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Commercial Aspects Of Contract CheatingRobert Clarke and Thomas Lancaster

Birmingham City University

ITiCSE 2013

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Background

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The Burning Questions

How are students cheating?How is technology helping students to cheat?Who is involved in the student cheating process?Who is profiting when students are cheating?

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Who Are We?

Thomas Lancaster

Senior Lecturer in ComputingPhD “Effective And Efficient Plagiarism Detection”Prog. Leader BSc Computer Science

Robert Clarke

Educational ConsultantVisiting Lecturer/Principal Lecturer30 Years Experience Teaching At BCU“Detective Bob”

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Cheating Through Original Work

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Contract Cheating

Contract cheating occurs when a student has original work produced for them, which they then submit for academic credit

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Typical Contract Cheating Essay Mills

If you thinking, "I just need someone to write my essay?" ProfEssays.com is the right choice if you want to get the best grade for your assignment. We strive to be the best partner for your academic career. Try our services – buy your essay now!

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The Agency Site Alternative

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Agency Sites For Commercial Work

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Contract Cheating Using Agency Sites

StudentAgency Site

Workers

1. Student posts assignment details onto agency site

2. Workers make bids to do the work

$20

$50

$50

3. Student selects bid Payment is escrowed

4. Selected Worker does assignment

5. Student receives solution Payment is released to Worker

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Explicit Agency Sites For Student Assignments

Post your homework for free and wait for answers from teachers. Most likely, more than one teacher will answer your question. You will be able to see a preview of the answers and purchase the one that seems the best for you.

If you don't understand your assignment or don't have enough time to complete it, let our tutors take care of the work for you.

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Breakdown Of Contract Cheating Attempts By Agency

ODESK

TRANSTUTORS

OTHER

LIVEPERSON

SCRIPTLANCE

ESSAYBAY

GETACODER

VWORKER

FREELANCER

0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000

29

45

105

216

294

725

1289

5468

10558

Postings by Agency Mar 2005 – Jun 2013Total of 18,729 detected items

Number of postings

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Postings On Freelancer (January 2007 to June 2013)

Jan, 07 Jan, 08 Jan, 09 Jan, 10 Jan, 11 Jan, 12 Jan, 130

500000

1000000

1500000

2000000

2500000

3000000

3500000

4000000

4500000

5000000

Incorporation of vWorker postings

Incorporation of LimeExchange

postings

Date Posting Detected

Proj

ect I

D (s

eque

nce)

Incorporation of ScriptLance postings

Items below trend line not detected when first posted

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What A Typical Student Posting Looks Like

Budgetrange

ProjectStatus

Details other

postings

Agreed price

Selected worker

Student alias

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Postings By A Typical Student

Student "davidwood91“ posted 5 OPENGL assignments Mar-Apr 2013

Other research shows “average” student posted between 4 and 7 assignments.

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Postings By A Less Typical “Student”

Title Paid Coder Date

Teaching Methods -- Literacy & Elementary Reading $85 USD geologistt Mar 18, 13

Teaching Methods--Literacy & Elementary Reading $100 USD remnyakovavw Mar 4, 13

Competency Exam Task $175 USD sdk2788 Jan 21, 12

Formal and informal assessment techniques for evaluating $90 USD sdk2788 Jan 5, 12

Bias in Testing $90 USD sdk2788 Dec 18, 11

Teaching Writing in the classroom $60 USD sdk2788 Nov 21, 11

Classroom Social Enviorment $60 USD sdk2788 Nov 14, 11

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT - Management Systems $65 USD sdk2788 Oct 6, 11

Classroom Management; Routines $60 USD sdk2788 Sep 9, 11

Experiential Learning $50 USD MrSir Apr 19, 11Setting & Communicating Expectations In the classroom Essay $35 USD MrSir Mar 4, 11

Legal Rights of Students with Disabilities essay $50 USD MrSir Feb 10, 11

Human development and learning, short essay $30 USD hotline69 Feb 7, 11

Cognitive development, a compare & contrast essay $40 USD sdk2788 Jan 31, 11

“pennykw” posted 27 items from Jan 2011 to Mar 2013

Either one student posting all his/her assignments or a contractor specialising in education courses at WGU (Western Governors University)

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Who Gets Involved?

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The Cast Of Players

Student Agency Site

Essay Mill Site

Worker

IntermediaryContractor

The student may “outsource” the work direct to the agency or indirectly through a essay-mill site or intermediary contractor

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“Intermediary Contractors”

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“Intermediary Contractors”

Intermediary Contractors undertake, for a fee, to complete assignments for students.Post a large number of assignments Post assignments from a range of subject areasAssignments traced to different universitiesOften linked to “Essay Mill” and “Homework Help” sites

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Examples Of “Intermediary Contractors”

Contractor Alias Date Started

Assignments Detected

Average Value (USD)

tutorapex Nov-09 134 110.1BTSacademy1 Apr-10 30 113.3mastermatlab Jul-10 45 42.7vipin85gupta Dec-10 83 86.0cjylondon Feb-11 65 224.6worldcitizen324 Mar-11 97 60.3yheducation Apr-11 25 109.2erocan Oct-11 24 162.9Charles2011 Nov-11 36 72.5powerapple Jan-12 54 92.7chunny02 Apr-12 31 97.5assignmentshelp Nov-12 64 70.5 Average 101.4

Based on a sample of recently completed

jobs

Represents 336 jobs with a total value of

34,000 USD

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Typical Posting By An “Intermediary Contractor”

Contractor’s Alias and previous postings

Assignment Brief in attachments

(as scanned image)

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Typical Range Of Postings By An “Intermediary Contractor”

cjylondon on Freelancer

Based on a sample of 59 postings made March to June 2011

Total value of 12,814 USD

Included assignments attributed to 18 different UK universities.

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Frequent Workers

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Frequent Workers

Frequent Workers specialise in undertaking student assignments.

Contractor “cjylondon” selected a small number of workers to carry out these 59 tasks.

Worker Jobs Value USD

sdk2788 21 5,195

raiseq 9 2,126

writingspirit 6 1,146

hotline69 5 424

saeedyasir 3 1,134

waqar21081974 3 419

dmjuma 3 245

writer048 2 628

jnk87 2 449

swiftcult22 2 196

PixelBrains 1 471

noureenpenwalla 1 314

Balistap40 1 68

Totals 59 12,814

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Typical Frequent Worker ActivitiesAssignments Completed By “sdk2788” Apr – May 2013

Title Employer Value $USDAcademic Writing - Literature Short Answer Questions hatcher 105Academic Writing - Book Report hatcher 62Technical writing richardgush 435Quality System in IT Thush73 20410 Page Paper with References awj118 310IT MGMT Task 3 Tguitari 50IT MGMT Task 1 Tguitari 50Strategic Information Systems munishluther 280The transition and influence of market economy in Russia Alihan777 471Casablanca Essay hatcher 125English Literature caro155347 132comparative essay greenpaint 110Why Didn't They Ask Evans? hatcher 187PESTEL analysis munishluther 70Research paper - Marketing Mix Analysis jale007bond 130answer the questions in essay style jus91 107OIL, OPEC and World Economies ustesol 185Writing a financial report TheMelt 181Global shifts have occurred in recent years fuelled partly by the Alihan777 129Land Economic Essay -1500 Words - Harvard Referencing Sunnitro 100

Average 171

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Linking The Cast Of Players

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Contractor Links To Essay-Mill Sites

If your college or university teacher gives you an assignment or project which is difficult to solve, then come on our board of experts. Our team of qualified and professional people provides all kind of solution of any topic

Entry on FacebookPosting and details on Freelancer

Essay-Mill Site

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Contractor To Essay Mill Site Link

Thank you and welcome to the SiteThe Student Tuition Anabasis.Briefly provide supportTheses all levels and thematic fieldsStudent work within the semester with the possibility to cover the work of all directionsStatistical Analysis - Statistical StudiesTranslations from and into over 50 languages

http://www.anavasis.gr/

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Contractor Example Postings

The below is a project for one of our customers. The student needs the coding part of his dissertation

Dissertaion title : Optimal Investment Planning for Distributed Generation in a Competitive Electricity Market

We are an educational company and want the below project for one of our clients

During this course, you will develop an information portal on a topic of your choice based on focused crawling technology.

The work is your one of our customers who is a student, so it is a student work

Abstract: The thesis includes a study of the IEEE 802.11n standard on the operation at the physical level and MAC layer of wireless local area networks ... in MATLAB.

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Monetary Value Of Postings

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Analysis of Postings on Freelancer (1)

Site has been monitored since Jan 2007More frequently since mid 2010

Unable to inspect every posting madeWe sample based on keywords (eg “assignment”, “plagiarism”)Examine activities of known “workers” and “contractors”

“Contractors” may hide real content of postingsCustom Projects may contain little detailProjects & attachments may be deleted after completion of job

Effort is put into postings where student may be identifiableAlso where there is evidence of frequent offending

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Analysis of Postings on Freelancer (2)

Estimate 5% of postings on Freelancer are attempts at “contract cheating”From analysis of project ID sequences

10,558 postings detected between Jan 07 and June 13Average of 1,920 postings per yearEstimated value of $192,000 per year ($100 average value)Freelancer admin fee is 10% = $19,200 income to freelancer.com

Estimate that only 1/3 of postings detected“Contractors” using custom/deleted projects to hide postingsLarge number of postings only found in follow-up searches

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Freelancer.com (1)

Fees payable to Freelancer(depends on type of membership)

Employer : 3% of valueFreelancer: 10% of value

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Statistics since February 2004 Number of posted projects: 4,647,828Number of verified users: 7,867,670Value of projects posted: $1,150,694,000 USD

Source: http://www.freelancer.com/info/about.php accessed 21/6/13

Average value of a project = 248 USD

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Freelancer.com (2)3.7 Terms of useOur Site acts as an online venue to allow Users to offer and buy professional services. As a result you acknowledge and agree that Freelancer.com has no control over the quality or legality of the professional services provided by Users on our Site, or the ability of Freelancers to provide the services or the Employers to pay for the services. We do not guarantee that a User will actually complete the professional services or act lawfully in using the Site.https://www.freelancer.com/page.php?p=info/terms

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“Homework Policy”

There is no explicit restriction on posting “homework” on Freelancer.

Posting copyrighted material is prohibited (9.1 User Content)

Upon request, Freelancer will remove assignments where there is copyright infringement.

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Recommendations

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Continued Development

Clear that the players in the contract cheating arena are benefitting financiallyNeed to automate the detection and attribution of contract cheating through agency sitesContinued education, research and analysis needed, particularly outside Computer ScienceAgency sites represent only the “tip of the iceberg”

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Further Resources

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For More Information

Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_cheating

Contract Cheating Special Interest Group (support by the Higher Education Academy):https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=CONTRACTCHEATING

Slides Available At:http://www.slideshare.net/ThomasLancaster

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Our Contact Details

Thomas LancasterEmail: thomas.lancaster@bcu.ac.ukWebsite: http://thomaslancaster.co.ukTwitter: @DrLancaster

Robert ClarkeEmail: robert.clarke@bcu.ac.uk