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

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

A student and her parent asked me point blank which question bank I used for tests and why I used time and navigation restrictions for the online quizzes. Uh, WTF? Either these two are the biggest Bozos ever to cross my office threshold, or they think I'm the biggest Bozo on campus.  How about my job as a professor is assessing your grasp of the subject matter not aiding in your cheating scheme?  Damn, just damn.   

Holy crap! That's audacious!

[apl68]

A student and her parent asked me point blank which question bank I used for tests and why I used time and navigation restrictions for the online quizzes. Uh, WTF? Either these two are the biggest Bozos ever to cross my office threshold, or they think I'm the biggest Bozo on campus.  How about my job as a professor is assessing your grasp of the subject matter not aiding in your cheating scheme?  Damn, just damn.   

Holy crap! That's audacious!

Reminds me of the resource services person at our largest local employer who once asked a group of new hires in orientation what questions they had regarding their benefits.  One asked how long he would have to work before he would be eligible to collect unemployment.  He said of the new hire, "Well, the screening didn't work too well in your case, did it?"

[Puget]

Here's a first-- Student plagiarized the freaking example outline I gave them! Just flat out paraphrased the example, which was on a totally different topic and supposed to just give them an idea of how to do a detailed outline, and substituted in her topic key words in places. References do not fit the outline at all of course, since the plagiarized outline is not on her topic. Did she think I wouldn't notice? I, who posted that very example and am quite familiar with it? Just boggled.

Bonus points- it was due by the start of class and she submitted it during class.

And this was a student who begged me to be a reference for a transfer application with 10 days notice and I foolishly agreed. Now that short but vaguely positive letter has already been submitted, and she pulls this.

Since she's a sophomore and an international student and may just need some education here, I've decided to give her a zero and a talking to rather than report her to the conduct board. But you better bet her final paper is going to get extra special plagiarism scrutiny (they already go through Turnitin).

Update: At my demand, Stu met with me during office hours today.It went about how you'd expect--

 Stu explained she thought she was supposed to closely adhere to to example and she only paraphrased and copied the structure, and that she didn't know that would be considered plagiarism because it was not a published source (?!). I pointed out that the example was on a completely different topic so the resulting outline made no sense, and asked what her process was for making the outline based on her sources -- blank staring and silence ensued. I asked if she had actually read the sources in her bibliography. She claimed yes. I asked again how she had used them to create the outline, more blank staring and silence.

So I hammered into her what constitutes plagiarism and told her she's on probation-- I'm going to have extra scrutiny on her paper because this is a serious violation and she's lost my trust. I won't turn her in to the conduct board now, but if I see one failure to cite properly or any copying or find-replace paraphrasing or signs of AI use in her final paper I'll report it.

I'm not convinced she's actually capable of writing her own paper at this point, since she's shown no evidence that she's done any of her own work on it so far. I suggest she go to the writing center and meet with me regularly. We'll see -- I just hope I don't have to write her up at the end of the semester, because then it becomes a huge time suck for me.

At least she didn't cry in my office, so that's something.

[Liquidambar]

My grader is driving me to despair.  A couple days before an exam, he marked a bunch of homeworks correct even though many students showed deep flaws in understanding.  Great, now they think they're ready for the exam.  I'm trying to get the grader to write more useful feedback on the homework, but it's been like arguing with a wall.

1) "Some professors don't want me to write feedback since they want the students to think for themselves about what they did wrong."
Dude, I asked you a month ago to give more feedback.

2) "Then I'd have to follow the students' arguments and see where they're wrong."
Um, yes, that's why I have you grading instead of a robot grading.

3) "It's hard to write feedback in the CMS."
You're the one who wanted to grade in the CMS.  I offered to collect hard copy assignments, but you didn't want them.

[marshwiggle]

3) "It's hard to write feedback in the CMS."
You're the one who wanted to grade in the CMS.  I offered to collect hard copy assignments, but you didn't want them.

You and your grader obviously disagree on the "bug or feature" question about this.

[bio-nonymous]

/Rant_On

Paraphrasing:

STU speaking to me about their required for graduation research project (just back from a clinical--they work <8hrs actual in the clinic and that is it, which is a much smaller workload than during academic sessions averaging 17 grad credits):
"I didn't have time to do anything for you during my clinical."

Me (slightly blowing my top): "The work is not for me, it is your work required for you to graduate. I could do this work myself easier, but it is not my work, it is yours."

They just needed to finish an abstract (due around NOW!)by doing a couple hours of data analysis...

:(  UGG!

Whether required or not, I totally understand that they are not interested in research--but they are not doing me any favors here!
/Rant_Over

[fosca]

I'm going to half to remind my students in the future that writing a paper and only putting in quotation marks/citations/references is a quick way to a plagiarism charge.  Where on earth did they get the idea that it's acceptable to write that way? I've had several students use this as their excuse for plagiarizing this semester, including one who's a junior. I swear if this job kills me I'm going to haunt any teachers/professors who taught this/let it happen, plus any students who are lying to me (although given my two-decade history of teaching in the American South, I suspect they're not--the schools are Not Well Here, and I'm sure letting things slide during the pandemic made it worse).

[fosca]

Sorry; lots of mistakes and I can't edit it.

I'm going to have to remind my students in the future that writing a paper and only putting in quotation marks/citations/references when they're done writing it is a quick way to a plagiarism charge.  Where on earth did they get the idea that it's acceptable to write that way? I've had several students use this as their excuse for plagiarizing this semester, including one who's a junior. I swear if this job kills me I'm going to haunt any teachers/professors who taught this/let it happen, plus any students who are lying to me (although given my two-decade history of teaching in the American South, I suspect they're not--the schools are Not Well Here, and I'm sure letting things slide during the pandemic made it worse).

[kaysixteen]

Fosca, pls clarify your point here-- what exactly is it that your students are doing that you think is plagiarism, but they do not, and how would they have to fix it?

[marshwiggle]

Sorry; lots of mistakes and I can't edit it.

I'm going to have to remind my students in the future that writing a paper and only putting in quotation marks/citations/references when they're done writing it is a quick way to a plagiarism charge.  Where on earth did they get the idea that it's acceptable to write that way? I've had several students use this as their excuse for plagiarizing this semester, including one who's a junior. I swear if this job kills me I'm going to haunt any teachers/professors who taught this/let it happen, plus any students who are lying to me (although given my two-decade history of teaching in the American South, I suspect they're not--the schools are Not Well Here, and I'm sure letting things slide during the pandemic made it worse).

Lots of the cases of big shot professionals getting accused of plagiarism get defended on the grounds of "mistakenly" having left out quotation marks, citations, etc. Since these people got as far as they did, and people defend them on these charges, clearly there are lots of situations when it's an apparently acceptable strategy.

TL;DR - Students are doing what others have gotten away with, (and essentially gotten rewarded for),for a long time.

[AmLitHist]

Sorry; lots of mistakes and I can't edit it.

I'm going to have to remind my students in the future that writing a paper and only putting in quotation marks/citations/references when they're done writing it is a quick way to a plagiarism charge.  Where on earth did they get the idea that it's acceptable to write that way? I've had several students use this as their excuse for plagiarizing this semester, including one who's a junior. I swear if this job kills me I'm going to haunt any teachers/professors who taught this/let it happen, plus any students who are lying to me (although given my two-decade history of teaching in the American South, I suspect they're not--the schools are Not Well Here, and I'm sure letting things slide during the pandemic made it worse).

Lots of the cases of big shot professionals getting accused of plagiarism get defended on the grounds of "mistakenly" having left out quotation marks, citations, etc. Since these people got as far as they did, and people defend them on these charges, clearly there are lots of situations when it's an apparently acceptable strategy.

TL;DR - Students are doing what others have gotten away with, (and essentially gotten rewarded for),for a long time.

In a similar vein, I had a blatant plagiarizer from last fall who just got her earned F (for 2 x plagiarizing) overturned by my dean. Nary a citation, attribution, or WC entry at all in the rough draft (after we'd spent a month covering MLA and plagiarism avoidance), so I marked the hell out of it, pointed to the syllabus policy that the first plagiarism earns a zero, and any subsequent instances earn an F in the course--and then she submits the same damned paper, complete with verbatim lifts and no documentation but with a few added quotation marks thrown in.  So she earned the F for the class.

Student and mom whined to my chair, who upheld my position; they then went to the dean, who changed the grade to a C, because the rough draft should have been "a learning experience."  Hell, no--there were 5 separate detailed assignments (all low stakes) that were learning experiences, and the student didn't turn ANY of them in.  Not my problem--and it sure as hell doesn't give her a pass to say, "But I didn't know" and get out of the charges and the F.

(I've raised plenty of hell over the years over asinine admin decisions, but I've never filed a formal grievance on one.  This one is getting grieved through my union.)

[apl68]

There needs to be some pushback over an administrative decision that egregious.  If admins are in the habit of undercutting the instructors that badly, then the school is failing its students.

[mythbuster]

AmLiHist- your story is why I refuse to call then drafts anymore. My writing in science class is similar in scaffolding to yours. So I now call it the "first submission". I've now made this first submission grade worth more than the revision and I warn, warn, warn them (including in the syllabus) not to submit an incomplete draft or they will fail. Not all get the message, but at least then my ass is covered if it goes to appeal.

[AmLitHist]

I'm stealing that, Mythbuster. Shall I cite you in my syllabus?  :-)

[OneMoreYear]

I also started just numbering scaffolded assignments/drafts rather than calling them a draft of anything: Scaffolding Assignment #1, Scaffolding Assignment #2, etc. Thus, they are a graded assignment on their own merit and should be treated as such.

I am also banging my head because I spent all day yesterday documenting plagiarism in a graduate level course, and then was told that I can't assign a 0 for the papers--I have to grade the parts per the rubric that do not include plagiarized material. So, the paper grades are still failing, but I don't think the message is as strong as it needs to be.