The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: apl68 on April 29, 2024, 01:19:38 PM

Quote from: spork on April 29, 2024, 10:25:50 AMClosure announcements today:

Wells College, NY

University of Saint Katherine, CA

Either St. Katherine's students and faculty had more to say, or its closure was the more abrupt of the two.  Apparently the great majority of their students played sports.

"St. Katherine's was founded in 2010 and offered more than two dozen undergraduate and three graduate programs of study. It enrolled about 300 students." The article indciated that they mainly enrolled students who could not afford to pay tuition, which leads quickly to dire financial straits unless one has a major alternate source of revenue. They also had grandiose plans for a 5000 student institution on a brand new campus in Chula Vista.

Quote from: marshwiggle on Today at 04:45:46 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on April 29, 2024, 02:40:49 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on April 29, 2024, 02:15:58 PM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on April 29, 2024, 12:51:02 PMI don't think you quite understand what that phrase means, Marshy. 

Why do you say that? The point is that how anyone wants to be treated flies in the face of a society that strives to treat people fairly. In the latter case, if everyone is treated the same, then that effectively means doling out available resources equally. But in the former, if everyone (or every "group") gets to decide what they feel they deserve, that makes no reference to whether that is compatible with the available resources in the context of what everyone else feels they themselves deserve.

It's Kant's categorical imperative simplified.

All it says is treat other people the same way you would want to be treated.

No, that's not what it says.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on April 28, 2024, 05:23:37 PM

QuoteAt their core, DEI efforts are aspirations toward and actualizations of the platinum rule ("Do unto others as they would like done to them").

"Treat others as you would like to be treated" is entirely different than "Treat others as they would like to be treated."

I heartily agree with the former; the latter is a hole with no bottom.

I think you're willfully misunderstanding that quote. And I know your impulse is to respond with "here's what it literally means" and continue spinning in circles. But if you really attribute unfairness, narcissism, and/or maliciousness to the idea that people are asking to be seen as a certain way, I'm not sure anyone on these fora (or elsewhere) can help you understand.

This issue came up in one of the posts over the weekend that seems to have gotten lost, but it seems worthy of more discussion.

There is a general prohibition against submitting one assignment (paper, etc.) for two different courses. There are a few points which potentially bear on that.

Checks like turnitin are used to prevent plagiarism, and would flag the second submission as matching the earlier one in a different course.

The point of looking for plagiarism is to ensure that work was produced by the student and not someone else, so if there's no question as to whether this is the student's own work, then this has nothing to do with whether it has been submitted elsewhere.

Students who argue they should get grades based on how much effort they put in are told that what is important is to meet the requirements; work itself is not explicitly rewarded.

If the student's work meets the requirements for each of the two different courses, then there is an apparent inconsistency; work that doesn't meet requirements doesn't count, but work that does meet requirements but was done for another purpose doesn't count. So, while the amount of effort is not explicitly rewarded, it seems that lack of effort, even when requirements are met, can be explicitly penalized.

For courses with overlapping content, exclusions usually prevent students getting credit for both, so most cases of material potentially being submitted in more than one course would be prevented by these exclusions.

The most obvious scenario for work being submitted for two courses without overlapping content is for a paper, report, etc. in one course being used in some sort of technical writing course as well. In that case, if the writing course was focused on planing and revising, i.e. the process of writing, while the other course is based on the content of the writing, it seems that the document produced under these circumstances would be better than either of the documents normally submitted for either course.

Prohibitions are typically against submitting one document in two courses; that doesn't address documents produced for some other purpose.

If a student was taking a creative writing course, and had a hobby of writing short stories, essays, etc., it would be possible to submit something written previously but which had never been submitted elsewhere for the course. Even though it was written before the course even began, that would not be considered academic misconduct.



Given all of those points, (and there are no doubt others as well), what is the moral principle by which a student, producing work of their own, which meets the requirements for more than one course, should not be normally permitted to submit it in each course?

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on April 29, 2024, 02:40:49 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on April 29, 2024, 02:15:58 PM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on April 29, 2024, 12:51:02 PMI don't think you quite understand what that phrase means, Marshy. 

Why do you say that? The point is that how anyone wants to be treated flies in the face of a society that strives to treat people fairly. In the latter case, if everyone is treated the same, then that effectively means doling out available resources equally. But in the former, if everyone (or every "group") gets to decide what they feel they deserve, that makes no reference to whether that is compatible with the available resources in the context of what everyone else feels they themselves deserve.

It's Kant's categorical imperative simplified.

All it says is treat other people the same way you would want to be treated.

No, that's not what it says.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on April 28, 2024, 05:23:37 PM

QuoteAt their core, DEI efforts are aspirations toward and actualizations of the platinum rule ("Do unto others as they would like done to them").

"Treat others as you would like to be treated" is entirely different than "Treat others as they would like to be treated."

I heartily agree with the former; the latter is a hole with no bottom.

I've never gotten word of my class reunions, although I know they've been held. Apparently the same clique of popular kids handles the invitations and PR, and those of us who were not in that group are skipped. I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall to see what classmates did with their lives, but that's about it.

My high school graduating class was 83 people. Many of them are dead or in prison. No.

No.

I went to one of those British boarding schools you see in movies (as it happens, our dining hall was scouted for the Harry Potter movies, but Oxford won out; the school itself has been in a few movies, however). As a scholarship student, which... is not ideal in that environment. The pecking order is very much based on who your parents are and what kind of money they've got.

My parents are both doctors, and I only grew up with one of them, but even so, we were well off. But... you have no idea what that other world is like. The world of oil company owners, foreign nobility, media giants, big time politicians, the occasional mafioso, etc., all of whom send their kids abroad to be babysat 24/7 because they can't be bothered.

It's an absolutely shit environment. And I (still) loathe most of my classmates. I want nothing to do with that hellhole.

I've got one coming up this summer.  Honestly, I'd forgotten about it except I saw something on social media.  From what I understand, the last couple were kind'a busts.  The first attempt was flooded with mailings and maps and lists of hotels (like we didn't all grow up in the same little town) and RSVPs and "Family Night" announcements and a list of names of "[Mascots] we are still missing."  I was only an hour away that summer, but I dutifully skipped. 

Don't get me wrong, these were ("are still," I assume) basically good people, but we weren't really all that into each other when we were all crammed into the same crummy high school in that boring little town.  Once we graduated, the majority of us decamped for college, the military, or other places and never really returned.  A few people, it seems, have kept in touch, but not the majority of us.

I've made contact with a few folks on social media, and we have exchanged a message or two over the years.

So, why would we all tramp back to our old stomping ground----which, ironically enough, has been torn down and replaced by a very modern building----just to see people we didn't care enough to keep in touch with in the first place?

Still, I find myself at that age when one becomes nostalgic for things one didn't really treasure at the time.  And I found myself surprisingly sad when I found out that a classmate I hadn't been particularly close to and hadn't talked to in 40 years unexpectedly died last year.  And I am a long way away from my home state and have been suffering through the pangs of homesickness for a while now. 

I'm just wondering if other people went to their high school reunions at any age and  what it was like for them.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on April 29, 2024, 04:08:46 PMT1 or referee reading today. Time is short.

Managed a bit of both.

Quote from: ab_grp on April 29, 2024, 03:47:57 PMSo true! They nailed it.  Have you seen either of the remakes?

No — one version is enough for me.