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

[marshwiggle]

So the student who has now missed a third of our figure drawing classes this semester wants to know if they can make up the work by drawing their boyfriend. Student tells me that the boyfriend is totally willing to pose nude so isn't that just as good as working from the nude model in class?
I let the student know, that as per our syllabus, I do not accept work done outside of the classroom as part of their portfolio. Yeesh.

I can see how maybe trying to cover the life-drawing requirement with some random unauthorized nude person could potentially create...issues.

The mind boggles at the possibilities.

[Liquidambar]

I said in the syllabus, and explained on the first day of class, that students needed to earn 50 quiz points throughout the semester.  If students earn fewer, their quiz grade will be calculated as a percentage out of 50.  This is also stated in the syllabus.  There's a column in our CMS that has a total number of quiz points.  Okay, I didn't name the column "Total number of quiz points."  I just called it "Quiz points."  It seemed pretty clear to me, though.

Now a student is upset because quizzes are 15% of the grade.  When he saw that the "Quiz points" column had reached 15, he decided he was done and stopped taking quizzes.  Today he was looking at the syllabus and realized his error.  No, I will not let him go back and take half a semester's worth of quizzes right now.

[the_geneticist]

I had our conduct folks request a "user" report from Chegg to determine who posted (or viewed) exam questions on Chegg.  Importantly, it includes the day, time, and IP address for all users.
I identified the student who posted the questions (already suspected, but this confirms it).
And learned about an additional group of students who looked at the questions & answers while they were taking the exam.

I'm off to file another round of misconduct reports. 
Bang! Bang! Bang!

I feel like telling the students that time I have to spend dealing with this means less time for me to make their labs more fun & interesting.  It takes time to create content.  I can do the "bare facts, good enough" version, but I like to include material that they ask about or current events or new case studies.

So tired of this. I've filed more misconduct reports this year than in all the years I've been teaching previously.

Same here.  I've done 2 today and have 4 more waiting.
We have to contact the student and give them time to respond BEFORE we can file the reports.  I've just pre-filled the forms so they are ready to go either when I hear back from the student or when the waiting time is up.

[OneMoreYear]

That's the kind of case Pry used to describe as "flunking cheating."

M.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Although, as it was so easy to find, it did not take hours of searching the interwebs to locate the source and document the similarities.

The count is now 2.  One with egregious plagiarism that prompted the original vent, and one with "minor" plagiarism that will probably result in a failure of the assignment, but still an opportunity to pass the course (yes, I know, at the graduate level, that is too mild a consequence, but we work within the system we've got). The 2nd one also plagiarized from the example.

OMG! Another one with egregious copying from an example.   I think I just need to stop grading.  If I don't find the plagiarism, then nobody plagiarized, right?

[kiana]

So tired of this. I've filed more misconduct reports this year than in all the years I've been teaching previously.

Same here.  I've done 2 today and have 4 more waiting.
We have to contact the student and give them time to respond BEFORE we can file the reports.  I've just pre-filled the forms so they are ready to go either when I hear back from the student or when the waiting time is up.

The part that really pisses me off is the indignant liars. Sure Johnny, tell me how you learned all about derivatives when you're in remedial algebra because you haven't taken a math class in 20 years.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

So tired of this. I've filed more misconduct reports this year than in all the years I've been teaching previously.

Same here.  I've done 2 today and have 4 more waiting.
We have to contact the student and give them time to respond BEFORE we can file the reports.  I've just pre-filled the forms so they are ready to go either when I hear back from the student or when the waiting time is up.

The part that really pisses me off is the indignant liars. Sure Johnny, tell me how you learned all about derivatives when you're in remedial algebra because you haven't taken a math class in 20 years.

Yep. What's that 'S-shaped symbol mean?' That was an actual question in one of my Calc-based Physics lecture. The Registrar lets anyone in.

[statsgeek]

One student wrote in their end-of-semester reflection that they didn't realize a class with [subtype of baskets] in the title would be about Basket-Weaving. 

These are going to be interesting evaluations.  In a small class, about 1/2 took the class because they were actually interested in the sub-topic and about 1/2 took it because it was the only available option to fill the last requirement for their major. 

[marshwiggle]

One student wrote in their end-of-semester reflection that they didn't realize a class with [subtype of baskets] in the title would be about Basket-Weaving. 

These are going to be interesting evaluations.  In a small class, about 1/2 took the class because they were actually interested in the sub-topic and about 1/2 took it because it was the only available option to fill the last requirement for their major.

I see a bimodal grade distribution in your future....

[onehappyunicorn]

So tired of this. I've filed more misconduct reports this year than in all the years I've been teaching previously.

Same here.  I've done 2 today and have 4 more waiting.
We have to contact the student and give them time to respond BEFORE we can file the reports.  I've just pre-filled the forms so they are ready to go either when I hear back from the student or when the waiting time is up.

The part that really pisses me off is the indignant liars. Sure Johnny, tell me how you learned all about derivatives when you're in remedial algebra because you haven't taken a math class in 20 years.

Oh I do enjoy those students. I handle the first level student grievances and I just got brought in on a dispute where the student clearly plagiarized a paper that was well beyond their understanding of the subject matter. Instead of shutting up and taking the "0" (first offense) the student in question decided to grab themselves a shovel and start digging. You see, the student took band in middle school, so they definitely knew what they are talking about. How dare the instructor, who has a Doctorate in music theory, call them a liar and impugn their character.
Unfortunately for the student they have been obnoxious enough in their replies that they are now being referred to the office of civility for possible disciplinary actions. No, no, dig up stupid!

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Oh my dear sweet Lord! Some of these final exam answers are painful to read. One student tried to calculate the range of a projectile using the volume equation for a cylinder. Stu thought that the radius was the range.

[spork]

Oh my dear sweet Lord! Some of these final exam answers are painful to read. One student tried to calculate the range of a projectile using the volume equation for a cylinder. Stu thought that the radius was the range.

This demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of mathematical principles going back to at least junior high.

[OneMoreYear]

Oh my dear sweet Lord! Some of these final exam answers are painful to read. One student tried to calculate the range of a projectile using the volume equation for a cylinder. Stu thought that the radius was the range.

This demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of mathematical principles going back to at least junior high.

But least the student might know the alphabet, as range and radius do both start with "r"

[marshwiggle]

Oh my dear sweet Lord! Some of these final exam answers are painful to read. One student tried to calculate the range of a projectile using the volume equation for a cylinder. Stu thought that the radius was the range.

This demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of mathematical principles going back to at least junior high.

But least the student might know the alphabet, as range and radius do both start with "r"

And velocity and volume both start with "v", so won't any formula including "v" and"r" work?????

[AvidReader]

Students were asked to pick a new, public-facing audience and revise a previous essay from my class for that audience. We looked at dozens of examples of research and scholarship compressed for the modern reader: newspaper articles, blogs, textbook summaries, even cover letters. I stress that most revisions will be shorter and simpler. The rubric states that the revision should be 50% different from the original.

Stu chose to transform a grandiloquent essay on rhetoric in an early American sermon for an audience of children 3 - 7 years old. Stu added three words and definitions of three rhetorical terms (the original essay forgot to mention rhetoric). Stu submitted the purported revision with the explanation that nothing else needed to be changed because keeping the original essay would "advance the cranial development of prepubescents."

I am so done with this semester.

AR.

[mamselle]

If that was Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," it should explain somewhere that over-anthologizing a non-representative outlier from the preacher's homiletic corpus seriously skews modern-day understandings of dubious terms like "The Great," and the "Second Great Awakening" and unfairly leverages late 19th-century Unitarian historical proclivities to demean their so-called Puritan ancestors (Edwards was a New-Light Congregationalist, not a Puritan) in a revisionist effort to maintain competing claims for primitive arrival narratives while also upholding unitarian theological constructions as inherent in the earliest arrivants' intentions (they were not, as covenantal formulae and doxological suffixes to Psalmody show.)

If they got that straight, then, fine, pass 'em.

But not otherwise...

M.