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Meta-issues-around-the-student-submission

It is not just the content of the answer that suggests something is odd about a student submission. The context and data around that submission can also raise concerns.

Evidence from file/document metadata and similar sources

There may be system or application data that suggests something unusual has occured.   

  • When looking through the VLE/Moodle metadata for document uploads and downloads, one record showed that a student downloaded an exam paper then five minutes later they uploaded a long submission document answering every question in the 3-hour exam. In this case, it wasn't a GenAI tool; they'd used the '3-hour paper in 8 hour time window' to get a copy of the exam paper from another student - avoiding starting their personal 3-hour timer - they sent the exam paper to Chegg and spent a large part of the next 5+ hours collating solutions posted on Chegg.

The information that a word proccessor can show about submission document can also indicate anomalies.  

  • Very short edit times indicate copy-paste may have been used to add content to a long document.
  • Differences in the last-editted by name, and document owner name have shown examples of student-student copying.

Example: Word meta data

A Word document containing a student submission of a TMA contributing 30% of the overall assessment on a module was found to have the following properties: 

a Word File Properties box. It shows that the document has 53 pages, 12749 words but has 0 total editing time.

You can view this through the following menu structure (Word, File, Info – and the Properties panel is on the right hand side).

Commentary

The document is 53 pages, 12,000+ words long, yet appears to have been edited for zero minutes, and never modified after it was created. Has this been copy-pasted from an external source?

While this may be highly exaggerated, there is a clear mis-match if we are expecting students to type the content of the document. 

 

Student past performance

Look for shift in styles from previous pieces of coursework by the same student. Does the work match your expectations based on previous interactions with the student (grammar, technical insights, level and approach to reflection/evaluation, writing style, terminology use)?

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