1. Assessing student programming - not agency RentACoding Thomas Lancaster UCE Birmingham Disciplinary Commons June 9 2006 Material sourced from: ‘Eliminating the successor to plagiarism? Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites’ Robert Clarke & Thomas Lancaster JISC 2 nd International Plagiarism Conference, Newcastle, June 19 – 21 2006

2. A portfolio http://commons.thomaslancaster.co.uk

3. Contract cheating process student creates bid request sellers bid to complete work… for a competitive price student selects a seller - funds placed in escrow bidder creates original work student submits original work

4. Why bother? Because students are using RentACoder. 12.3% of bid requests on RentACoder represent contract cheating. –(3 week exhaustive check of RentACoder submissions i.e. 99 out of 803 bid requests).

5. Extent of use 236 contract cheaters identified over a 2 month period. –19 (8.1%) made only a single bid request. –122 (51.7%) made between 2 and 7 bid requests. –6 (2.5%) made 51 or more bid requests.

6. Redesigning assessment Assess students when they can be monitored: –in lab assessments Ensure that students understand what they have produced. –vivas –in lab assessment Produce unique watermarked assignment specifications for every student.

7. Only 1 identified this year http://www.rentacoder.com

8. Any questions? Any answers?