Update: Anti-Cheating Bot Scoring Hits
Plus, a new survey on business views on test misconduct. Plus, more cheating sites blocked in Australia.
Issue 157
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Update: Anti-Cheating Bot is Scoring Hits
Way back in 2018, I wrote about a bot that University of Maryland Global Campus - then known as University of Maryland, University College - was building to counter the proliferation of copyrighted course materials available from cheating providers such as Course Hero and Quizlet.
Their bot idea was cool because it was to be a search and destroy deal - finding the material and generating and sending take down notices.
Well, the university has an update.
According to a UMGC spokesperson, the bot went live in November of 2019 and:
more than a million pieces of classroom material have been scanned and more than 840,000 URLs scanned from web search results. More than 11,000 takedown notices have been sent and just over 7,000 successful takedowns have been recorded.
Two things.
One, and I cannot say this enough, good for UMGC. I’m delighted to see schools engaging the threats to academic integrity and their reputations directly. Passivity is not going to prevail over profit. Seriously, good for them. That they’ve pulled back some 7,000 pieces of content belonging to their professors and their school is great - just no other word for it.
Two, that UMGC’s bot has found 11,000 articles of their protected course material in three years should accentuate the size of this challenge. Roughly, that’s ten every single day - at just this one school. If anyone needed more evidence as to the scale of today’s industrial cheating, there it is.
I asked if UMGC would or could share their bot with other schools, or advise them on creating their own. I haven’t heard yet and will give an update when they reply. But if I worked at any college or university on the planet, I’d be calling UMGC right now to see how I could clone their bot.
Survey: More Than One Third of Corporate Development and Training Officers “Not Concerned” about Cheating
Questionmark, the sizeable UK-based assessment platform, released a survey this week of 500 corporate “Learning, Training and Development” officers, 250 each in the UK and US.
The headline finding was that:
35% were not concerned about cheating within their organization
Given how common cheating is, it’s surprising that more than one in three of these business leaders would tell a survey they were not concerned about it. I mean, whatever they do or do not do to deal with test misconduct, you would think they’d at least say the right thing. Moreover, if 35% say they’re not concerned, I’m worried about what percentage take any meaningful action at all. Yikes.
Double yikes that we’re talking about professional testing because there’s a gulf of consequence between cheating in college civics and cheating on your nursing or engineering certification exams.
Interesting to me was the breakdown of responses between the UK and US. I’ve contended for a long time that American awareness of and activity on cheating are far behind. According to Questionmark, that may not be so, at least as it relates to professional test settings:
While 27% of UK respondents reported being ‘extremely concerned’ about test fraud within their sector, it rose to 40% for US respondents. When we next asked them how they felt about their own organization, 22% of UK respondents admitted to being ‘extremely concerned’ which rose sharply to 46% for US respondents.
And on the question of their perceived ability to detect cheating:
while only 19% of UK organizations said that they were ‘extremely concerned’, it rose to 41% for the US.
Questionmark says bluntly:
US senior leaders are, overall, taking test cheating more seriously.
Huh. That’s not a pattern I see in higher education. Maybe I’m missing it. Or maybe professional testing attitudes are just that different.
Or maybe Americans just know what to say about it. I mean, the true constant of academic and test misconduct is that, when asked, every single school or business or credential provider will at least say how seriously they take integrity, what a priority it is.
Australia Blocks Another 100+ Cheating Sites
You probably know that Australia has banned cheating. It’s not alone in this - the U.K., Ireland and others have also taken legislative action.
Somewhat uniquely, though, Australia’s laws give it the power to block the websites of cheating providers, a power they are using. Back in August, the national regulator TEQSA blocked 40 sites (see Issue 142). This week, TEQSA announced it had blocked 110 more.
The government has, in the past, refused to identify the blocked sites. Though based on the first 40, the action was focused on minor essay mill players and not the big money, international folks. While that’s disappointing, action is good and blocking some is better than doing nothing.
Interesting too that in the announcement, a spokesperson said:
“Through our work with the sector, reports from the public and our own intelligence gathering, we’ve identified about 2330 suspected academic cheating sites. Of particular interest to us are 580 of these sites that are targeting students at Australian institutions.”
More than 2,300 sites. Again, I do not think people appreciate the scale of the cheating-for-profit game.
Perhaps more importantly, TEQSA also said it was able to have 697 “social media posts and accounts” removed from platforms including Facebook and Instagram. Sure, they will reappear. But cutting off the advertising and outreach of cheating providers is big.
Finally, if you just happen to know of any websites that sell cheating services, you can report to them to TEQSA here.
ICAI “Day of Action” on Contract Cheating - October 19
The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) will host its annual “International Day of Action against contract cheating” on Wednesday, October 19.
ICAI is hosting free panels and events and also announced other upcoming activities.