This talk, from the HEA STEM Conference 2014, looks at research into the attribution of contract cheating cases found on agency websites. Previously, contract cheating detectives have struggled to attribute many assignment briefs found online. This presentation provides examples of assignment briefs that have been attributed through the use of Turnitin, adding a powerful weapon to the arsenal of the contract cheating detective. The full paper associated with this presentation, containing more details about the data collected, is available from the Higher Education Academy.

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Using Turnitin As a Tool For
Attribution In Cases Of Contract
Cheating
Thomas Lancaster & Robert Clarke
Birmingham City University
HEA STEM Conference 2014

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Contract Cheating
A student uses a third party to produce
academic work for them

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Business Card Distributed
During Induction Week At
Birmingham City University

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Business Card Distributed
During Induction Week At
Birmingham City University

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Turnitin
Turnitin is a text matching service, used to
identify students copying from external
services and colluding with other students

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Contract Cheating
Work produced using contract cheating is
original, so Turnitin will not identify
sources for this work

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Attribution
The challenging process where a contract
cheating detective tries to identify the
university that student contract cheating
requests found online are from
Most of our work is based around the Freelancer.com
agency site

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Some Success
Running student contract cheating requests
through Turnitin has started to show interesting
results for a small number cases

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Turnitin Example 1
Large match to
assignment brief

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Turnitin Example 2
Multiple small
hits from the
same source

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Turnitin Example 3
No matches when
first posted
But received request to view
from another university when
it matched one of their
assignments
2 months later

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Turnitin Example 4
Turnitin Report from Posting in Jan 2014
Shows that same stock assignment has
been used before in previous years
Brainmass.com
provides stock
answers

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Turnitin Example 5a
Freelancer request
to re-write
assignment
Source located by
Turnitin

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Turnitin Example 5b
We try to follow up other postings.
This was made by the same person as
before and matches the same source

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Turnitin Example 6
Multiple sources
for
EdExcel courses
Example of
“false positive”
matches

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Turnitin Example 7
Turnitin also
matches public
web sites
Particularly useful
if “old data” not
found by Google

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Turnitin Example 8
Multiple hits, but
no response to
Turnitin requests
Possible problems:
Staff Turnover
University no longer
registered with Turnitin

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Current Use
Turnitin is now allowing contract cheating
detectives to attribute work that has not been
identified using other methods
29% success rate based on sample in paper
Recommendation – academics should load all
assignment specifications into Turnitin

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Resources
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_cheating
Contract Cheating Special Interest Group (supported by the Higher
Education Academy):
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/webadmin?A0=CONTRACTCHEATING
Materials from recent HEA STEM Contract Cheating Workshop:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2013/13_March_Computi
ng_Contract_Birmingham

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For More Information
Thomas Lancaster
Email: thomas.lancaster@bcu.ac.uk
Website: http://thomaslancaster.co.uk
Twitter: @DrLancaster
Robert Clarke
Email: robert.clarke@bcu.ac.uk
Slides Available At
http://www.slideshare.net/ThomasLancaster