Sandie Donnelly

Learning Enhancement Manager (Academic Literacies)   Monday – Thursday

Academic Services & Retention team| Library & Student Services (LiSS)| University of Cumbria | Lancaster Campus| LA1 3JD

(01524) 590800 ext 2728

List members may remember last year's thread on essay mills, which prompted some very interesting discussions at the ALDinHE London and SE network meeting at the University of Reading in July on the topic. One of the issues that was raised was the rather blurred situation with regards to legality: were students acting fraudulently in a legal sense in submitting contract essays, or was this just an academic misconduct offence to be locally adjudicated? One thing that seemed depressingly certain was that the essay mills themselves were not legally at fault in providing the service.

Helen Kealy from the QAA attended this meeting, and it now seems that the QAA have been pushing for changes to law to make the selling of contract assignments an illegal act in itself. It would be nice to think that our input and experiences as learning developers working directly with students has contributed to thinking and to the need to take the problem more seriously.

There's an article in the Telegraph on DfE consultations: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/02/21/university-students-could-fined-handedcriminal-records-plagiarised/
The paper mentioned in the article is available via Open Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40979-017-0014-5

Best wishes,

Kim