Did you student buy the paper onine/hire someone else to write it?

[Morris Zapp]

Here's a weird one:  I got a paper today that was written in British English (i.e.  "take a decision", etc.) which is odd since I"m at an American university and most of the students are American.  I realized that this is perhaps an indicator that the paper was purchased from some sort of term paper mill online.
Beyond this, are there other indicators that one can find that suggest that the person didn't write the paper themselves?
I'd love a checklist of some sort though I realize that's probably impossible.

[backatit]

So my partner is from the UK but lives here, and all four of his kids, who are in US universities, grew up in the UK and use the UK spellings and colloquialisms. In this case, I'd talk to the person (my stepdaughter has NO real accent, btw - she was 4 when she went there and just never acquired one).  None of the kids have strong accents, probably because they grew up hearing their mother speak (she's from the US). Have they done other, in-class writings (I always have a sense of students' writing voices from their other work) in which case, yes, that would be a flag?  Varying diction (I just had a case where a student pasted directly from a journal and it was jarring compared to their normal writing).

[downer]

It's good to have a line in the syllabus or added to paper assignments saying that you may need to discuss a student's work with them before assigning a grade.

If you have the time, then tell them to come to meet with you to discuss their paper, and ask them questions about it. If it seems clear that they didn't write the paper, then consult with the chair, the dean, or whoever appropriate about what to do.

If it is hard to tell, but it seems like the student is probably trying to pull one over on you, make it clear you are suspicious and that you will have your eye on them in the future if they take more of your classes. Although probably don't make open accusations.

[ciao_yall]

Here's a weird one:  I got a paper today that was written in British English (i.e.  "take a decision", etc.) which is odd since I"m at an American university and most of the students are American.  I realized that this is perhaps an indicator that the paper was purchased from some sort of term paper mill online.
Beyond this, are there other indicators that one can find that suggest that the person didn't write the paper themselves?
I'd love a checklist of some sort though I realize that's probably impossible.

Quick check is to Google the suspicious sentences and phrases and see what comes up. If it comes up clean, don't worry about it. Just keep watching.

[Liquidambar]

My brother, who is 100% American, sometimes writes in British English because it entertains him.

Is the paper quality inconsistent with other work you've seen from the student?  If not, I'd be inclined to treat it as ciao_yall recommends.

[Caracal]

It's good to have a line in the syllabus or added to paper assignments saying that you may need to discuss a student's work with them before assigning a grade.

If you have the time, then tell them to come to meet with you to discuss their paper, and ask them questions about it. If it seems clear that they didn't write the paper, then consult with the chair, the dean, or whoever appropriate about what to do.

I'm always leery about this approach, because when I was a student I was once called into a professor's office and asked a series of weird questions about my paper. The questions weren't particularly fair, he asked me to define words I'd used and asked aggressive questions about arguments I had made in the paper. My answers didn't satisfy him.

The paper wasn't one of my better efforts, I had written most of it very late at night. I was really intrigued by some complicated ideas I'd researched, but hadn't taken the time to really make them particularly clear. There was nothing plagiarized though, I cited everything. I wrote the thing, turned it in and didn't think about it again until I was getting the third degree in this professor's office. I also was 21 and not particularly good at talking through stuff I'd written. I was also flustered and angry about the accusation and that didn't help either. It ended up fine, but it was pretty upsetting.

I understand nobody is suggesting taking that kind of aggressive approach or making accusations, but the broader problem is that you it would be possible to feel pretty confident a student wrote the paper using this approach, but I can't see how you could be completely convinced a student didn't write the paper, even if you think their answers don't make sense.

[Golazo]

Check document properties to see if there is anything suspicious--was the file first made three years ago? Is it it some one else's name? etc. None of these are conclusive but could warrant more investigation.

[downer]

It's good to have a line in the syllabus or added to paper assignments saying that you may need to discuss a student's work with them before assigning a grade.

If you have the time, then tell them to come to meet with you to discuss their paper, and ask them questions about it. If it seems clear that they didn't write the paper, then consult with the chair, the dean, or whoever appropriate about what to do.

I'm always leery about this approach, because when I was a student I was once called into a professor's office and asked a series of weird questions about my paper. The questions weren't particularly fair, he asked me to define words I'd used and asked aggressive questions about arguments I had made in the paper. My answers didn't satisfy him.

The paper wasn't one of my better efforts, I had written most of it very late at night. I was really intrigued by some complicated ideas I'd researched, but hadn't taken the time to really make them particularly clear. There was nothing plagiarized though, I cited everything. I wrote the thing, turned it in and didn't think about it again until I was getting the third degree in this professor's office. I also was 21 and not particularly good at talking through stuff I'd written. I was also flustered and angry about the accusation and that didn't help either. It ended up fine, but it was pretty upsetting.

I understand nobody is suggesting taking that kind of aggressive approach or making accusations, but the broader problem is that you it would be possible to feel pretty confident a student wrote the paper using this approach, but I can't see how you could be completely convinced a student didn't write the paper, even if you think their answers don't make sense.

I think the wider issue is what kind of relationship professor and student have. It would be nice to think it is one of trust and nurturing.

I know professors who take that attitude, and accept the consequences.

But in many contexts that is unrealistic. We are often engaged in a war with would-be cheaters. The attitude we have to take is one of suspicion and civility. It may be that some innocent students suffer as a result.

[Caracal]

But in many contexts that is unrealistic. We are often engaged in a war with would-be cheaters. The attitude we have to take is one of suspicion and civility. It may be that some innocent students suffer as a result.

That is not a trade off I'm willing to make, nor a war I'm willing to fight. The basic problem is that we can't win this anyway. It isn't possible to be able to catch all attempts at plagiarism. There's stuff we can sometimes do to make it harder, like targeted assignments, when appropriate, or structured assignments. I wouldn't really support either of these things just as ways to deter cheaters though, that's just a side benefit to things that help students write better papers.

My main job is not to fight cheaters and catch plagiarists. My job is to teach students and if I'm assigning a paper, I'm trying to improve their writing and research. I can't do that if my default attitude is one of "suspicion." I'm going to assume my students wrote the paper until proven otherwise. Now, I'm not an idiot, and there might be circumstances in which I would be so suspicious of the authorship of a paper that I would talk to the student, but the bar is really high. I'd have to feel like I'm almost certain a student wrote a paper. Even at that point, I'm not going to just ask the student random questions about their paper. Failing a surprise oral exam on your work isn't evidence of academic dishonesty. Questions would need to be very targeted, like "In this paper about baseball you refer to it as 'rounders,' why did you do that?"

Honestly, there's no way to catch all forms of plagiarism and buying a paper is particularly tricky, and I'm ok with that. If you are paying tons of money to take a class and then you pay 150 bucks to have someone write you a paper instead of hunkering down, vaguely learning something, and writing a crummy C+ paper yourself that probably would get you a B in the class, the joke is on you.

[downer]

I take your point Caracal. I also sometimes decide that it would take too much effort to find whether a paper was not written by the students. If the college wants to make plagiarism-detection a #1 priority, then they should provide extra resources.

Still, if a significant proportion of the class is buying papers, then the whole exercise of "education" is rather pointless. I might as well just get the students to pay me extra so they can avoid having to write the paper, and cut out the intermediary people who are profiting from us.

[Caracal]

I take your point Caracal. I also sometimes decide that it would take too much effort to find whether a paper was not written by the students. If the college wants to make plagiarism-detection a #1 priority, then they should provide extra resources.

Still, if a significant proportion of the class is buying papers, then the whole exercise of "education" is rather pointless. I might as well just get the students to pay me extra so they can avoid having to write the paper, and cut out the intermediary people who are profiting from us.

Sure, the scale of a problem matters. My uninformed guess is that the number of students who actually do this is relatively small, although it might vary quite a lot by institution. My impression of my own students is that most of them aren't in a position to be paying significant amounts of money for papers. I graded thirty five long papers this semester and none of them raised any alarm bells for paper buying, nothing was too polished or came out of left field for a particular student. If anybody paid for their papers, I don't think they got their money's worth...

[ergative]

I graded thirty five long papers this semester and none of them raised any alarm bells for paper buying, nothing was too polished or came out of left field for a particular student. If anybody paid for their papers, I don't think they got their money's worth...

I'd say they got exactly their money's worth: presumably the papers earned a passing grade, and you didn't get suspicious. Mission accomplished.

[Caracal]

I graded thirty five long papers this semester and none of them raised any alarm bells for paper buying, nothing was too polished or came out of left field for a particular student. If anybody paid for their papers, I don't think they got their money's worth...

I'd say they got exactly their money's worth: presumably the papers earned a passing grade, and you didn't get suspicious. Mission accomplished.

If people are buying B- papers, I can live with that.

[dr_codex]

I graded thirty five long papers this semester and none of them raised any alarm bells for paper buying, nothing was too polished or came out of left field for a particular student. If anybody paid for their papers, I don't think they got their money's worth...

I'd say they got exactly their money's worth: presumably the papers earned a passing grade, and you didn't get suspicious. Mission accomplished.

If people are buying B- papers, I can live with that.

My friend was once very offended that somebody had purchased the "B" paper for his course. What he didn't realize was that for a student tempted to plagiarize, buying the "A" looks a lot riskier.

Truly bespoke papers are hard to catch, unless you're prepared to use the kinds of stylometric analysis that outed Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors. The only practical way is to do the kind of post hoc Q&A advised upthread. It's one reason that many graduate programs have oral defenses; they are a way to evaluate how well students understands what was submitted under their names.

Those of you arguing that you don't care about plagiarism must have institutional policies very different from mine. I'm obliged to report violations of academic honest.

That said, there's some leeway to determine the difference among plagiarism, carelessness, and cluelessness. Many instances are teaching moments rather than forensic investigations. A purchased paper, when I can prove it, is one of the slam-dunk instances that's going straight to the Dean, and no regrets.

OP, many "sample paper" websites allow limited use by instructors for the purposes of investigating academic dishonesty. You might be able to check yours that way. In my experience, Google catches almost everything, since most plagiarists are too time-strapped to get a truly original copy (pun intended).

dc

[Morden]

Our institution is seeing a lot more bespoke papers (and other assignments) now. It's remarkably cheap, and you can include the specific assignment instructions, instructor preferences, etc. in your request. For one of the many sites out there, see
https://www.reddit.com/r/PaperMarket/