrees.

    Sunday Times (UK)

    "Student cheats fuel online essay boom
    Geraldine Hackett and Gareth Walsh


    LAW students and other undergraduates at some of Britain’s top universities cheat in their degrees by buying “tailor-made” essays from specialist companies.
    An undercover reporter was offered a 2,000-word law essay — later assessed as being of 2:1 standard — for £300. The names of the “essay banks” are being circulated at parties by students under increasing pressure to get good degrees.

    Although plagiarism is a problem recognised by universities, a Sunday Times investigation found cheating to be more widespread and systematic than previously thought. Tutors admit commissioned papers are extremely difficult to detect.

    The most successful companies — which are making thousands of pounds a year — produce more than 500 essays a week, costing from £80 to £800. One essay can account for as much of 10% of marks towards a final degree.

    Law is predominantly targeted. One law tutor said he was being paid up to £10,000 a year on top of his salary by writing for undergraduates studying at universities including Newcastle, Durham and Bristol.

    The Sunday Times inquiry began after a Newcastle sociology student admitted buying10 essays for £800 which, over three years, earned him a 2:2 degree. A reporter approached Law Essays and Tutors UK, a company run by Barclay Littlewood, 25, a law graduate. Its website boasts: “We are specialists in researching all aspects of academia tailored to your individual needs.” The firm’s price list ranges from £300 for an essay by a law graduate to £450 for one by a solicitor and £800 for one by a barrister delivered the same day.

    After two days and payment of £420, the 2,000-word essay was delivered. It was independently assessed by a law professor at a leading university as of 2:1 standard.

    For months Littlewood has been using university careers boards to recruit graduates who have at least a 2:1, offering to pay them for “research pieces” of 2,000 to 3,500 words.

    Finsbury Law Tutors offered a similar service. Its boss, Dorit Chomer, who used to run a law publishing firm, charged £350 for an essay on company law that was judged to be of 2:2 standard by an independent professor. Chomer claimed to be producing 15 to 20 essays a week at present, but that rose to 500 during peak periods.

    She said: “The more complaints about us the more hits we get (on the website). We are all prostituted to something; it is not my problem. If you buy a gun in a shop, what you do with it is your business.”

    As well as using internet companies, students also rely on informal networks of specialists. One London-based part-time law tutor said he had written essays for students at most top universities including Newcastle, Durham, Bristol and Exeter.

    He said: “The dons don’t seem to notice. If an undergraduate can afford it, I don’t see why they shouldn’t. It is usually bright students who like to spend a lot of time playing. Our names and numbers get passed around at parties.”

    One 21-year-old law graduate, with a first-class degree from a Midlands university, admitted buying essays and said: “Nobody wants to talk about this. It is common where students are under pressure.”

    Senior dons privately admit students plagiarise, but say customised essays are almost impossible to detect. On many law courses essays account for up to half of the degree marks.

    One head of a law department said: “Law is vulnerable because all students cover core areas. It is impossible to monitor because it would just take too long to track it down. Students are under pressure to get a 2:1 because that means big bucks.”

    Colin Rickwood, Birmingham University’s pro-vice- chancellor, said universities picked up most plagiarism, but added: “We would not claim to police it 100%.”

    Companies offering essays insist they are selling research to students and the papers are not meant to be reproduced word for word in course work. Both Chomer and Littlewood have disclaimers on their websites saying the essays they provide should not be passed off as the work of the purchasers.

    But Chomer told the undercover reporter: “Change it a little and then send it back and I will tell you if it still flows.”

    Littlewood said: “It would be the biggest cheat in the book to hand it (the essay) in as your own work. If you tell us it’s for research purposes we are happy and we’ll supply it as soon as you need it.”

    When approached by The Sunday Times last week Littlewood, whose business is expanding overseas, said it was difficult to prevent students ordering work and passing it off as their own. "
     
  2. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Nothing new under the Sun.

    Some thirty years ago a scandal erupted in the U.S. over the selling of term papers with much outrage being expressed in many quarters. Some was of the "doth protest too much" variety. One news columnist related that in his college days, fraternities like the one he belonged to kept on hand essays and theses of past members for the edification of current members. While not approving of the practice, he saw the selling of term papers as the "democratization" of an old, restricted practice.
     
  3. MarkIsrael@aol.com

    [email protected] New Member

    The title "Cheating soft essay regimes" is Prof. Kennedy's choice of words (not in the article).

    What, in his opinion, would constitute a "hard essay regime"?
     
  4. MarkIsrael@aol.com

    [email protected] New Member

    > The firm’s price list ranges from £300 for an essay by a law
    > graduate to £450 for one by a solicitor and £800 for one by a
    > barrister delivered the same day.


    Pardon my ignorance, but I thought a barrister's specialty was making oral arguments in court. Why would a barrister write a better essay than a solicitor?
     
  5. Homer

    Homer New Member


    Furthermore, why is this any particular 'threat to DL'? If anything, it supports the proposition that cheating is easily accomplished regardless of the delivery method.
     
  6. cmt

    cmt New Member

    Shouldn't the concern be towards the fact that Barristers and Solicitors are the source of the essays? Putting drug cartels behind bars does more good than putting junkies in prison. The fact that Barristers are pumping out essays should sound the ethical alarm bell.

    Those evil students forcing those innocent Barristers and Solicitors to write essays :rolleyes:
     
  7. roy maybery

    roy maybery New Member

    Re: Re: Cheating soft essay regimes

    I read prof Kennedy as sugesting that all essay regiemes are soft where a substantial proportion of the marks are distributed amongst essays. However, It is my view that essays are an essential learning tool. A tool which allows the student to indulge in research and at the same time fix into the mind, arguments that surround specific issues or parcels of knowledge.

    Of course I am doing Imperialism and Culture at Sheffield Hallam at the moment; a MA that is all essays and a dissertation. I am to arroganrt to cheat and I am doing the MA largely to water the gardens of my mind anyway. I do realize though that there is nothing stoping anyone else presenting work that is not their own. I am satisfied that I neither do or need to.

    The way to reduce opportunity to cheat is to have invigilated exams that hold the majority of the marks. Quite difficult for most people if they engaged in distance learning. It could mean perhaps either proctoring or air fares; both inconvenient

    Another way to reduce cheating might be to remove the degrees awarded to those involved, both author and user of the purchaced work, when caught. Surely a seller can be held moraly responsible for the use that his or her piece of work is used for. Especially if it is a one off piece sold to an individual rather than a published paper. If I have a party and I ply one of my guests with drink and send him off at the end of the evening in his car, I would have a legal responsibility. If I give someone a gun and he goes and does a murder, I would shoulder some of the legal consequences. Why not apply the same thinking to university papers?

    I teach in high school it is usually fairly easy to detect if a particular piece is written by the student or plagiarized. It is largely due to writing style which can be checked against invigilated or previous work.

    Roy Maybery
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 28, 2003
  8. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    Mark seems to be missing the point. It is not that there are such things as "hard essay" regimes per se, unless the essay is written in a timed session in front of an independent invigilators, otherwise known as a "final examination" with such features as closed book, no choice of questions, graded by the awarding faculty, Externally Examined by senior faculty from other universities, one resit only, with a non-zero failure rate, with no marks for "continuous assessment", "attendance"(!) or "participation in class", or any other extraneous attributions.

    Homer is disengenuous. Many DL courses, including MBAs from "top schools" so-called "accredited" by AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS use essays written off site and out of sight as part of the assessment process. Such regimes invite cheating which is hard to detect. That is why it is a particular problem for DL. The best antidote is to avoid such essay practices. See above. That was my point.

    Cheating is always possible but can be minimised in an invigilated exam room (most modes of cheating are known and we seldom discover new ones, but we catch most of the others and deal with them). When cheating reaches 80 per cent of a class (as it did recently in a UK University - not EBS - we have a crisis of potential to compromise DL where detection of this kind of fraud is weak. I hope you care about this half as much as I do.
     
  9. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I agree. Essays are the meat-and-potatoes of the various humanities subjects, and they are normally written outside of classrooms, usually with a library close at hand.

    It seems to me that continuous assessment could even be a safeguard against cheating. If multiple smaller essays were assigned throughout a semester, if those essays had to address issues and material discussed in class, and if there was some kind of on-going interactive electronic class discussion taking place, professors would have class relevance along with stylistic and intellectual consistency to tip them off that individual assignments might be spurious.

    Paying somebody else to emulate multiple assignments in a consistent fashion would essentially mean paying somebody else to take your whole class for you. Is that more likely than dishonest students paying somebody to take their one big proctored exam for them by supplying them with a fake ID?

    I think that Gavin Kennedy's concerns are obviously important, but I think that his solution is unconvincing. On-going class participation, assignments and (yes) creative/research essays are too important a part of the teaching/learning process to simply dismiss.
     
  10. MarkIsrael@aol.com

    [email protected] New Member

    Professor Kennedy writes:

    > Mark seems to be missing the point. It is not that there are
    > such things as "hard essay" regimes per se, unless the essay
    > is written in a timed session in front of an independent
    > invigilators, otherwise known as a "final examination" with such
    > features as closed book, no choice of questions,
    [...]

    Ah. Do you believe that master's and doctoral theses should be written under those conditions, as well?

    I hate phrases like "the point is". "My point is" is fine; but "the point" suggests that other people are not allowed to make points.
     
  11. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Many pointed comments in this thread.
     
  12. Homer

    Homer New Member


    Yet I still don't quite understand your argument. It appears that writing essays "off site" is problematic regardless of whether a course is taken via DL or in a traditional setting. Why would this be unique to DL? In fact, it does not appear that the article (quoted in your original post) has anything to do with DL. The students purportedly buying essays weren't taking courses via DL; they were in residence.

    I have the distinct impression that you believe cheating is more rampant in the DL world than elsewhere. I have yet to see any evidence of that, however.
     
  13. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    Tiresome nit picking

    Mark is creating the impression he prefers to nit pick phrases I use rather than deal with substance. I noticed this last week but ignored it as the point I was making was meant light heartedly (Norman French, etc.). This time its my clipping a phrase: 'Mark seems to be missing the point [which I am making]'. Sorry, it is of no more significance than that.

    Next he switches to something entirely different: Masters and Doctoral theses, which are much longer than "continuous assessment" essays of a couple of thousand words.

    Masters and Doctoral theses are not easily downloaded from the web and put in as your own work. Examiners at the Doctoral level are well familiar with the literature and how it integrates into their subject. Class essays are a trifle thin in comparison.

    Bill is probably right about essays on campus, though the incidence of fraud is becoming serious. The examples given in the Sunday Times essay are becoming the norm, not the homely class that Bill is familiar with. I do not dismiss their educational value but I do not think they should count towards the award. That corrupts their educational purpose. Our students write essays set by the eMBA programme and grade them against the faculty answer and get feedback too. But they still have to sit the exam for 100 per cent of their marks.

    We examine 20,000 candidates a year (many sitting two or more a Diet) and we believe the personation Bill thinks is easy is not common. There are nine final exams not one. Our statistical tests spot variations likely to be cheating and the exam regime makes it difficult to cheat by copying before the exam (nobody knows what's in a exam, question spotting is not possible), consulting notes during the exam is countered (it's where most are caught - toilet visits etc.,), use of programmed and downloaded calculators is prohibited and text messages too. The point is, IMHO, properly invigilated final exams reduce the incidence of cheating to a minimum: short essays increase the opportunities. In DL that is a high risk; too high in my view.

    Mark should answer that point and not evade it. I do not know how I have irritated him but nit picking is not a happy road to tread, so whatever it was I apologise for it.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 28, 2003
  14. June

    June New Member

    BillDayson said, "If multiple smaller essays were assigned throughout a semester, if those essays had to address issues and material discussed in class, and if there was some kind of on-going interactive electronic class discussion taking place, professors would have class relevance along with stylistic and intellectual consistency to tip them off that individual assignments might be spurious."

    I once had an English professor tell me, towards the end of a DL composition class, that she had once suspected I was turning in somebody else's work but then recognized my "voice" was consistent in e-mail and Blackboard discussions. At the time I thought it was a really odd thing to say--what would be the point of taking a writing class and not doing my own writing?
     
  15. MarkIsrael@aol.com

    [email protected] New Member

    I have no grudge against Prof. Kennedy. The phrase "the point is" has been a peeve of mine for years.

    I am in favour of measures that would reduce cheating: for example, I think every course should have at least one proctored exam, and the student should be required to make an "oral defence" of randomly chosen submitted work.

    I am not in favour of "minimizing" cheating. We could "minimize" cheating (to zero) by closing all the schools, but we wouldn't want to do that.

    I think there are necessary academic skills that cannot be assessed in a proctored exam, and if they are not tied to grades for submitted work, some students may never acquire them. Take a Computer Science course in object-oriented programming. The whole point is to be be able to write a large program well, but there isn't enough time in a proctored exam to write a large program. Or take an English literature course. The student is supposed to be able to do his own analysis of the literature. In an essay, the student has time to develop his own view, and could be penalized for plagiarism. For an exam, a student will likely just memorize and regurgitate an analysis from Cliffs Notes / Coles Notes / Key Fact Cards, and I don't see how can be fairly penalized for doing that.

    Yes, undergraduate term papers are "thin" compared to Master's theses, but I think students should be required to develop the necessary skills on a smaller scale at the undergraduate level.

    Americans have got grades based partly on submitted work for as long as anyone can remember, and they haven't become a nation of cheaters because of it. Of course, the top British universities have been turning out good people as well with their exam-only model, so my case may not be invincible.
     
  16. Sharon Bonner

    Sharon Bonner New Member

    In my opinion, buying a job in specialized companies is not a bad thing. After all, not all students can write essays and dissertations.
     
  17. Mac Juli

    Mac Juli Well-Known Member

    Hello!


    While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, you join today, necromance two threads to say us this - with a reference to a site where you can download essays for money?
    I am not entirely sure if this is ok, but hey, it's up to the admins to decide this!!

    Best regards,
    Mac Juli
     

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