The Shadow Scholar
The man who writes your students' papers tells his story
Jonathan Barkat for The Chronicle Review Enlarge Image
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Jonathan Barkat for The Chronicle Review
By Ed Dante
Editor's note: Ed Dante is a pseudonym for a writer who lives on the East Coast. Through a literary agent, he approached The Chronicle wanting to tell the story of how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and to describe the extent of student cheating he has observed. In the course of editing his article, The Chronicle reviewed correspondence Dante had with clients and some of the papers he had been paid to write. In the article published here, some details of the assignment he describes have been altered to protect the identity of the student.
One tactic is to proactively teach the nuances of plagiarism in an engaging way. Here's a link to a series of games that help all students (k-12 & Higher Ed) understand the issues. http://www.diigo.com/list/wiredinstructor/plagiarism_games While these games won't stop the kind of abuses described in the article, they will help teachers prove they have taken the necessary steps to inform and train their students about plagiarism and plagiarism detection.
