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All your own work? Essays and the Internet
Guest Editorial
All your own work? Essays and the Internet A topic that often arises during the exam season is whether or not it is possible for students to buy their essays on the Internet. It is a delicate area. On the one hand, we all like to believe that we can spot work that is out of character for that student. On the other, we do not like to run the risk of accusing students of cheating: the appeals process is usually rigorous. Is it possible to buy these essays and, if so, how easy is it? The answer, for me, turned out to be `very easy'. I used the Google search engine and typed in the keyword `essays'. A company selling essays was in the first list of findings. These are some of the features of the site: It offers essays for sale on a huge range of topics from engineering to nursing It allows you to view a section of the essay before you buy it You can buy the essay on-line and cut and paste it into your own word processor If there is not a ready-made essay on the site, the company will have it written for you It offers a two-tier, simple, pricing structure: one price per page, for pre-written essays and just over twice as much for tailor-made. On the home page of the site is a disclaimer to the effect that the company is keen that students do not try to pass off these essays as their own work. They ask students to reference the page in their own work. On another page, however, is the darker message that sites like this will exist all the time that teachers set the same essays for courses, year after year. The message is clear: buy one of our essays and use it to frame your own project. Or, perhaps, buy one of our essays and submit it as your own. Clearly, all this is legal. Just as it is possible to buy books and journals, it is possible to buy very specific papers on very particular topics. No one working for the company running this service forces anyone's hand. They cannot be
& 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd doi:10.1054/nedt.2002.0784, available online at http: // www.idealibrary.com on
responsible for what others do with their papers, however cynical we may feel about the company's intentions. The implications of a service like this are daunting. It would be quite possible to identify a course, study the assessment processes and order your essays prior to starting. Given that many courses are now assessed only by essay or project work, this should not be too difficult. And, if it is difficult, order purpose-written essays on an as-needed basis. The cost need not be prohibitive. The site I looked at asked for about fifteen pounds per page of custom-written text. All the usual credit cards were accepted. The continuing pressure to hold higher and higher qualifications must make this an option for those who are really driven to `achieve' at whatever the cost. While those of us working in education may be surprised that anyone would want to hold a qualification that they did not work for, I suspect that the existence of sites such as these indicates that this view is not held as widely as might be believed. Education, it seems, can become a true commodity. Can we do anything to lessen the risk of students carefully planning to cheat in this way? While essays and projects constitute the bulk of assessments, it seems unlikely. When custom written papers can be bought and sent to you within days, there seems little that can be done to stop the determined student from working in this way. Adopting `different' titles for essays each year clearly cannot solve the problem. Companies of the sort identified here can no doubt tailor essays very specifically. The student or a friend can easily do what further tailoring that is required. I suspect that the only way open to avoiding this essay-option is to ensure that all courses have a formal, written examination component. This would ensure that at least part of the course is assessed in a relatively objective
1
Nurse EducationToday (2002) 22, 187±188 187
Guest Editorial
way: students would be forced to put their own pens to paper. I am aware that there are, for some, ideological problems with this view. There seem few other ways of ensuring that we have a clear understanding of this student's particular understanding of a given topic. How far can all this go? If an essay writing service is so easily available, it cannot be too hard (for a considerable sum) to find someone prepared to write a dissertation or thesis. At many universities, there is not a requirement that students attend an oral examination for a master's thesis. Fortunately, it seems that all universities have a requirement that doctoral students do submit to such an examination. With the above thoughts in mind, I did a search, on Google, for `dissertations'. Sure enough, there was a company that would help you with your dissertation. For those students whose research ideas do not fit their current templates, the company will offer a custom-written service for those `difficult' topics. The tone, on this page, is a little more tentative. There is no suggestion that you will be sold a complete work but neither is there anything to suggest that you will not be able to buy the bulk of your finished work. The company offered help on both dissertations and theses. The two words are used differently in the US to that which is the case in the UK.
188 Nurse EducationToday (2002) 22, 187±188
A thesis is normally submitted for a master's degree and a dissertation for a doctorate. In the UK it is the other way round. The message is the same, though: help is at hand for the masters student and the doctoral student who does not want to write the major piece of work that constitutes the submission for a higher degree. Would you spot a piece of work that was not written by your student? If you did, what evidence would you call to support your claim that this was not the student's work? All the time that it remains impossible to answer these questions in a convincing way and if we rely on continuous assessment, companies that sell essays are likely to thrive on the internet. If we are to remain fairly true to any sort of educational values, we need to think clearly and carefully about these issues. Meanwhile, unscrupulous students can purchase all the written work they need on the Internet. Professor Philip Burnard, PhD, RN, Vice Dean School of Nursing and Midwifery Studies University of Wales College of Medicine Heath Park Cardiff, UK
& 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd
All your own work? Essays and the Internet A topic that often arises during the exam season is whether or not it is possible for students to buy their essays on the Internet. It is a delicate area. On the one hand, we all like to believe that we can spot work that is out of character for that student. On the other, we do not like to run the risk of accusing students of cheating: the appeals process is usually rigorous. Is it possible to buy these essays and, if so, how easy is it? The answer, for me, turned out to be `very easy'. I used the Google search engine and typed in the keyword `essays'. A company selling essays was in the first list of findings. These are some of the features of the site: It offers essays for sale on a huge range of topics from engineering to nursing It allows you to view a section of the essay before you buy it You can buy the essay on-line and cut and paste it into your own word processor If there is not a ready-made essay on the site, the company will have it written for you It offers a two-tier, simple, pricing structure: one price per page, for pre-written essays and just over twice as much for tailor-made. On the home page of the site is a disclaimer to the effect that the company is keen that students do not try to pass off these essays as their own work. They ask students to reference the page in their own work. On another page, however, is the darker message that sites like this will exist all the time that teachers set the same essays for courses, year after year. The message is clear: buy one of our essays and use it to frame your own project. Or, perhaps, buy one of our essays and submit it as your own. Clearly, all this is legal. Just as it is possible to buy books and journals, it is possible to buy very specific papers on very particular topics. No one working for the company running this service forces anyone's hand. They cannot be
& 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd doi:10.1054/nedt.2002.0784, available online at http: // www.idealibrary.com on
responsible for what others do with their papers, however cynical we may feel about the company's intentions. The implications of a service like this are daunting. It would be quite possible to identify a course, study the assessment processes and order your essays prior to starting. Given that many courses are now assessed only by essay or project work, this should not be too difficult. And, if it is difficult, order purpose-written essays on an as-needed basis. The cost need not be prohibitive. The site I looked at asked for about fifteen pounds per page of custom-written text. All the usual credit cards were accepted. The continuing pressure to hold higher and higher qualifications must make this an option for those who are really driven to `achieve' at whatever the cost. While those of us working in education may be surprised that anyone would want to hold a qualification that they did not work for, I suspect that the existence of sites such as these indicates that this view is not held as widely as might be believed. Education, it seems, can become a true commodity. Can we do anything to lessen the risk of students carefully planning to cheat in this way? While essays and projects constitute the bulk of assessments, it seems unlikely. When custom written papers can be bought and sent to you within days, there seems little that can be done to stop the determined student from working in this way. Adopting `different' titles for essays each year clearly cannot solve the problem. Companies of the sort identified here can no doubt tailor essays very specifically. The student or a friend can easily do what further tailoring that is required. I suspect that the only way open to avoiding this essay-option is to ensure that all courses have a formal, written examination component. This would ensure that at least part of the course is assessed in a relatively objective
1
Nurse EducationToday (2002) 22, 187±188 187
Guest Editorial
way: students would be forced to put their own pens to paper. I am aware that there are, for some, ideological problems with this view. There seem few other ways of ensuring that we have a clear understanding of this student's particular understanding of a given topic. How far can all this go? If an essay writing service is so easily available, it cannot be too hard (for a considerable sum) to find someone prepared to write a dissertation or thesis. At many universities, there is not a requirement that students attend an oral examination for a master's thesis. Fortunately, it seems that all universities have a requirement that doctoral students do submit to such an examination. With the above thoughts in mind, I did a search, on Google, for `dissertations'. Sure enough, there was a company that would help you with your dissertation. For those students whose research ideas do not fit their current templates, the company will offer a custom-written service for those `difficult' topics. The tone, on this page, is a little more tentative. There is no suggestion that you will be sold a complete work but neither is there anything to suggest that you will not be able to buy the bulk of your finished work. The company offered help on both dissertations and theses. The two words are used differently in the US to that which is the case in the UK.
188 Nurse EducationToday (2002) 22, 187±188
A thesis is normally submitted for a master's degree and a dissertation for a doctorate. In the UK it is the other way round. The message is the same, though: help is at hand for the masters student and the doctoral student who does not want to write the major piece of work that constitutes the submission for a higher degree. Would you spot a piece of work that was not written by your student? If you did, what evidence would you call to support your claim that this was not the student's work? All the time that it remains impossible to answer these questions in a convincing way and if we rely on continuous assessment, companies that sell essays are likely to thrive on the internet. If we are to remain fairly true to any sort of educational values, we need to think clearly and carefully about these issues. Meanwhile, unscrupulous students can purchase all the written work they need on the Internet. Professor Philip Burnard, PhD, RN, Vice Dean School of Nursing and Midwifery Studies University of Wales College of Medicine Heath Park Cardiff, UK
& 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd