Hello Jane,
Being at Swansea, I'd suggest discussing this with one of the UK's lasting experts on Essay Banks, namely Phil Newton. He's right on your doorstep…
As for your 'ques', I would have a couple of issues:
Firstly, until a student submits a piece of summative assessment, no offence has actually taken place. Commissioning an essay isn't a crime (yet) and without evidence the student would actually hand it in as their own work, you have nothing to convict them for. Furthermore, many institutions would give much greater penalties, not less, for resorting to a commissioned essay, when/if detected, as a more deliberate act of academic fraud.
In this case, preparing evidence prior to suspected submission is both a good thing and bad. The dilemma is dependent upon what specific evidence exists of a potential infringement; you'd have to give us more details. An example I was involved in started with a colleague from another institution contacting me to say a question had appeared on a commissioned essay site, which had my own university identified. I created an fake account on the site to be able to see the tender in question; it was a programming site where potential bidders competed for work, with the job presumably going to the lowest/best quote. With a little creative computing, I was able to roughly identify the student concerned; no laws were broken, I might add. This information was then passed to the lecturer who set the original assignment. The only active part he took prior to submission was to ensure all students, including our suspect, were made aware of the academic misconduct/plagiarism policy as a general issue, and offered the option for additional tutorial support if they were struggling; something we do anyway, of course. However, it was made certain this student had attended, and filled in the declaration cover sheet, which includes a statement confirming their understanding of the regulations. Sure enough, the student submitted work way beyond their proven ability in tutorials, and was put forward on academic misconduct charges, after a viva determined his total lack of understanding of the assignment.
To whit, we did ground work in preparation of the case, made publicly clear what was acceptable, and let them hang themself. The lecturer concerned was quite shocked their work had appeared on the site. Identifying the suspect was (in this case) relatively easy, but the work stood out as obvious in any event. We did everything reasonable to make the student aware what they were contemplating was academic misconduct short of accusing them with no direct evidence. This presents a moral/ethical problem of prevention against potential harassment/loss of trust.
Mike
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