This presentation, from ITiCSE 2013, explores the commercial extent of contract cheating, where students pay to have work completed on their behalf. The presentation includes examples and explores the contractors and frequent workers who responsible for original work being created for students.

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Commercial Aspects Of
Contract Cheating
Robert 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 Computing
PhD “Effective And Efficient
Plagiarism Detection”
Prog. Leader BSc Computer Science
Robert Clarke
Educational Consultant
Visiting Lecturer/Principal Lecturer
30 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
Student
Agency Site
Workers
1. Student posts assignment details
onto agency site
2. Workers make bids to do the work
$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
29
45
105
216
294
725
1289
5468
10558
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000
ODESK
TRANSTUTORS
OTHER
LIVEPERSON
SCRIPTLANCE
ESSAYBAY
GETACODER
VWORKER
FREELANCER
Postings by Agency Mar 2005 – Jun 2013
Total of 18,729 detected items
Number of postings

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Postings On Freelancer
(January 2007 to June 2013)
0
500000
1000000
1500000
2000000
2500000
3000000
3500000
4000000
4500000
5000000
Jan, 07 Jan, 08 Jan, 09 Jan, 10 Jan, 11 Jan, 12 Jan, 13
Incorporation of
vWorker postings
Incorporation of
LimeExchange
postings
Date Posting Detected
ProjectID(sequence)
Incorporation of
ScriptLance postings
Items below trend
line not detected
when first posted

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What A Typical Student
Posting Looks Like
Budget
range
Project
Status
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, 11
Setting & 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
Intermediary
Contractor
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 areas
Assignments traced to different universities
Often 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-09 134 110.1
BTSacademy1 Apr-10 30 113.3
mastermatlab Jul-10 45 42.7
vipin85gupta Dec-10 83 86.0
cjylondon Feb-11 65 224.6
worldcitizen324 Mar-11 97 60.3
yheducation Apr-11 25 109.2
erocan Oct-11 24 162.9
Charles2011 Nov-11 36 72.5
powerapple Jan-12 54 92.7
chunny02 Apr-12 31 97.5
assignmentshelp 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 Activities
Assignments Completed By “sdk2788” Apr – May 2013
Title Employer Value $USD
Academic Writing - Literature Short Answer Questions hatcher 105
Academic Writing - Book Report hatcher 62
Technical writing richardgush 435
Quality System in IT Thush73 204
10 Page Paper with References awj118 310
IT MGMT Task 3 Tguitari 50
IT MGMT Task 1 Tguitari 50
Strategic Information Systems munishluther 280
The transition and influence of market economy in Russia Alihan777 471
Casablanca Essay hatcher 125
English Literature caro155347 132
comparative essay greenpaint 110
Why Didn't They Ask Evans? hatcher 187
PESTEL analysis munishluther 70
Research paper - Marketing Mix Analysis jale007bond 130
answer the questions in essay style jus91 107
OIL, OPEC and World Economies ustesol 185
Writing a financial report TheMelt 181
Global shifts have occurred in recent years fuelled partly by the Alihan777 129
Land 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 Site
The Student Tuition Anabasis.
Briefly provide support
Theses all levels and thematic fields
Student work within the semester with the
possibility to cover the work of all directions
Statistical Analysis - Statistical Studies
Translations 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 2007
More frequently since mid 2010
Unable to inspect every posting made
We sample based on keywords (eg “assignment”, “plagiarism”)
Examine activities of known “workers” and “contractors”
“Contractors” may hide real content of postings
Custom Projects may contain little detail
Projects & attachments may be deleted after completion of job
Effort is put into postings where student may be identifiable
Also where there is evidence of frequent offending
32

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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 13
Average of 1,920 postings per year
Estimated 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 postings
Large number of postings only found in follow-up searches
33

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Freelancer.com (1)
Fees payable to Freelancer
(depends on type of membership)
Employer : 3% of value
Freelancer: 10% of value
34
Statistics since February 2004
Number of posted projects: 4,647,828
Number of verified users: 7,867,670
Value 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 use
Our 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
35
“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 financially
Need to automate the detection and attribution
of contract cheating through agency sites
Continued education, research and analysis
needed, particularly outside Computer Science
Agency 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 Lancaster
Email: thomas.lancaster@bcu.ac.uk
Website: http://thomaslancaster.co.uk
Twitter: @DrLancaster
Robert Clarke
Email: robert.clarke@bcu.ac.uk