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

[OneMoreYear]

Gah! Friggin grad students! What could you possibly be thinking when you decided to plagiarize this small stakes assignment?  This is a scaffolded assignment. The point of this part is to write an initial draft can so you can get feedback for the next draft.  Now, I've got to have meetings to figure out what to do with both of you. 

[arcturus]

Dear We-thought-you-wouldn't-notice students -

If we set the Discussion submission rules such that you must post before you can see other students contributions, that is because we want you to think about the prompt and come up with your own individualized response. Submitting a blank (or nonsense) response with the plan to edit it after you have seen the other contributions is academic misconduct. Fortunately, we turned off the edit option, so we now have a record of both your first submission and the second one you crafted after seeing what other students wrote. We will grade based on that first submission. Welcome to the world of zeros.

Sincerely,
Prof I-wasn't-born-yesterday.

[Larimar]

Dear We-thought-you-wouldn't-notice students -

If we set the Discussion submission rules such that you must post before you can see other students contributions, that is because we want you to think about the prompt and come up with your own individualized response. Submitting a blank (or nonsense) response with the plan to edit it after you have seen the other contributions is academic misconduct. Fortunately, we turned off the edit option, so we now have a record of both your first submission and the second one you crafted after seeing what other students wrote. We will grade based on that first submission. Welcome to the world of zeros.

Sincerely,
Prof I-wasn't-born-yesterday.

Wow. I'm glad my students don't seem to have thought of that trick, at least this time. Will need to incorporate countermeasures for next semester. Thanks for the heads-up.

[sinenomine]

Dear We-thought-you-wouldn't-notice students -

If we set the Discussion submission rules such that you must post before you can see other students contributions, that is because we want you to think about the prompt and come up with your own individualized response. Submitting a blank (or nonsense) response with the plan to edit it after you have seen the other contributions is academic misconduct. Fortunately, we turned off the edit option, so we now have a record of both your first submission and the second one you crafted after seeing what other students wrote. We will grade based on that first submission. Welcome to the world of zeros.

Sincerely,
Prof I-wasn't-born-yesterday.

Wow. I'm glad my students don't seem to have thought of that trick, at least this time. Will need to incorporate countermeasures for next semester. Thanks for the heads-up.

I called out one of my students on that earlier this semester; she never did it again.

[AmLitHist]

In a similar vein to arcturus' little sneaks, I think I posted here last spring? last fall? about one of mine who tried to meet a minimum word count creatively:  he submitted a paper that was about 3/4 of a page, but the word count showed it was something like 2300 words.  I kept highlighting the brief text and getting that same count.  Finally I did "page down" and ended up at the end of page 5.  Turns out the guy had copied and pasted gibberish, selected it, and changed the font to white.

If they'd put that much effort into actually doing the work. . . .  (and yes, that was an interesting conversation when I asked him about it).

[RatGuy]

In a similar vein to arcturus' little sneaks, I think I posted here last spring? last fall? about one of mine who tried to meet a minimum word count creatively:  he submitted a paper that was about 3/4 of a page, but the word count showed it was something like 2300 words.  I kept highlighting the brief text and getting that same count.  Finally I did "page down" and ended up at the end of page 5.  Turns out the guy had copied and pasted gibberish, selected it, and changed the font to white.

If they'd put that much effort into actually doing the work. . . .  (and yes, that was an interesting conversation when I asked him about it).

Yes, that has been a common tactic among freshpeeps my my school -- they must hear it from someone, and they always seem baffled when I catch them. For what its worth, they've added "flags" to Turnitin, and white text is one of the things it is supposed to catch. (Aside: I think that's useless, since it generally highlights white text as matching anyway). 

Other such shenanigans include using white quotation marks around everything. It's supposed to fool TII if the instructor has "ignore quotes" turned on. Also students have been using 0ther charac+er$ instead of letters. Some fonts make it a little more subtle than others.

[FishProf]

When I send you the link to sign up for registration and, for whatever reason on YOUR system, it isn't a hyperlink, you can STILL copy the address and paste it in your browser.

'Digital natives' my ass.

[lilyb]

Yes, that has been a common tactic among freshpeeps my my school -- they must hear it from someone, and they always seem baffled when I catch them. For what its worth, they've added "flags" to Turnitin, and white text is one of the things it is supposed to catch. (Aside: I think that's useless, since it generally highlights white text as matching anyway).

Other such shenanigans include using white quotation marks around everything. It's supposed to fool TII if the instructor has "ignore quotes" turned on. Also students have been using 0ther charac+er$ instead of letters. Some fonts make it a little more subtle than others.

After making all the white text visible for a recent (male) student essay, I had the pleasure of reading sentences that all revolved around the word "penis." Think "I love my penis," or just "penis penis penis."

Was this choice of gibberish meant as some kind of subliminal influence? Bodily self-affirmation? A glimpse into the interior monologue of young men today?

To cap this off, much of the black text was plagiarized.

[mamselle]

Yes, that has been a common tactic among freshpeeps my my school -- they must hear it from someone, and they always seem baffled when I catch them. For what its worth, they've added "flags" to Turnitin, and white text is one of the things it is supposed to catch. (Aside: I think that's useless, since it generally highlights white text as matching anyway).

Other such shenanigans include using white quotation marks around everything. It's supposed to fool TII if the instructor has "ignore quotes" turned on. Also students have been using 0ther charac+er$ instead of letters. Some fonts make it a little more subtle than others.

After making all the white text visible for a recent (male) student essay, I had the pleasure of reading sentences that all revolved around the word "penis." Think "I love my penis," or just "penis penis penis."

Was this choice of gibberish meant as some kind of subliminal influence? Bodily self-affirmation? A glimpse into the interior monologue of young men today?

To cap this off, much of the black text was plagiarized.

Maybe he's studying Jeanne de Montbaston?

   https://readingmedievalbooks.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/jeanne-de-montbaston-penis-trees-against-the-misogynists/

;--}

M.

[ciao_yall]

Yes, that has been a common tactic among freshpeeps my my school -- they must hear it from someone, and they always seem baffled when I catch them. For what its worth, they've added "flags" to Turnitin, and white text is one of the things it is supposed to catch. (Aside: I think that's useless, since it generally highlights white text as matching anyway).

Other such shenanigans include using white quotation marks around everything. It's supposed to fool TII if the instructor has "ignore quotes" turned on. Also students have been using 0ther charac+er$ instead of letters. Some fonts make it a little more subtle than others.

After making all the white text visible for a recent (male) student essay, I had the pleasure of reading sentences that all revolved around the word "penis." Think "I love my penis," or just "penis penis penis."

Was this choice of gibberish meant as some kind of subliminal influence? Bodily self-affirmation? A glimpse into the interior monologue of young men today?

To cap this off, much of the black text was plagiarized.

Okay, so you MUST tell us how the conversation went!

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Student turns in a 30+ page lab report with over 20 screenshots (only needed 5). Stu also measured things that weren't required to be measured.

This is painful.

[Caracal]

God, I hate the grade complainers who are convinced I'm unjustly depriving them of the grade they deserve. I get like one of these students every 4 semesters or so and they take up an inordinate amount of my time and energy. It always starts with complaints on the first exam, and then escalates to more complaints about every subsequent exam. I sense this student is going to eventually be sending emails to my chair.

Yes, you seem to suck at this. Get better at it. Or don't and get a C. I don't care, but stop bothering me.

[Langue_doc]

I once had a student complain about the grading policy in the syllabus. Stu, grading policies are not decided by consensus during the third week of class.

[marshwiggle]

I once had a student complain about the grading policy in the syllabus. Stu, grading policies are not decided by consensus during the third week of class.

Actually, I have heard people advocating that sort of crowd-sourced grading during the first class; typically in the kind of course where they are "creating knowledge together".

[mamselle]

I used to get the wish for a 90-80-70 scale as "more fair."

When I explained that the curved scale worked in their favor, they'd still complain, because, like, they had to do the MATH to figure out how to improve their grade..

I'd say, "No, you just have to do the WORK...." but they didn't seem to get it.

M.