During the fall 2017 semester, we saw an increase in students buying papers from online “consultants” offering professional writing services.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education documents how this works via social media:  “How Twitter Hooks Up Students with Ghostwriters,” January 19, 2018 at https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Twitter-Hooks-Up-Students/242299

These papers are custom written according to the student’s specifications and can be very inexpensive to buy. Custom papers are not flagged by Turnitin since they are original work.

These papers are best spotted because, generally, they are “perfect,” without typos, grammatical errors, or citation problems. The papers also have no authentic voice and lack any insight into the student’s own experiences or ideas and make no reference to the course, its particular ideas, arguments, or discussions. The papers often get the topic at least slightly “wrong.” We are in the process of suspending a number of students who chose not to do their own work; most of these had prior infractions.

In order to protect the integrity and reputation of your course and department, we ask that you pay special attention to this problem and to consult with us about any papers that you suspect are not genuine.

• We can help you decide about the nature of the student’s work and guide you during this process. Please remember that reporting students gives us a chance to educate them and to challenge their ideas of what matters and why.
• We believe that our responses will reach friends of friends and will help give students the language to reject the chatter on social media.

This type of cheating can be difficult to prevent but below are some best practices that might help. If you would like to send along additional ideas you have found useful in your classroom, we will then expand this list, adding your ideas to our website.

Overall Approaches

• Talking with students about misconduct can be difficult because it can create a feeling of mistrust in the classroom and one of disrespect. Instructors have talked to us many times about this problem.
• It is best to approach dishonesty through a discussion about the importance of integrity, keeping the discussion positive. Instructors often explain their desire to be fair to every student in the class and to make the classroom safe so all students know they are being graded fairly.
• Instructors have also found that explaining how integrity matters in something related to academics in research and how “faking it” could have disastrous effects helps students to better understand the importance of their actions. If people cheated on research, what could happen? Why is integrity important to a university, to teaching, and to learning? Some students do not know the answers to these questions and indeed have never even thought to ask such questions.
• Likewise, instructors also report that students who do not know what they are learning or why they are learning it tend not to value the experience. Students who understand these concepts are motivated to learn and have no need or desire to cheat. Be sure to keep talking about learning: what, why, when, and how.
• Teaching the love of learning, in other words, is the best preventive action we can take; indeed, some students cheat because they believe their own thoughts, ideas, and responses are not worthy of your time.

Additional Best Practices to Prevent Cheating

• Use Turnitin for all written assignments, even short homework questions.
• Ask students to sign an “honor code statement” before submitting any major work or taking any exam. This is best done for papers well before the due date but for tests just before students open the exam. Be sure to also remind students of the CLAS Code of Academic Honesty, https://clas.uiowa.edu/students/handbook/academic-fraud-honor-code.
• Stay away from paper topics that are broad and thus are more easily researched.
• Create unique assignments tied to your course content that will be hard to address unless the student was attending and listening.
• Consider requesting that students connect the topic to their own experience or to other courses the student has taken, with the paper perhaps using the first-person voice.
• Have students work on a draft in a discussion section, workshop them in small groups, and then collect those drafts. You do not need to grade these or read these; tell students they are only for peer review and to help students begin the assignment sooner than later, with points given for participation and completion of the draft rather than for its quality.  Keep the drafts to learn more about your students’ writing and the help they need.
• Break the paper assignment into smaller steps, with a due date for each step while explaining that this will help students to better manage a complex task while providing time to work on each aspect of the paper carefully.
• Talk to your students about the relation of writing to thinking and as a tool for problem solving that will matter in their lives.
• Do five minute pre- or post-writing on a topic to get a sense of a student’s writing voice and style and to give the students practice writing and thinking about class topics. Do not grade these but collect them a few times during the semester unannounced and count these for participation points. These short assignments will help you see the students’ level of writing when done spontaneously as well as a chance to assess their learning of the material.
• Use a grading rubric and share it with students; include items in the rubric related to student voice, perspective, and experience, letting students know you value their particular insights and style.
• Give students examples of papers you value because of the individual quality of thinking and writing that appears in the paper.
• Work with the Writing Center and the Writing Fellows to provide writing help for students.
• When grading a paper, if it looks too “perfect,” inspect the “document properties”; sometimes students will forget to remove the actual author’s name from these properties.
• If a paper’s quality seems above a student’s ability, request that they come into your office to discuss the ideas in the paper. Present this as a chance to talk about ideas. Let the student know you care about their thinking. If at the end of this conversation, it becomes apparent that the student is unfamiliar with the topic, let them know that you suspect the paper is not their own work—but first give them a chance to show what they actually do know.
• Consult with CLAS on any questions you might have about suspicious work. Remember, no matter what preventative steps are taken, some students will be inclined to take a short cut and that is not the instructor’s fault.
• Submit suspicious papers to CLAS using the Academic Misconduct Reporting Form.
• Visit this site to understand more about the CLAS Academic Misconduct policy, to find the reporting form, and to read the CLAS Code of Academic Honesty: https://clas.uiowa.edu/faculty/undergraduate-teaching-policies-resources/academic-misconduct

Thank you for your help.  We look forward to hearing from you and supporting your work with students.