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

[Cheerful]

Writing class. After taking ans passing the plagiarism quiz. Student's paper is flagged by Turnitin as 60% match. Yup. Blatant plagiarism. I fill out appropriate forms, have tearful Zoom call wih said student, recommend using the writing center etc. etc. etc.

Student submission of the revised research paper. . .  now a 57% match. And not just to previously submitted paper. It matches the original sources once again.

Some possibilities:  student inadvertently submitted wrong version of revised paper, student doesn't understand what constitutes plagiarism, Turnitin flagging nonproblems, student doesn't care.

[mythbuster]

Likely the last. This course is required for the major, so she will get to take it again and learn to care.

[fishbrains]

Writing class. After taking ans passing the plagiarism quiz. Student's paper is flagged by Turnitin as 60% match. Yup. Blatant plagiarism. I fill out appropriate forms, have tearful Zoom call wih said student, recommend using the writing center etc. etc. etc.

Student submission of the revised research paper. . .  now a 57% match. And not just to previously submitted paper. It matches the original sources once again.

Some possibilities:  student inadvertently submitted wrong version of revised paper, student doesn't understand what constitutes plagiarism, Turnitin flagging nonproblems, student doesn't care.

FWIW: I found students generally refused to discard their plagiarized work and start over. They just tried to take what they had and make it less "plagiarizy." So I started requiring students to write on completely different topics with new research if they want to do a rewrite. The ones that take me up on the offer tend to do much better than they would if they tried to revise what they plagiarized.

[mythbuster]

Yeah, the revision is a major part of the assignment for everyone, as it's one of the skills we are practicing in this course. Most students think that revision = fix the typos. It does not. I have a picture of one of Obama's speech drafts that I use to illustrate what good revision REALLY looks like.

The thing that kills me about this student is that she was given the full report with all the plagiarized parts highlighted. So it's pretty easy from there to at least attempt to fix the relevant sentences. She didn't even attempt that.

[the_geneticist]

Yeah, the revision is a major part of the assignment for everyone, as it's one of the skills we are practicing in this course. Most students think that revision = fix the typos. It does not. I have a picture of one of Obama's speech drafts that I use to illustrate what good revision REALLY looks like.

The thing that kills me about this student is that she was given the full report with all the plagiarized parts highlighted. So it's pretty easy from there to at least attempt to fix the relevant sentences. She didn't even attempt that.

I see this is graduate students too.  I have them write quiz questions for their labs and send them to me for feedback before giving them to their students.  I've had TAs that would keep sending me the same terrible questions with slightly different wording, even with feedback that the questions were not answerable/too challenging/not even a question and instructions to delete them and start over. 

[AmLitHist]

Let's see.  Over the past 20 or so days:

--The curse of the white font has returned.  A guy submitted a homework assignment targeted at 400-600 words that showed a word count of 5xx.  Yet the text was about 3/5 of a page long, double-spaced, including header.  Yep, I did "select all" and changed the font to red, and found strings of 2-character chunks of gibberish at the end of every line, including the header. I returned it with a zero and the comment that when he decided to get serious about trying to actually do some work, I'd get serious about reading and grading it.

--After returning that to the student, with the usual announcement instructing them to review both the grade and my feedback, the essay was due < 24 hours later. Yep--same a**hole did the same damned thing on the essay.  This time, on a target of 1200 words, 28% of it was white-font gibberish. That got him an official misconduct complaint (for all the good it will amount to), and he dropped the class without a word.  (Or maybe there were words, but they were white, and I couldn't see them......)

--In the absolutely ridiculous mandated Comp I course of record, the developer put in a research paper at the end of the term, with clear examples and instruction about plagiarism avoidance.  As a result, I've graded many papers down heavily for missing documentation in that section of the rubric (to be warm and fuzzy rather than giving the zeros they've earned), and I've put way too much time in feedback and commentary to show how and where they should have cited.  That's fine. . . except for the TWO nearly completely copied and pasted submissions I graded yesterday--two different students in the same section.  Both are awful writers who magically turned into published authors and then back again, within their single papers.  So, I ended up spending much more time filing the plagiarism cases on these two characters than either of them put in to create their submissions.

--One of these plagiarists was after me on email all morning while I was teaching:  she had no idea she couldn't do that, is sure that if she could just go back in and put quotes around the stolen text (we're talking literally multiple paragraphs cut ad pasted in their original sequence) it would be OK, it really doesn't need citations (which is beside the point, and yes, it does), etc.  In the second round, I was frustrated and said, "Look, you committed theft, and you got caught. Somebody had to research and write that stuff, and you stole it, turned it in with your name on it, and clearly expected me to give you a good grade when you didn't do a damned thing--you couldn't even be bothered to change a word here and there.  This is the very definition of 'intent to deceive,' and saying 'I didn't know' doesn't shield you--you had tons of reading and homework assignments on it, and you did fine on those. Just being lazy and then trying to weasel your way out of it is too bad."  THAT she finally got, and she finally apologized.

Damn to hell.  This semester needs to be done already.  I haven't smoked in nearly 9 years or had a drink in many more years than that, but I'm really missing my Marlboros and bourbon these days.

The good news is, I'm past caring at this point.  I'm sure I'll hear from the other plagiarist, and I'm braced for more fun and games in the other sections.  At this point, they've beaten me down.  I'll grade and comment as needed and then forget about it.  At least I have plenty of appropriate comments (and email material) so that I can just copy and paste, myself.  (My chair is aware of all this and is ready, should any more come up about it.  He's made clear that I've been a lot nicer than he would/will be.)

[Larimar]

Wow. What a mess. My sympathies.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Daaayum, AmLitHist. That's some crap!

[mamselle]

Let's see.  Over the past 20 or so days:

--The curse of the white font has returned.  A guy submitted a homework assignment targeted at 400-600 words that showed a word count of 5xx.  Yet the text was about 3/5 of a page long, double-spaced, including header.  Yep, I did "select all" and changed the font to red, and found strings of 2-character chunks of gibberish at the end of every line, including the header. I returned it with a zero and the comment that when he decided to get serious about trying to actually do some work, I'd get serious about reading and grading it.

--After returning that to the student, with the usual announcement instructing them to review both the grade and my feedback, the essay was due < 24 hours later. Yep--same a**hole did the same damned thing on the essay.  This time, on a target of 1200 words, 28% of it was white-font gibberish. That got him an official misconduct complaint (for all the good it will amount to), and he dropped the class without a word.  (Or maybe there were words, but they were white, and I couldn't see them......)

--In the absolutely ridiculous mandated Comp I course of record, the developer put in a research paper at the end of the term, with clear examples and instruction about plagiarism avoidance.  As a result, I've graded many papers down heavily for missing documentation in that section of the rubric (to be warm and fuzzy rather than giving the zeros they've earned), and I've put way too much time in feedback and commentary to show how and where they should have cited.  That's fine. . . except for the TWO nearly completely copied and pasted submissions I graded yesterday--two different students in the same section.  Both are awful writers who magically turned into published authors and then back again, within their single papers.  So, I ended up spending much more time filing the plagiarism cases on these two characters than either of them put in to create their submissions.

--One of these plagiarists was after me on email all morning while I was teaching:  she had no idea she couldn't do that, is sure that if she could just go back in and put quotes around the stolen text (we're talking literally multiple paragraphs cut ad pasted in their original sequence) it would be OK, it really doesn't need citations (which is beside the point, and yes, it does), etc.  In the second round, I was frustrated and said, "Look, you committed theft, and you got caught. Somebody had to research and write that stuff, and you stole it, turned it in with your name on it, and clearly expected me to give you a good grade when you didn't do a damned thing--you couldn't even be bothered to change a word here and there.  This is the very definition of 'intent to deceive,' and saying 'I didn't know' doesn't shield you--you had tons of reading and homework assignments on it, and you did fine on those. Just being lazy and then trying to weasel your way out of it is too bad."  THAT she finally got, and she finally apologized.

Damn to hell.  This semester needs to be done already.  I haven't smoked in nearly 9 years or had a drink in many more years than that, but I'm really missing my Marlboros and bourbon these days.

The good news is, I'm past caring at this point.  I'm sure I'll hear from the other plagiarist, and I'm braced for more fun and games in the other sections.  At this point, they've beaten me down.  I'll grade and comment as needed and then forget about it.  At least I have plenty of appropriate comments (and email material) so that I can just copy and paste, myself.  (My chair is aware of all this and is ready, should any more come up about it.  He's made clear that I've been a lot nicer than he would/will be.)

Was all the white text about penises? (Interthreaduality)

M.

[AvidReader]

That is awful, AmLitHist. I will sip a whisky in your honor tonight. I hope it gets better.

My most recent plagiarist (who also recently emailed to complain) also does not believe the numerous copied and pasted sentences--with ONE citation in the whole essay, which says just (JSTOR)--count as plagiarism. Fortunately, I require all my Comp 1 students to take the plagiarism test offered through Indiana University. I really want to write my own (theirs is in APA and the answers are becoming increasingly easier to Google search) but I never have the time--or stay at a university long enough--to do it. It is (a little too) hard: they try it once, we discuss the results in class, and then they have another week to pass. This makes my next steps much easier.

AR.

[AvidReader]

Sorry for the double post. This was going to go on the "grading" thread, but I am mostly just annoyed with myself for creating extra work, so it came here instead.

One of my classes had to upload a list of sources for their final research essay, and I stupidly told them that they could either list the information or required or submit a works cited page. I would only grade the sources, I said, but could give feedback on the works cited pages if they wanted to double-check.

Foolish me! Now I have a whole host of works cited pages copied and pasted from various auto-citation generators. I can tell because many errors are standard, but I can also tell because various entries are in (many) different citation styles, even within a single works cited page. There is no way to specify "If you actually tried to do your citations yourself, I will look at them, but if you copy & paste the library citation or use a citation generator, you are responsible for the errors it introduces" when I offer to look over works cited pages. Obviously I can type (and am typing) a version of the latter half of that into many of my comments, but it's mindboggling that they don't even notice the differences. I may not offer to give feedback on these next semester. Maybe I will instead have them evaluate the accuracy of a library-generated citation against the MANY excellent resources I have provided that they have clearly all ignored. Ugh!

AR.

[apl68]

Sorry for the double post. This was going to go on the "grading" thread, but I am mostly just annoyed with myself for creating extra work, so it came here instead.

One of my classes had to upload a list of sources for their final research essay, and I stupidly told them that they could either list the information or required or submit a works cited page. I would only grade the sources, I said, but could give feedback on the works cited pages if they wanted to double-check.

Foolish me! Now I have a whole host of works cited pages copied and pasted from various auto-citation generators. I can tell because many errors are standard, but I can also tell because various entries are in (many) different citation styles, even within a single works cited page. There is no way to specify "If you actually tried to do your citations yourself, I will look at them, but if you copy & paste the library citation or use a citation generator, you are responsible for the errors it introduces" when I offer to look over works cited pages. Obviously I can type (and am typing) a version of the latter half of that into many of my comments, but it's mindboggling that they don't even notice the differences. I may not offer to give feedback on these next semester. Maybe I will instead have them evaluate the accuracy of a library-generated citation against the MANY excellent resources I have provided that they have clearly all ignored. Ugh!

AR.

It's disturbing to think that behaviors like this are so widespread.  So much of what's on this thread is an effort to substitute token compliance with the letter of the instructions for actual, substantial effort.  It's as if it has become a ingrained behavior for large numbers of students.  Like it's all they know how to do.  Imagine the sorts of things that this mentality must lead to outside the classroom.

[the_geneticist]

Dear students,
Due to previous students saying it would have been really great to have more time on the last project, we moved the start of the project a week earlier this term.  You have had the guidelines, grading rubric, 2 full class periods, and 3 weeks to work on it.  I've held office hours, your TAs have held office hours.  You've had lots of time to think and work and ask questions.  Most of you have done a fantastic job.  But some of you have decided to wait until the night before/morning of to finish.  Not a good plan on your part and not an emergency on my part.  I'll answer your emails, but not at 2:00am since I'm asleep (and you should be too!). 

[Anon1787]

It's disturbing to think that behaviors like this are so widespread.  So much of what's on this thread is an effort to substitute token compliance with the letter of the instructions for actual, substantial effort.  It's as if it has become a ingrained behavior for large numbers of students.  Like it's all they know how to do.  Imagine the sorts of things that this mentality must lead to outside the classroom.

Agreed. I made the mistake of using a text where there are a lot of summaries that contain enough information that could be plausibly connected to the assignment question and a fairly large number of students more or less copied those summaries without adding much of anything to make that connection.

[Chemystery]

3. Friend was visiting from out of town and had a torn esophagus requiring student to wait at hospital without computer (I have thoughts about visiting friends in a pandemic, plus what hospitals currently allow non-patients inside??)

I received a long email from a student patiently explaining to me how everything I do is wrong.  One of my many transgressions is that the amount of time he has to spend studying for my class stops him from getting together with his friends on the weekend and having a social life.

I really wanted to respond with something to the effect of "Given that we are in the midst of a global pandemic and should not be getting together with others outside our households, I will read this as 'your class may have saved my life.' You're welcome."