29 July 2017

It has long been known that some students are turning to online services offering to complete assignments or projects for a fee. For example, such services are widely available in Singapore on the online platform Carousell. Some of the service providers claim to have years of experience, whilst others appear to be students themselves from good schools and universities.

With the advent of such services, Singapore’s universities have increasingly instituted plagiarism checks, as well as harsher penalties for submitting work that is done by another person. Lecturers also train themselves to spot work that is not written in the style or the level of achievement normally associated with the student being graded.

Work done by such online services tend to read like stock answers copied directly from popular textbooks, with scant regard to the actual question posed by the lecturer or examiner. Such stock answers often fail to answer the question because they are peppered with irrelevant material, and fail to consider the context in which the question is posed. They do not take into account specific instructions laid out of the lecturer, nor utilize specific concepts, examples, and problem solving techniques taught by the particular lecturer conducting the course and setting the examination. This makes it easier for lecturers and examiners to spot when a student has asked another party to do work on his or her behalf.

In the words of a lecturer recently interviewed by Channel News Asia: “The essay (was) not adequately referenced, and reads like a back-cover summary of what you’d find on the back cover of a text. The first thing that came to mind is that they’ve taken one assigned reading, resummarised that and tried to link current events to a history that was presented. It doesn’t draw any connections to anything we’ve done in the course or any other reading.”

In other words, the submitted work appears totally disconnected with the content and style of how the lecturer had conducted the course, and appeared to be nothing more than a stock answer to the question being posed to the student.

The lecturer added: “(The essay) doesn’t answer or even address the question, so straight out of the game it would be a failing essay.”