The Application of Intelligent Context-Aware Systems to the Detection of Online Student Cheating

Student cheating and plagiarism present a combined threat to the value of academic awards. The technological age has increased the ease with which students can cheat. Although some computerised solutions exist to detect plagiarism and cheating in its other forms, many of these are easily fooled. For other types of cheating, technical solutions are not yet widely available. This suggests that students are receiving awards that they do not deserve. This paper presents three different examples of student cheating, all of which provide academics with a problem. These issues include: (1) plagiarism of documents through automated essay spinning, (2) social media facilitated student cheating groups, and (3) contract cheating using agency and auction web sites. Each of these problems is shown to benefit from the provision of intelligent context-aware systems. The context behind each problem is explored and suggestions for technical implementations of intelligent context-aware systems for each are provided.