School With 27,000 Students Clocks 10,000 Hits to Cheating Websites. In One Month.
Plus, China ups their cheating prevention tactics. Plus, an essay mill ad. Again.
Issue 139
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10,000 Hits a Month, and Other News from Australia
As we wait to see what enforcement actions the Australian authorities will take against illegal cheating providers (see Issue 138), a recent article in Times Higher Ed has general bits of news regarding the state of academic integrity in the Commonwealth.
A staff member at Charles Darwin University (CDU) said the school blocked access to more than 2,000 websites suspected of providing cheating services to students, in violation of the law in Australia - sites that were “blacklisted” by the national regulator. That staffer said that:
In just one month, CDU recorded almost 10,000 hits on the sites
That number was despite many students being “away from campus” due to Covid and, presumably, not on the school’s servers. CDU has about 27,000 students.
I’m not sure what that means. But 10,000 is a big number, about 330 every single day.
Maybe that 10,000 number indicates that the students seeking illicit and improper help are highly motivated to find it - pinging several websites until they find one that’s unblocked. If that’s the case, the persistence to find cheating providers does cut against the idea that cheating is born of confusion or lack of clarity regarding what is or is not permitted.
The article continues that:
The number of final-year New South Wales school students [high school seniors] caught cheating on assessment tasks last year was 27 per cent higher than before the pandemic, with 854 offences detected.
Most of those were plagiarism.
A CDU professor said the data:
scratch the surface of a snowballing problem
A Torrens University vice-chancellor said a large portion of cheating at their institution involved master’s-level students in business or information systems and said:
“We should not be naive about the creativity underlying this whole thing. We should also not oversimplify the problem. It is not a matter of just education, and it will go away. It is a matter of consistently monitoring, managing and supporting.”
Since you read “The Cheat Sheet,” you know I agree. Education is important, but it alone is no answer.
Also, there were two other news reports on that jump in cheating among high school students in Australia - here and here. The second one extensively quotes James Thorley, a vice president at Turnitin, the plagiarism detection company. He says:
“Schools and universities have always been vulnerable to academic misconduct, however increased reliance on digital and asynchronous learning, coupled with ease-of-access to the wealth of information online, means students are being presented with more and more tempting shortcuts in their learning,”
“The shift to digital can, unfortunately, yield academic integrity risks that require greater awareness and mitigation.”
I agree with that too.
China Steps Up Anti-Cheating Tactics
A news outlet in Indonesia has a story on the new and increased tactics Chinese authorities are using to stop cheating on the nation’s college placement exams. That’s because:
Over the years, students have used wireless cheating devices disguised as erasers, belts and watches. Some also use tiny earpieces to communicate with accomplices helping them outside the exam room.
The innovations have forced authorities to step up their game in response.
Therefore:
Exam centres this year have deployed metal detectors, facial and fingerprint recognition technology, cellphone-signal blockers, wireless detectors and even drones in their fight to root out cheating
And, the article says, universities have even canceled time off for students so they don’t try to impersonate test-takers. All of which leads to:
Even before the exam kicked off in earnest on Tuesday, security officers had arrested 52 people nationwide. Cheaters and their accomplices face up to seven years in jail.
Yet Another Essay Mill Ad
We’ve looked at these misleading ads for essay mills in the past - see Issue 52 for just one example. Or Issue 120. You get the idea.
Here’s another new one - this time in an outlet called “LA Progressive.”
This one carries the headline:
5 Best Homework Help Websites
Now, if you’re betting, and you know how these operations work, chances are very good that all five of these sites are actually the same site - because why would any of them pay to market a competitor? And because research has shown that single essay providers operate multiple storefronts to lure clients.
I share these ads not because they’re especially insightful or even rare, but as a reminder that professional cheaters and cheating companies are spending real dollars to sell their services. This ad was “sponsored” content. Someone paid for it to be written and paid again to have it placed on this website.
Cheating is profitable. And easy to find.