Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

188 Studying online 
Avoid “Essay Mills” 
Tere are several “Essay Mills” online. Tese are websites that 
provide examples of essays, often from former students. Many 
of these sites purport to just allow students to share examples of 
essays so that others can get helpful ideas. Te problem is that 
users of the essay mill websites have no knowledge of whether 
those example essays achieved high marks. You may well fnd 
that what looks like a good essay was actually a failed assign-
ment. In addition, many essay mills ofer assignment writing 
services. For a small sum of money, someone else will write your 
essay for you. It sounds like a great idea, except, of course, it is 
cheating. Te essay that people present from essay mills is not 
their own work. It is ghost-written for them, which is fraudu-
lent behaviour. Worse still for the students forking out money 
for these essay mills is that the writers of the assignments will 
often plagiarise anyway. As a result, the essay that the student 
did not write is picked up for plagiarism through something like 
Turnitin. Tat’s a double penalty for the student because they 
have paid for an essay and have also been found to be cheating by 
copying. Some essay mills guarantee that the work they provide 
will be completely genuine and will not trigger plagiarism detec-
tion software. However, they forget that these essays will trigger 
the human detection of lecturers. We get to know our student’s 
style and way of working. We can spot the diference between a 
student’s usual work and an essay they have submitted, which is 
out of the ordinary for them. Tat alone can trigger an Academic 
Misconduct investigation. Furthermore, even if the assessments 
are marked anonymously, statistical software will demonstrate 
an out of range mark for a student once the anonymity is re-
moved at the end of the marking period. Tis will then trigger a 
lecturer to look at the submitted work again, at which point any-
thing suspicious for that student could be identifed. As a result, 
paying for an essay to be written for you is a complete waste of 
money. Not only are you likely to be found out, but you are also 
cheating yourself. You will know that the marks you get, perhaps 
even the degree classifcation you receive, is not deserved. Tat’s 

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