contract cheating | Learning, Teaching and Leadership

Coming in 2021! New book: Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Academic Integrity

August 10, 2020

Pretty excited to see that my upcoming book now has an official webpage on the publisher site! The manuscript has been officially approved by my editor, the wonderful Jessica Gribble. The next steps are for it to move into production. The scheduled release date is early 2021.

The book is not yet available for sale though. You’ll have to wait until closer to the publication date for that. In the meantime, you can send the book info to your friendly neighbourhood librarian, and ask them to put it in their ordering queue!

Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Academic Integrity

Libraries Unlimited

Pages: 230

The book will be available in paperback and e-book formats.

Description

Plagiarism is a complex issue that affects many stakeholders in higher education, but it isn’t always well understood. This text provides an in-depth, evidence-based understanding of plagiarism with the goal of engaging campus communities in informed conversations about proactive approaches to plagiarism.

Offering practical suggestions for addressing plagiarism campus-wide, this book tackles such messy topics as self-plagiarism, plagiarism among international students, essay mills, and contract cheating. It also answers such tough questions as:

Why do students plagiarize, and why don’t faculty always report it?
Why are plagiarism cases so hard to manage?
What if researchers themselves plagiarize?
How can we design better learning assessments to prevent plagiarism?
When should we choose human detection versus text-matching software?

This book focuses on academic integrity from a teaching and learning perspective, offering comprehensive insights into various aspects of plagiarism with a particular lens on higher education to benefit the entire campus community.

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Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, and the Educational Leader in Residence, Academic Integrity, University of Calgary, Canada. Opinions are my own and do not represent those of the University of Calgary.

This blog has had over 2 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

How to Deal with Contract Cheating: A Collection of Resources

June 1, 2020

Last updated: 20 October 2021

I have been getting a lot more requests lately about how to determine if a student has outsourced their academic work. I am noticing a need for more practical hands-on tools, particularly for educators who work at institutions that do not have an academic integrity office or staff with roles dedicated to academic misconduct investigations.

Resources for educators and administrators

Here are some of my favourite free, open-access resources to help educators and administrators:

Substantiating contract cheating for symbol-dense, logical responses in any discipline, particularly mathematics A guide for investigators (from TEQSA, Australia) https://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/substantiating-contract-cheating-for-symbol-dense-logical-responses.pdf?v=1634700092
Contract cheating detection for markers: checklist (from the UK-based LSEAIN Contract Cheating Working Group) https://rise.articulate.com/share/dPC3F7wAQgeKahu71aUg0vBKfEUg8vsj#/
Bretag, T., & Harper, R. (n.d.). Impossible to prove? Substantiating contract cheating. Retrieved from https://cheatingandassessment.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/EDUCATOR-RESOURCE-Substantiating-contract-cheating.pdf
Deakin University: CRADLE. (2018). How to detect contract cheating. Retrieved from https://www.deakin.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1853881/01-cradle-detect-contract-cheating.pdf
Eaton, S. E. (2020). 15 Strategies to Detect Contract Cheating. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112660
Eaton, S. E. (2019). U Have Integrity: Educator Resource – How to Lead a Discovery Interview About Contract Cheating. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111077
Ellis, C. (2015). Know the signs of contract cheating (Fact sheet). Retrieved from http://www.apfei.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Contract-Cheating-Factsheet-UNSW-2015.pdf
Sambell, K., Brown, S., & Race, P. (n.d.). ENhance QUICK GUIDE: Combatting Contract Cheating. Retrieved from https://staff.napier.ac.uk/services/dlte/Documents/14%20Combatting%20Contract%20Cheating.pdf
UC San Diego. (n.d.). Detecting Contract Cheating in Narrative Assessments. Retrieved from https://academicintegrity.ucsd.edu/_files/Detecting%20Contract%20Cheating.pdf
University of California – San Diego. (n.d.). Excellence with Integrity: Combating Contract Cheating. Retrieved from https://humber.ca/staff/sites/default/files/sub-attachments/Combating%20Contract%20Cheating.pdf
University of New South Wales. (n.d.). Have you contact cheated? Retrieved from https://www.arc.unsw.edu.au/uploads/Yellow%20poster_v2.pdf

Resources for Institutions

International Center for Academic Integrity. (2016). Institutional toolkit to combat contract cheating. Retrieved from http://integrity.fiu.edu/pdfs/Contract%20Cheating.pdf

Resources for Quality Assurance Agencies

International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE). (2020). Toolkit to support quality assurance agencies to address academic integrity and contract cheating. Retrieved from https://www.teqsa.gov.au/latest-news/publications/toolkit-support-quality-assurance-agencies-address-academic-integrity

I hope you find these helpful. It is important to have practical tools to be able to identify if a third party has completed work on the student’s behalf. I will update this post with more tool as I find them, review them and then assess their quality and utility, as I have done with all of the resources included in this post.

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

The Ed Podcast: Do the Right Thing

May 1, 2020

edlogo_sm A while ago I had the chance to talk with Shane, creator and producer of The Ed Podcast. In an episode he’s titled, “Do the Right Thing“, we talk about academic integrity, contract cheating and what educators need to know.

We recorded the episode, pre-COVID, after Shane heard about the cheating incident at the University of Alberta, involving 40 computer science students.

You can find the Ed Podcast on Twitter and Instagram

You can also subscribe to the podcast by searching in your podcast app for “ed conversations”.

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This blog has had over 2 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, and the Educational Leader in Residence, Academic Integrity, University of Calgary, Canada. Opinions are my own and do not represent those of the University of Calgary.

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Academic integrity violations in Canada that made the news 2010-2019

February 3, 2020

Significant Incidents of Academic Misconduct in Canada 2010-2019

At the end of the fall 2019 term, there were three instances of academic misconduct in Canadian higher education that made the news:

Brandon University, Manitoba

Students in a second-year nursing class at Brandon University faced disciplinary action after a final exam for the 2019 fall semester was deemed “compromised” (Klowak, 2020). The course in question was 71:250 Nursing Foundations II course, taught by Dr. Ali Salman. Although the total number of students implicated was not officially released,the media reported that between 46 and 48 students may have been involved. One news report printed a photo of a de-identified letter, signed by the Dean of the Faculty of Health Studies, Dr. John Moraros, indicating that the students would be offered the opportunity to re-take their final exam, with the caveat that the maximum they could earn on the rewritten exam would be 70%. Although the incident took place at the end of the fall 2019 term, details did not appear in the news until early 2020.

Simon Fraser University, British Columbia

On the west coast, the media reported that the Burnaby RCMP investigated allegations of someone impersonating a student during a final exam. Both the test writer and the student were arrested. The incident allegedly occurred on December 12, 2019, though details of the story did not appear the media for almost a week afterwards. Details about the individuals involved or the course the final exam related to were not released.

Saskatchewan Polytechnic, Saskatchewan

Twenty-two (22) construction electricians had their journeyperson certificates suspended or cancelled as a result of an investigation into exam cheating at Saskatchewan Polytechnic in Moosejaw. Saskatchewan Apprenticeship and Trade Certification Commission (SATCC) and an unidentified third- party investigation firm found that apprentices had accessed unauthorized materials during their exams, which included Red Seal interprovincial certification exams, one of the highest credentials available to journeypeople in Canada.

News stories over the past decade

The investigation reportedly began 18 months prior, with the cheating having been found to occur between 2015 and 2018. Two individuals were implicated in the scandal. CBC reported that an instructor who was found to have been giving out exam answers to students was fired following the investigation. In addition, an SATCC staff member was also found responsible and resigned.

These reports got me asking what other cases of academic misconduct were reported by the press in the past decade. I did some digging and documented some of the most prominent cases in this report.

One of the findings that surprised me was that the media have reported at least three cases in the past decade that resulted in arrests in Canada for contract cheating through exam impersonation. In addition the 2019 case at Simon Fraser University, there was an arrest made in 2016 at Concordia University and another two years prior for a similar situation at the University of Waterloo.

The report I pulled together documents key cases covered by the media in the past decade. Here’s to doing better in the decade ahead.

Get the full report:

Eaton, S. E. (2020). An Inquiry into Major Academic Integrity Violations in Canada: 2010-2019. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111483

Related posts:

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

University of Calgary activities planned for 2019 International Day of Action Against Contract Cheating

October 16, 2019

This year, the Univeristy of Calgary has activities planned for students, faculty, staff, teaching assistants and other members of the university community. We have activities being led by students all over campus including:

Student’s Union, Mac Hall – Lunch time awareness event and game.
Taylor Family Digital Library – Interactive prize wheel game.

Health Research Innovation Centre (HRIC) Atrium – Foothills Campus – Interactive prize wheel game.
Roaming Whiteboards – Social media campaign – Students Union representatives.

I will document the student-focused initiatives in another post after the Day of Action.

We have also launched the University of Calgary’s own social media campaign called #UHaveIntegrity. Here’s a photo of our shiny new laptop stickers that we’ll be giving out starting tomorrow:

#Uhaveintegrity sticker on Mac small

In this post, I highlight two workshops, designed specifically to help academic staff and teaching assistants better understand what contract cheating is and how to address it.

Workshop #1: Contract Cheating: What professors and teaching assistants need to know

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 – 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

How do you know if your students are buying their academic work from the Internet? How prevalent is this practice, anyway? How do you talk to your students about the issue of contract cheating? Get answers to these questions and more in this interactive workshop. Find out the latest research about academic outsourcing and get resources to help.

Participants will:

Gain insights into how the contract cheating industry really works

Learn what the latest research says

Learn practical ways to detect contract cheating and how to talk to students about it.

Facilitator: Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD. is the Educational Leader in Residence, Academic Integrity, at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on academic integrity, misconduct and contract cheating.

Workshop #2: Pay-to-Pass: Knowledge as a commodity

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 – 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

With the aid of social media, companies offering study ‘help’ and better grades have proliferated the post-secondary sector at an alarming rate. Students are deliberately or inadvertently breaching academic integrity regulations in the search of an easier solution to improve academic performance. This interactive workshop examines how some of these companies have created the ease and (sometimes) anonymity of online uploads and downloads.

Participants will:

Learn the scope of the pay-to-pass phenomenon

Share and discuss their experiences with pay-to-pass companies

Brainstorm solutions to this rising crisis.

Facilitators: Ebba Kurz, PhD., Associate Dean, Undergraduate Health and Science Education and Director, O’Brien Centre for the Bachelor of Health Sciences Program, Cumming School of Medicine

Nancy Chibry, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Programs and Student Affairs, Faculty of Science

These workshops are free of charge and open to all members of the campus community.

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Share or Tweet this: University of Calgary activities planned for 2019 International Day of Action Against Contract Cheating #defeatthecheat #excelwithintegrity #uhaveintegrity

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Learning, Teaching and Leadership