Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[spork]

Students who choose not to pay attention to deadlines, or who can't tell time/read calendars, should not be in college. I vote no on any makeup exam.

[EdnaMode]

I would not allow the student to take the final exam. If it's posted everywhere, has been discussed at length in class, and they still missed it, then that's on them. And I know my Dept Chair would back me up.

[downer]

I would decide on whether to allow the student to do a make up purely on what works best for me, not for the student. I would feel no obligation to the student.

[fosca]

I allowed makeups for quizzes, but while the quizzes were multiple-choice the makeups were all short-answer and were all given on the last day of class.  It allowed the few students who genuinely took the makeup seriously to do well, while most everyone else (probably 80-90%) would do poorly but couldn't complain because I did let them take a makeup and they knew the format in advance.  And since all the makeups were at the same time, I just needed to create one makeup test per quiz.  It took a couple of hours of my time and made me look good to my boss, which was well worth it.

[the_geneticist]

Student missed the final exam because stu mixed up the days. I understand that things happen, but I've been talking about this exam for the past two weeks, posting about it online and oh, it's in the syllabus. I guess it would have helped if stu came to class more often...

Edit: Should I take pity on stu and allow a makeup with penalty? Damn, this kind of thing always gets me in trouble though...

I'd let them take it in my office.  My chair would NOT have my back if I said they earned a 0 on the final exam.

[RatGuy]

I'd like to bang colleague's head.

Student submits final essay with 98% similarity. Student emails "I matched with myself. I asked my English professor if I could turn in the same paper I wrote for you to him too. He said it was ok." Stu forwards email exchange confirming. The English prof said something like "welp, it looks like you got lucky that the essay you'd write for him works for my prompt. Go ahead. [Ratguy] won't mind."

In what world is this ok?

[kaysixteen]

None that I could see.   What will you do here?

[marshwiggle]

I'd like to bang colleague's head.

Student submits final essay with 98% similarity. Student emails "I matched with myself. I asked my English professor if I could turn in the same paper I wrote for you to him too. He said it was ok." Stu forwards email exchange confirming. The English prof said something like "welp, it looks like you got lucky that the essay you'd write for him works for my prompt. Go ahead. [Ratguy] won't mind."

In what world is this ok?

If he submitted it to you first, so it was "unique" for you, I don't see it matters if someone else accepts it later (knowingly) for something else. If it was submitted to the other person first, then it's a different story. It's hard to tell which is the case, since the match presumably happened just after submission for your course, whereas the other prof's response suggests it was submitted for your course earlier.

[ciao_yall]

I'd like to bang colleague's head.

Student submits final essay with 98% similarity. Student emails "I matched with myself. I asked my English professor if I could turn in the same paper I wrote for you to him too. He said it was ok." Stu forwards email exchange confirming. The English prof said something like "welp, it looks like you got lucky that the essay you'd write for him works for my prompt. Go ahead. [Ratguy] won't mind."

In what world is this ok?

If he submitted it to you first, so it was "unique" for you, I don't see it matters if someone else accepts it later (knowingly) for something else. If it was submitted to the other person first, then it's a different story. It's hard to tell which is the case, since the match presumably happened just after submission for your course, whereas the other prof's response suggests it was submitted for your course earlier.

If it meets the requirements and it's original work to him, then I wouldn't mind.

In my business classes I have had students use the same project for different classes. They could reuse some bits, but there were other pieces that had to be done for one class but not the other.

[mythbuster]

Submitting the same essay for two classes is a violation of our student conduct code here and is considered a form of plagiarism. I would check your university policies. At a minimum, I would suggest adding a clause about this to your syllabus for the future.

[sinenomine]

Submitting the same essay for two classes is a violation of our student conduct code here and is considered a form of plagiarism. I would check your university policies. At a minimum, I would suggest adding a clause about this to your syllabus for the future.

My institution has the same policy.

[marshwiggle]

Submitting the same essay for two classes is a violation of our student conduct code here and is considered a form of plagiarism. I would check your university policies. At a minimum, I would suggest adding a clause about this to your syllabus for the future.

My institution has the same policy.

Don't these policies usually specify "without permission"? And as I indicated earlier, it would potentially only be the second submission that would be in question.

(As always, this term "self-*plagiarism" is an oxymoron.)


*Plagiarism - the process or practice of using another person's ideas or work and pretending that it is your own - Cambridge Dictionary

[RatGuy]

Submitting the same essay for two classes is a violation of our student conduct code here and is considered a form of plagiarism. I would check your university policies. At a minimum, I would suggest adding a clause about this to your syllabus for the future.

Same here, as well as in my syllabus. Presumably it's also part of the first-year writing program's policies as well. My guess is that the student asked permission from the prof he knew would let it slide. And (not that it matters, given the policies), but he did submit his ENG102 essay first -- early April. But that's because my (much more specific) project contained a number of benchmark days and other scaffolding. So student would on my project for about seven weeks total, and he saw the opportunity to double dip.

I suspect that I'm going to get a "but Mr. 102 gave that paper an A so you should give me one too" email next.