From the artice in The Chronicle Review, November 16, 2010. "You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists." The Shadow Scholar
Does education need to find a way to focus on education versus evaluation and how would that look as the article the Shadow Scholar suggests? How would online education adjust to this abuse? What technologies could control this paper mill approach to learning. How about the use of video conferencing and paper presentation verbally? After acceptance would a picture and digital "fingerprint" be used to match up the student and their academic submissions. And what about the student accepting responsibility for their academic work and ethics and being held accountable.
I believe there is a way to reduce this abuse by students with technologies and innovation thinking on the part of educators. We need to understand the data on students outsourcing their academic work and how widespread the problem to get to some solutions. Thoughts?
