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

[AvidReader]

I once had a student who would refuse to bring the printout of her assignments for peer review claiming that she had the assignment on her laptop and that other professors allowed her to bring her laptop. I had to remind her that her assignment could be peer-reviewed only if the reviewer had a physical copy.

Pre-Covid/in person: When my students brought the assignment on their devices for peer review, they had to pass their device around and have a variety of people use it. Some really didn't care; others brought paper versions the next time.

Mine get points for bringing two printed-out copies of their essays for peer review. Then everyone does two peer reviews each and I glance over the first round of peer reviews, especially citation and grammar feedback, and check off strong recommendations and cross out responses with which I disagree. Bringing a computer would make this impossible.

. . .

Today I'm grading research essays. Students can choose from five general topics and then have to narrow down their chosen topics to a specific issue. Ten chose a topic that can veer towards a debate over the right to privacy, and half of these are writing about this narrower problem, which is fine. All five frequently allude to the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, but have, instead of quoting or discussing the actual Amendment (~50 words?), chosen to quote and incorporate philosophical scholarly articles about the amendment, some of which are 40+ pages long and clearly well over the students' heads. Sigh.

In happy news, I have fewer than 200 essays left to grade this semester. Haven't run the actual count in a while.

AR.

[mythbuster]

We had finals last week. The University deadline to submit final grades is Tuesday at 10am. I inform students when I posted final grades on Sunday that if they had an issue the HAD to contact me before Tuesday at 10am. I even had a Zoom hour on Monday just in case.

Now, Tuesday at 4pm I get emails from both D students and another who really wants an A-. The A- I can blow off. But the D's I will be expected to at least meet with. I HATE this part of the job.

[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.

[kiana]

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.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

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.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just state (point blank), that if you post questions on Chegg, you will be caught and you will get a zero? I mean, I do have statements similar to this in my syllabus, but I don't mention specific websites.

It is a pain in the ass and I'm sorry you're dealing with it. I had to create new content after my questions were posted on Chegg, so I am familiar with what you're going through.

[OneMoreYear]

This is a vent. Skip if you need to:

Damn it, grad student! Why did you do this to yourself?!  You needed a C on this final paper to pass this class, so basically, you needed to turn in something not awful, and you would have passed. Now, you have plagiarized in the stupidest way possible, and you are going to fail the course and possibly get booted from the program because you did not bother to write 5 pages in your own words.  Any what is the name of all things holy made you think I would not notice? I gave you the frakkin example that you plagiarized from!  I know I am entirely burnt out and dealing with long-term brain fog from covid effects, but even in my current state, I am still not that clueless.

[mamselle]

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

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

For just one class, I'd like to try telling everyone that I will accede to all their grade-grubbing and quiz and exam retaking demands (because it's their last semester!)--on the condition that I will publicly post their request on the LMS for everyone to see. I know I can't, though.

I think that what I will do, henceforth, is anonymize and save the requests in a file, and read them out loud to my classes and ask what they think I should have done. Should be a fun case study for my ethics classes. Perhaps when they see te sheer volume of grubbing, they'll think twice about doing it themselves.

[dr_codex]

For just one class, I'd like to try telling everyone that I will accede to all their grade-grubbing and quiz and exam retaking demands (because it's their last semester!)--on the condition that I will publicly post their request on the LMS for everyone to see. I know I can't, though.

I think that what I will do, henceforth, is anonymize and save the requests in a file, and read them out loud to my classes and ask what they think I should have done. Should be a fun case study for my ethics classes. Perhaps when they see te sheer volume of grubbing, they'll think twice about doing it themselves.

What's the over/under on this experiment increasing the flow instead? ("People can do that? I should, too!)

I'm going with the over.

[marshwiggle]

For just one class, I'd like to try telling everyone that I will accede to all their grade-grubbing and quiz and exam retaking demands (because it's their last semester!)--on the condition that I will publicly post their request on the LMS for everyone to see. I know I can't, though.

I think that what I will do, henceforth, is anonymize and save the requests in a file, and read them out loud to my classes and ask what they think I should have done. Should be a fun case study for my ethics classes. Perhaps when they see te sheer volume of grubbing, they'll think twice about doing it themselves.

What's the over/under on this experiment increasing the flow instead? ("People can do that? I should, too!)

I'm going with the over.

That was my immediate thought too. Put my money with yours.

[AvidReader]

For just one class, I'd like to try telling everyone that I will accede to all their grade-grubbing and quiz and exam retaking demands (because it's their last semester!)--on the condition that I will publicly post their request on the LMS for everyone to see. I know I can't, though.

The problem I see with this is that students who ask for one exception often don't stop at one. So you'd get:

1) Dear Prof, my life is so hard and I forgot the quiz; can I pleeeeease have extra time.
2) Dear Prof, I didn't see your email and I missed the window you gave me but I can take it tonight (sent at 11 pm Monday night)
3) Dear Prof, I can't take it on Tuesdays because I work. Can I take it tomorrow instead?
4) Dear Prof, I took the quiz but it says I failed but I know I put the rite answer for question 4. Can you fix this, please?
5) Dear Prof, as you know, I couldn't take last week's quiz until Wednesday, so I didn't have any time to study for today's quiz. Could I please take it next week instead?

Giving extra time on no. 1 doesn't take much time. Dealing with the full sequence (x even half your students) gets exhausting.

AR.

[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.

[onehappyunicorn]

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.

[Parasaurolophus]

What's the over/under on this experiment increasing the flow instead? ("People can do that? I should, too!)

I'm going with the over.

That was my immediate thought too. Put my money with yours.

The problem I see with this is that students who ask for one exception often don't stop at one. So you'd get:

1) Dear Prof, my life is so hard and I forgot the quiz; can I pleeeeease have extra time.
2) Dear Prof, I didn't see your email and I missed the window you gave me but I can take it tonight (sent at 11 pm Monday night)
3) Dear Prof, I can't take it on Tuesdays because I work. Can I take it tomorrow instead?
4) Dear Prof, I took the quiz but it says I failed but I know I put the rite answer for question 4. Can you fix this, please?
5) Dear Prof, as you know, I couldn't take last week's quiz until Wednesday, so I didn't have any time to study for today's quiz. Could I please take it next week instead?

Giving extra time on no. 1 doesn't take much time. Dealing with the full sequence (x even half your students) gets exhausting.

AR.

It might. I'd still like to experiment with the shaming, however.


After a night's sleep, I still think it's a good idea to show them a semester's worth of anonymized grubbing, so I'll start collecting the emails. (Which, FTR, literally say things like 'Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease'. Ugh.)

[apl68]

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.