How do we avoid the use of Essay Mills?
Essay Mills are private companies that offer essay writing services to students. There has been a proliferation of these companies in recent years (see this Guardian article for example). Their main focus has been the higher education sector, however it can be assumed that their services are also available to IB Diploma students. The question for ToK Teachers is how can we deter our students from using Essay Mills ?
During, and after, the 'act' processes - do they beat essay mills ?
The use of the following processes to retain academic integrity is fairly widespread in ToK:
Using Construction monitoring tools such as Google Docs: The teacher can monitor the essay as it is being written by the student.
Plagiarism detection software such as Turnitin.Com: This software is best used by the student during the writing of the essay. Giving the student the power and freedom to use the software helps them to avoid any potential plagiarism issues. It also helps them to find papers that have been written using the same terms that they are using.
There are a couple of concerns with plagiarism detection software:
Using it after the essay has been submitted.
If it is only used after the student has submitted their essay it is being used as a cure rather than a prevention. The 'after-submission' method doesn't teach the student best practises for avoiding academic integrity problems in the future.
"What % is acceptable ?".
I often hear teachers (& students) asking what the "acceptable percentage" of similarity is when looking at a Similarity Report. This question demonstrates a misunderstanding of what the software is doing. A report can have a high similarity rating just because it repeatedly uses a phrase from the prescribed title which is often used in other papers. This doesn't necessarily mean that the student has plagiarised the essay, they are merely repeatedly referring to the Prescribed Title (which is good practice). Conversely, a report can have a very low similarity percentage yet the essay contains a whole paragraph which has been copied word for word from another source - this is a serious breach of academic integrity despite the report having a low similarity rating.
Writing in controlled circumstances: When a teacher suspects that an essay may not be the student's own work there is the option of asking the student to write a new essay under monitored & controlled circumstances. Obviously this is opens up a whole range of problems - the student is not developing the essay under the same conditions as other students, the student doesn't have a long period of time to develop the essay, and it is very demanding on school resources.
None of the "during & after the act' processes above avoid the problem of students using essay mills.
The essay monitoring system (sometimes called "Check Check out") is open to the student adding the milled essay piece by piece. Plagiarism detection software will only pick up an essay if it (or parts of it) has been copied from elsewhere. If the essay mill writes an original essay then this will not be picked up by the software (however, there is evidence that essay mills are recycling essays - which is obvious a great potential threat for our students). Finally, asking students to write under controlled conditions opens the school up to all sorts of allegations of unfair treatment etc.
There is only one viable educational method to counter the scourge of essay mills - the development of Self Regulated Learning Skills.
Self Regulated Learning definition: Self-regulated learning is a cyclical process, wherein the student plans for a task, monitors their performance, and then reflects on the outcome. The cycle then repeats as the student uses the reflection to adjust and prepare for the next task. The process is not one-size-fits-all; it should be tailored for individual students and for specific learning tasks (Zimmerman, 2002).
It's a fair assumption that we all know those students in our classroom who have self regulated learning skills and qualities. I don't need to describe how those students take charge of their learning in ToK. I think we can all agree that those students are not going to use Essay Mills. However, if you need more details see the end of this blog.
How do we teach Self Regulated Learning Skills in ToK ?
Most research shows that the basis of self regulated learning is critical reflection, and in turn the basis for critical reflection is self reflection. In order to integrate self, and critical, reflection into the ToK classroom we can use the basic teaching structure of David Kolb's Learning Cycle:
Kolb's Learning Cycle provides us with a framework for developing self regulated learning in the ToK classroom.
Time
We can't start to deal with academic integrity of the ToK Essay when the students start to write the essay (or even worse, after they submit the essay). We need to address it from the first day in ToK through the use of self reflection. Self Regulation does not appear over night, but over a long period of time.Domain Specific
Self Regulated Learning Skills are domain specific - therefore just because a student is a self regulated learner in another DP subject doesn't necessarily mean they will be so in ToK. We need to show them how to be a reflective and self regulated learner in ToK.Self Confidence.
Students turn to Essay Mills because they have low confidence in their own abilities to write The ToK essay. Therefore we need to ensure that our students have the self-confidence and capacity to write the essay. We do this by slowly scaffolding ToK Skills, and the use of self reflection throughout the course.
For more on ToK Skills see this blog (& video)
For more on using Kolb's Learning Cycle see this blog (& video).
In the coming months I will have more content showing the use of Kolb's learning cycle as the lesson framework for ToK lessons. In the meantime you may want to look at this lesson.
If you have any specific requests for resources please let me know at Daniel@ToKToday.com.
Daniel,
Lisbon, September 2022
References
Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64-70.
Characteristics of Self Regulated Learners:
What we know
Research (see reference list below) shows that teaching self-regulated learning skills enhances student learning. Self-regulated learning is:
a goal driven process
encompasses skills that can be learned through observations or modelling.
Self-regulation skills include:
goal setting
reflection
self-management of on/off task behaviour.
Self-regulated learners are aware of:
their strengths and weaknesses as a learner
the learning strategies that they can manage and use
strategies they can use to motivate their learning and stay on task.
(From Victoria State Education Dept) Like & Reference: at this website