Forensic Assignment Stylometry

This chapter discusses the stylometry of portfolios of assignments submitted by individual students from the perspective of evidence gathering in cases of suspected contract cheating. It opens with a discussion of the properties of student-submitted assignments that distinguish those from “normal” texts as written by established authors and how those affect stylometry. Stylometry has evolved with a main focus on established writers writing in their individual styles, whereas students are learners developing their styles across a range of different types of assignments over their periods of study, often spanning several years. Any forensic stylometry of student assignments thus has to factor in such variabilities while discriminating documents written by students from those written by commissioned third parties. The second part of the chapter describes a novel stylometric approach based on information theory, still in development, that seeks to work around variabilities in student assignments. Initial evaluative case studies are presented.