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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An Initial Analysis Of The
Contextual Information Available
Within Auction Posts On Contract
Cheating Agency Websites
Thomas Lancaster and Robert Clarke
Birmingham City University
ICAES 2014

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Background

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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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“Originators” Of Contract
Cheating
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5071886.stm

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Not Turnitin
Turnitin is a text similarity detection engine,
which determines when two pieces of text share
commonality
Contract Cheating produces original work, so
will not be detected using Turnitin

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The Role Of Context

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Can Context Help?
The paper hypothesis:
Knowing the context of a request placed online
by a student looking to cheat will help to
attribute the cheating student

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Two Stages Of Attribution
1. Identify from which university/academic
institution an attempt at cheating has been
taken from
2. Identify which individual student out of a
larger cohort attempted to cheat

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Examples

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Example Of Contract
Cheating (1)

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Example Of Contract
Cheating (2)

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Towards Intelligent Detection

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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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Missing Context (Can This
Be Gathered?)
Copies of all assignment briefs provided
worldwide, in all subjects
Full profiles of all students worldwide, with
identifying/characteristic information

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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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Recommendations

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Partial Solutions
The Contract Cheating proposes multiple partial
solutions:
Six-Stage Contract Cheating Detection Process
Use of Stylometrics
Watermarking of assignments to allow cheating
students to be identified

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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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More Information

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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?