This presentation explores the role that context can play in the detection of contract cheating. The paper looks at how context can be identified, both directly on the posts made on agency websites, and through wider observation of the contract cheating landscape and makes some initial proposals as to how intelligent software to detect contract cheating could be developed.
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The Role Of The Authors In
Contract Cheating Research
Dr. Thomas Lancaster
Senior Lecturer in Computing
PhD “Effective And Efficient Plagiarism
Detection”
Programme Leader BSc Computer Science
Lead of Innovations in Computing Education
Group
Robert Clarke
Educational Consultant
Current Visiting Lecturer/Former Principal
Lecturer
30 Years Experience Teaching At BCU
19,000 Attempts at Contract Cheating Found
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Automated Detection
An automated system to detect contract
cheating using agency sites, such as
Freelancer.com, would need to
scrape/automatically collect as much contextual
information as possible
Context is largely used in this way by current
manual detection methods (by a detective)
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Examples Of Available
Context
The text of the cheating request (does this
match known assignment content? does this
contain institutional identifiers?)
The username/history/photo/stated location of
the requester (does this match information on
other sites?)
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An Approximation Of
These Databases
Suggestion, use Google to approximate the
necessary searches for images, assignment
information, contact information
Use Facebook for social media searches for
student information
Augment this using Turnitin, which contains
some assignment briefs (e.g. embedded within
student uploads)
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The Community Role
The wider community can support Contract
Cheating detection by developing fully and
partially automated tools
Student and research projects have a role to play here
Embedding the use of contextual information
within these tools should aid in the detective
process
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Continued Awareness
There are still academics who are unaware that
students can cheat, or who seem tempted to
“turn a blind eye”
Changes to pedagogy and to staff attitudes are
needed to continue to preserve the value of
academic qualifications
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For More Information
Thomas Lancaster:
http://thomaslancaster.co.uk
thomas.lancaster@bcu.ac.uk
Robert Clarke:
robert.clarke@bcu.ac.uk
Slides Available At:
http://slideshare.net/ThomasLancaster
Video Discussion Available At:
http://youtube.com/DrThomasLancaster
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Discussion
How can context for contract cheating on agency sites
be automatically gathered?
Can existing systems be used to augment automatically
gathered contextual information?
What algorithmic techniques are most suited for the
detection of contract cheating?