[Open-education] Fw: [M25-LT-GROUP] Plagarism - Turning us over

Fri May 6 09:37:56 UTC 2016

*apologies for cross posting*

Dear Open Ed friends

Academics in the UK are leading on a petition to make illegal essay mills, which are basically companies what write essays for students which tend to be really difficult to identify, as they are nicely written but not by the students, which is basically a fraud, if you want to contribute, please sign this petition https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/128037 and spread the word

Best wishes

J

Dr. Javiera Atenas
HEA Fellow
UCL School of Management
Gower St, London, WC1E 6BT
London

________________________________
From: The M25 Learning Technology Group <M25-LT-GROUP at JISCMAIL.AC.UK> on behalf of Rose Heaney <romieheaney at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: 06 May 2016 10:12
To: M25-LT-GROUP at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: [M25-LT-GROUP] Plagarism - Turning us over

Big issue Tina, I agree.

Needs to be tackled on many fronts.

Just listened to yesterday's PM interview with the writer which gave an interesting perspective not least on the ambivalence in universities when it comes to cracking down hard on it.

There's a petition doing the rounds at moment to make essay mills illegal which people might like to think about signing. It has a way to go before it gets to 10000.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/128037
[https://petition.parliament.uk/assets/os-social/opengraph-image-74d2a08295a6290b3e3c5b57a8d37deedf3d61f8a07d36883a6750f1ac82e828.png]<https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/128037>

Petition: Parliament should make "essay writing mills" illegal<https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/128037>
petition.parliament.uk
I believe there are important values that hold human society together: If you work hard, act with integrity, be creative and solve problems then you should get ahead in life. In my opinion, 'Essay Writing Mills' are not in accordance with these values. They should be made illegal.

No single thing will solve this crisis but it's getting a lot of air time at the moment which can't be a bad thing.

Rose

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Tina Rowe <t.rowe at gold.ac.uk<mailto:t.rowe at gold.ac.uk>> wrote:

Hello everybody,

Last Friday I was  listening to the PM programme on Radio 4 where there was a hefty feature about plagiarism and essay mills in particular.  Andrew Bomford from the programme has been doing some research into these practices but the really hairy part of the discussion was about how widespread this is and how far into a degree this can go.  He has a very wide ranging interview with a professional writer that will air on this week's programme that has some jaw dropping claims including having written work that has been awarded a first.

You can hear the piece on the radio player here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783lqm, it starts at about 51 minutes.

I think it really highlights the pointlessness of using tools such as Turnitin as the main way of identifying cheating if it is not used in conjunction with library borrowing or registers etc.

Tina Rowe.

[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1200x675/p02w4hl3.jpg]<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783lqm>

BBC Radio 4 - PM, 29/04/2016<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783lqm>
www.bbc.co.uk<http://www.bbc.co.uk>
As a child Alicia met a man online who then abducted her. She told Eddie Mair her story.

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