Multilingual essay mills: And other forms of contract cheating in languages other than English
Date
2019-04-18
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Abstract
Contract cheating occurs when a third party completes work on behalf of a student who then submits the work for assessment as if it were their own (Clarke & Lancaster, 2006; QAA, 2017). Our study focuses specifically on commercial suppliers offering online services to students in languages other than English. In Canada, an estimated 71,000+ post-secondary students engage in contract cheating (Eaton, 2018). In 2006, Canada was among the top four nations where students bought academic work online (Clarke & Lancaster, 2006). Although contract cheating is illegal in some jurisdictions, that is not the case in Canada. Canada’s anti-corruption laws include “principles of extraterritoriality” (Draper & Newton (2017. p. 8) that might allow for legislation that would facilitate legal action against such companies, even if they operated offshore. Currently, teachers and administrators must address contract cheating at the local level. Little research has been conducted in Canada on contract cheating. Further, much of the available literature focuses on contract cheating in English. This need for research in other language contexts, with a focus on the Canadian context promoted in our research question: What evidence exists that online providers offer academic work in languages other than English? We conducted a rapid review (Hartling et al., 2017) of websites which might offer online contract cheating (e.g. “essay mills”) to better understand how prevalent these services are in additional languages and to what extent they are available to K-12 students. We identified eighteen online sites offering academic work in ten languages in addition to English: (1) Arabic, (2) French, (3) German, (4) Hebrew, (5) Italian, (6) Latin, (7) Mandarin, (8) Portuguese, (9) Spanish and (10) Welsh. Two-thirds of the websites marketed directly to K-12 students, with one offering explicit services to students in grades six and up. This shows contract cheating is happening not only in a variety of languages, but is also a consideration for K-12 students. At the end of this sessions, educators at all levels will have an awareness of how online services target students in languages other than English and will learn how to take steps to promote academic integrity among young and adolescent learners.
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Keywords
Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity, contract cheating, Canada, French, foreign language, multilingual, essay mill
Citation
Dressler, R., & Eaton, S. E. (2019). Multilingual essay mills: And other forms of contract cheating in languages other than English. 1-14.