I had the strangest dream last night…
It was late May, the sun was shining and the birds were singing.
But then I realised that I was late for an exam.
But for some reason my shoes wouldn’t go on my feet properly, then my bike had a flat tyre, then I found, that no matter how hard I tried to run, the bus stop got no nearer.
And my watch was telling me that the exam started in two minutes.
Then suddenly I was in a sports hall entrance, showing my ID and then sitting down at a desk listening to an invigilator
- who was Woody Allen – telling me that I may look up for inspiration, look down in desperation, but not sideways for information.
At that point I turned over the exam paper only to find that I’d revised all the wrong stuff, and then I looked down and realised in my haste I’d forgotten to put my jeans on.
At that point I thought I should try to make a stealthy exit from the room, but then realised that my feet were stuck to the floor.
So, stoically, I decided just to write down everything I knew, very fast, and hope that I would win this race anyway.
I then found myself at home with two parrots on my shoulders.
One was saying that perhaps I’d fooled these suckers and that they might announce that I was the winner, but the other parrot was saying that, at last, this would expose me as the charlatan that I really was.
And in the background I could hear Tom Jones singing `The green, green grass of home’.
At that point Clement Freud appeared in my kitchen (I’m sure that should have been Sigmund), announcing that I was only having this dream because I had in fact done very well. If you’d have done badly you would have repressed all of this, he said. As
he was speaking I was busy thinking of the injuries I could feign as an explanation for my poor performance.
At that point I awoke in a cold sweat.
I made my way to the kitchen, recovering from this nightmare, and comforted myself in knowing that all my university colleagues, despite all the pitfalls, were working really hard to ensure that this dream did not become a reality for anyone.
But at that point I heard a tap, tap, tap on the kitchen window and there on the other side of window I saw Michael Gove’s big smiley face…
Dear Panos
I agree entirely with Yaz's perceptive comments on this. Treating the symptom won't cure the disease. It needs radical surgery! Through post TESTA interventions, we have seen students take delight in academic writing through formative blogging on academic
texts. They learn more and take more confident stabs at their summative tasks as a result. Helping students learn about the craft of writing, the 'long slow obedience in the same direction' (to misquote Niezsche) is an important way of subverting the profiteers
and crooks who sell writing.
At my previous institution we were vigorous in tackling the ghost writing touts who brazenly put flyers about, and we regularly warned students of the consequences. However most of the advertising is online. One of the presenters at AHE a couple of years
ago did a live connection to a ghost writer in the session to show just how easy it is....
Spotting ghost writing in the world of anonymous marking is another thing!
All the best
Tansy
Dear Panos,
This is a growing industry due to the difficulty and time being taken in proving the work is not the students but I think it may die a death depending on when tech solves the problem I.e. Biometric recognition of content input - ExamProctor does this through
the webcam I believe.
One discussion we had through the TESTA project that I believe relates to this topic centred around the lack of iterative points of formative assessment. Using good assessment practices to both increase the students relatedness to and investment into their
own work.
Therefore, instead of a summative assessment on its own, we considered whether students would commission ghost writers for iterative and formative points leading up to a summative point? They may then become more involved in both the dialogic nature of assessment
and more invested in their own work and in the assessment process. Peer marking could also be important in such a process and brings in a social and moral reflection on the part of the individual.
I agree it is a thorny issue but hope this adds some food for thought - sorry no silver bullet just yet! Maybe someone else has that bullet for you?
Nice to hear from you Panos!
All the best,
Yaz.
On 8 Mar 2017, 04:49 +0000, Panos Vlachopoulos <
[log in to unmask]>, wrote:
Dear colleagues,
I am writing, again, from down under to seek your advice. We are using TurntitIn to support our text matching cases (which is used to identify plagiarism). However, we are receiving more and more cases that are about Ghost Writing. Apart from the expert
eyes of linguists who can assist in some extreme cases, are there any other tools that you may be using to assist with such cases? Are you using for example any text analysis tools (e.g. Lexalytics). Or is there anything else to which you can point me?
with warm wishes from a still warm Sydney
Panos
Associate
Professor Panos Vlachopoulos
Associate
Dean Quality and Standards
Faculty
of Arts
