In recent years, the use of essay mills by students has expanded rapidly in Ireland. These essay mills involve students paying a company to write an essay for them, through a network of freelance writers worldwide.

Moreover, recent technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have seen the emergence of automatic, software-derived, academic writing services that students have now started to exploit in great numbers. Detection of this form of cheating and plagiarism is extremely difficult and time-consuming for academic staff, and often difficult to prove.

This aim of this project is to develop novel, student-led solutions to combat the emergence and increased use of essay mills and artificial intelligence (AI) engines by students for completing academic writing tasks.

By empowering ATU students to come up with their own solutions to this growing problem, it is hoped to lead to long-lasting behaviour change and help to maintain the academic integrity of assessment strategies into the future.