Depressed TA: plagarism. Long-ish

The BBQ Pit
1

So I have this one fellow in one of my discussion sections who I am fond of. He really participates more than most of the other students and has clever and insightful things to say. The day that the professor sat in on the class in particular he was active and engaged and bright to the point that she mentioned him to me after class “That guy back there-- he’s good!”

However, his written English isn’t too hot (he’s hispanic-- I can’t help but feel sympathetic to him as this is a fairly homogenous school with few minority students and I want him to succeed). His first short (5 pp) paper wasn’t very good; I had to give him something in the C range for it, and his midterm was pretty bad. But I kept trying to run into him after class so I could tell him how much I appreciated his great particpation in section-- the moment never arrived.

The final exam is on Tuesday and I’m reading and grading their second paper assignment today. Reading his paper, initially I am really delighted at how much better this is than the first paper-- it’s really quite well done and I’m looking forward to praising him in the comments I’ll write at the end. By page three I realize that it is TOO well done.

I get home and plug a random sentence into Google. Sigh.

About 3/4 of the paper is a pastiche of entire sentences and groups of sentences pulled from 4 (so far) web sites. We made sure that the students know what plagarism is-- they had to read a form about it and sign it and turn it in. This isn’t even subtle or out of mere confusion-- it is totally premeditated and blatant. There’s no way I can be a soft touch here: I will have to totally bust his ass for this, per course policy (very large course).

I’m just depressed that it was THIS student, who I had actually become a bit emotionally invested in. I’m upset that he’s betrayed my trust, and I wonder if he thinks I’m a pushover or an idiot. Jeez, plagarists-- if you take something from the web, at least use a pay-for-use site! I wonder if the web is just too convenient and a horrible temptation for those who might otherwise come to their senses while going through the relatively involved process of retyping written plagarized sources?

Sigh, again. I’d better get used to this feeling, I suppose. 4 years of TAing and this is the first time I’ve been totally let down and dissapointed in someone I was rooting for.

2

This is why grading is not always such a good measurement of a students performance.

Pressure about grades can also cause situations like the one you are in, a student who would under an optimal system be very successful, is forced to cheat to get a ‘passing’ grade in a system that relies solely upon how well a person can prove on paper that they know what they know.

I am blessed with the ability to crap out 90%+ papers in a few hours on almost any topic though, so I (luckily!) do not have this problem;

except in a few professors’s classes, if stuff is not stated the EXACT way that they want it, next to no credit. . . .

Ick. Heh.

But yah, hell, who knows, if the student is on an academic scholarship of some sort, or even just minor financial aid, it might have very well come down to a case of “cheat and hope you don’t get caught” or “not have enough money for next term.”

Which sucks even more of course. :frowning:

If a person is INTELLECTUALLY succeeding then they should NEVER be forced into a situation (and indeed it should NOT BE POSSIBLE for them to be forced into a situation) where cheating becomes necessary. Though not knowing the students full situation I obviously cannot comment on if this is the case or not.

3

Is there any way that he could improve his writing with some tuition and/or guidance? You gave me the impression that there was nothing wrong with his oral skills, so I’m assuming it isn’t a language barrier.

That really sucks.

4

In virtually any college course outside pure math, the ability to clearly and efficiently convey what you know in writting is what is meant by “intellectually succeeding”: what that good grade represnts is that you have a solid understanding of whatever that course covers, and you can apply that knowledge. If you can’t get that understanding across in writing, than you don’t have it.

Furthermore, if the problem is a language barrier, every university I’ve ever attended has had extensive resources for polishing writing: writing labs, grad student tutorials, TAs, professor office hours. And all that is exactly why it hurts when this happens: you try so hard to give people oppurtunities, and it smarts when it isn’t enough.

You have my sympathies, capybara. It sucks to be in that position. The only thing i can suggest is that after you rip him a new one, you end with something like “I really enjoyed your contributions to the class this semester, and I hope you are in my section again next semester.” In other words 'You fucked up bad, boy, and you are going to pay the consequenses. However, there are no hard feelings, and you have potential."

And make sure he knows about writing labs and tutoring and coming to see his TA/Professor during office hours.

5

capybaraWhat’s the punishment for plagerism?

6

Although I cannot speak for capybara, I did TA nearly every quarter over a period of 5 years (until one year ago) at the same University where capybara is currently a TA. I also taught courses to the incoming TAs in our department on “TA Training” which brought me into contact with the Dean of Students who would present in my class on the subject of academic dishonesty.

The TA is a representative of the professor, and therefore the professor has the final say as to what punishment should be meted out for plagiarism. From the OP I gather that the penalty was made explicit at the beginning of the course, which is a good idea since this topic comes up more often than you might think. Nearly constantly is more like it. The penalty may even have been included in writing in the course syllabus. If this is the case the professor ought to penalize the student according to those specified standards, although there is no law saying that she must.

The professor can essentially decide to do one of the following things:

  1. Nothing
  2. Fail the student and report the infraction with evidence to the Dean of Students
  3. Anything in between 1 and 2

Number 3 could consist of a stern talking to, or a failing grade on the assignment, or an incomplete for the course, or a failing grade for the course without reporting it to the dean of students. There is a huge amount of discretion here. In my opinion anything short of reporting the cheating to the Dean will not result in fundamentally permanent damage to a student’s future. Even an “F” won’t doom a student forever. I should know - I got several as an undergrad (not for cheating it was my daily acid habit that did it) and I’m a few weeks away from my PhD.

If the professor does decide to do number 2 (so to speak), then there are codified procedures by which the Dean of Students can take action against the student. I don’t remember them exactly off the top of my head, but they involve interviewing the student, and presenting him/her with the evidence of academic dishonesty, evaluating his/her response, and imposing some type of punishment. The student can appeal this decision to a board of review (including students) who can then rule on the fairness of the Dean’s decision and can either lessen the punishment or make it more severe. I believe the worst possible punishment is expulsion from the school and - of course - revocation of financial aid. This would probably have an effect on the student’s ability to return to school someday, though it still might not be an educational death sentence.

Since I’ve already gone on too long - just one more note to capybara. I’ve seen the most ridiculous and blatant attempts at cheating in my teaching career, and I’ve said to myself several times “Do they really think I’m stupid?”. But you can’t take it personally. It isn’t about you, it is about them. In my experience it isn’t “good” students under pressure to get good grades who cheat, it is poor students who blew off working on the class, who fundamentally do not care about their education and think most of there classes are a joke, and who really oughtn’t be in college in the first place, who cheat. Don’t get me started on the mindset that says every student who doesn’t go to college right out of high school is a loser.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be able to find the best solution to this problem, and that both you and the student will find a fair middle ground where his cheating is punished, and his education is not irreparably damaged.

7

Damn. “there classes” = “their classes”

8

Point one: it’s an art history survey class that fulfills a core writing requirement, which is why most of the students take it, so writing does matter very much. His exams aren’t hot either, which aren’t really graded strongly in terms of writing skills, so it’s not just trouble with writing. One shouldn’t be able to get through college being clever and doing no work. He’s not intellectually succeeding, per se-- he just participates nicely in section.

Two-- what I likely have to do is give him a 0 on the paper (failing him for the course might also be suggested, but if he gets a 0 on this paper I believe that results anyway) and report him to the dean. I think I can request that he not be suspended (1 or 2 quarters is an option) but it’s considered a good idea to report it at least to leave a paper trail in case this is a habit.

I offer to meet with students at office hours, read drafts, help proofread, there’s a writing center they can go to for help, etc. When someone does poorly on a paper I bend over backwards to offer help, if they want it, and make it abundantly clear in the feedback that they get with the paper, so there’s an element of sloth hidden in the plagarism here (I do have failing students come to me for advice and such at my suggestion-- some of them come, some of them don’t). Some know that all of these resources are there, but it’s too much trouble to take advantage of it. Of course he’ll have a chance to claim mitigating circumstances.

I’m not jaded or draconian about this. I’ll probably lose sleep about it, as I have too much empathy. Alas.

9

A friend of mine who is from China didn’t initially understand the difference between quoting and plagerism. Soon after he was here, I was proofing a paper he’d written and there would be sections of very poor grammer followed by several lines to a paragraph of good grammer with word usage that was obviously not his. I had to spend quite awhile explaining why this was wrong. He felt that if the paragraph said what he wanted what difference did it make since he was getting the info from it either way.

Maybe your student didn’t quite understand. Maybe.

PC

10

Ya, that sucks, and it especially sucks that you will sleep over the student being a jerk.

are students stupid these days? Your student could have rewritten the whole thing in his words instead of lifting directly off of the internet. a lot harder to get caught

11

When I was a TA in English Composition, I was told that if I could prove a student had plagiarized, I should give that person a big fat F for the course–not an incomplete, but an F. (Rumor had it that the student would be expelled from the university if we chose to report it to the dean, but I never confirmed this.) The most flagrant example was from an south Asian student who turned in a badly typed copy of George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant. When I showed him the story in a Norton Anthology, he insisted that it had happened in his village and that he told the story strictly from memory, and it was a huge coincidence that the same thing had happened to Orwell in Burma. He dropped the course before I had a chance to fail him.

Now, teaching English Composition at a foreign university, I also have to deal with this issue from time to time. Usually it’s pretty easy to find the sources the students copy from; it’s always either the internet (I just Google a sentence from the essay) or from some local English book, and since there are surprisingly few such books to choose from around here, I can often find it. Once two really good students copied essays from a book that I just happened to have, and the next time the class met, I brought the book. The two guys were on the front row, and when I pulled the book out of my briefcase, they both dropped their heads face down on their desks, and groaned. For them, I did just give them a good talking to. They were both under a lot of pressure that week, blah blah, and so I told them that if they would re-write the papers, I would give them another chance. I’m getting soft in my old age. But for the next year, before those guys graduated, they were extremely grateful to me, bowing and all that. I think they realized that they got a pretty big break.

The thing here is that if I give an F, all the student has to do is re-take the class, and the F disappears from the transcript. The only way an F really hurts a student is if he or she is about to graduate and needs the credit. If I have a really crappy student who cheats, I’ll usually give a D–that stays on the transcript, and hurts the GPA.

12

Hmm…depends on the university, MrO. In the one I’m in, Fs are not forgotten…what you got the first time is averaged with what you got the second (or third, fourth, etc.) time you took that class.

Capybara, I know you feel bad, but the student lazied and didn’t take the help that was offered, there was nothing you could do except pointing a gun and order him to go to office hours. I’m a hispanic student, in a place with few minorities, and with a merit scholarship that depends of my GPA. I know my writing skills are not up there, and when I took an English course last fall, I went to the professor’s hour to have it proofread, comment on, etc. I also went to the writing lab, emailed copies to some relatives and friend, all to make sure the essays were coherent enough. That kid had a chance, and he didn’t take it.

13

Yes, it does depend. The university I attended, in Texas, didn’t forget an F, and I don’t know of any in the US that do. I’m not sure if all universities in Korea do, but the one I teach at does. When I heard about it I was horrified–it means that if students don’t mind staying a little longer than necessary, they can screw around and fail as many classes as they like, with no record of it showing up anywhere except in their professors’ grade books. Then as long as they get themselves together and do okay when they re-take the classes they bombed, they can graduate with a good GPA. It does not speak well for the academic standards of the school, but hey, it’s a job.

14

I’m an English tutor, and I run into this all the time. The vast majority of my students are business students from Asian countries (mainly China and Taiwan). It seems I have to give the “Plagerism Talk” on a daily basis.
I asked one woman how she paraphrased a certain passage. She responded, “I changed ‘cash’ to ‘money’.” The rest was directly lifted from the source. I realized that she honestly believed (and so do almost all of my students) that that is what paraphrasing means. I try to help them as much as possible, but one day I fear they won’t have someone who is so understanding and willing to help them, and it’ll bite them in the ass.
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15

In my student teaching, I found doing “paraphrasing activities” as a group seemed to make a big difference. This is high school, mond, but I don’t think it would be out of place in a freshman comp course, either. I cut-and-pasted (and credited!) passages from Encyclopedia Britanica onto overhead projector sheets, and then we worked through the passages together. Actually seeing it done from sources that they were likely to use seemed to help a great deal.

For a freshman compl class one could use more difficult material than the Encyclodia Britannica, but I actually think it’s a pretty good place to start: the prose is a bit complicated, and the vocabularly about right for 18 year olds, and it is always clear.

16

That sucks, capybara. I’m prosecuting my first honor code case right now, and the student looked absolutely sick when I confronted him with the evidence. (Can’t say I blame him – honor violations here are tried by a student court, and absolutely the last people I’d want sitting in judgment on me are overachieving 18- to-21 year-olds.)

Sigh … of course it’s the right thing to do, but I do wish they wouldn’t put us in this position. Best of luck.

17

Last semester I was shocked when one of my fellow graduate students was accused of plagarism on her evolution paper. A whole section of her paper was word-for-word lifted, without the proper citations or anything. For a graduate student, this is serious shit. Fortunately, the professor didn’t get her kicked out. He put a letter in her file, made her rewrite the paper, and made her write an essay on plagarism. She also took a severe grade penalty. Even though it was fairly resolved, it was big blow to her esteem and now she’s dropping out of the program.

I have to teach marine biology next fall and I know I’m going to be dealing with this kind of mess. If you don’t know how to write, it can be very tempting to plagarize, especially if you’re confident you’ll never be found out. The best way to nip it in the bud is to require students to turn in copies of all their sources along with their papers. It will limit the temptation to cheat and also force students to get real citations rather than make them up.

18

Oh my.

It really sucks to have an emotional attatchment to someone that ends up (emotionally) giving you a kick in the stomach. Do you have to report the incident to the dean, or do you have to report it to the professor, who in turn does (or does not) talk to the dean?

Plagiarism is taken very seriously here at my university. If you are caught doing it (by googling a sentence or whatever), about 90% of the time you will automatically be expelled, and the incident will be one of the first things any university will see on your transcripts. Ouch.

People still plagiarise around here though. Although many times, cheating on math is more common. I mean, why would you want to do your own work in classes directly related to your major? How foolish would that be?? </sarcasm>

Oh, and for the record: my American university allows you to retake a class if you fail. If you get an A the second time around, you petition to get the F erased from your record (it’s always erased when you petition, it’s just a formal procedure you must follow). Instead of the F, you have an A. But I attend a private university, which could explain things a bit.

19

Sigh. Another one. This one is even more irritating, though, as he, again, lifted sentences and paragraphs straight from web pages, but then put in cooked-up citations to make it those sections look like paraphrases from a book.
What a schmuck.

Another student closely paraphrased a site a bit but only one sentence was left too similar for my tastes, so I won’t bust him as badly.

Now I have to spend a great deal of the time I have to grade these plugging in sentences from each odd-sounding paper to make sure that half my students aren’t doing this. ARGH!
On the other hand, these are making me appreciate the work of the other students much more. A few of them may write poorly, but at least they went to the trouble of writing their own work.

20

It’s good that they have to sign the policy at the beginning of the semester. That way they can’t claim that they didn’t know that copying someone else’s words without quotation marks is plagiarism. I can’t believe the number of students who try to get off by pleading ignorance. Where you educated with a banana and an innertube[sup]1[/sup]? Use some damn common sense! How would you like someone claiming your work for their own, and getting credit without doing any work?

Just makes you sick to your stomach, though, doesn’t it? It’s laziness, pure and simple. All they have to do is take the exact same sources, paraphrase and put direct quotes in quotation marks, and cite their sources properly, but, hell, that’s too much work! It’s a lot easier to just copy ‘n’ paste, isn’t it? And the guys who wrote the websites are much better writers, too, so plagiarism means less work for a better grade! Those idiot TAs are so dumb, they’ll never catch on!

Intellectual honesty isn’t even an issue for these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers. capybera, you’re way too nice. This guy just handed you a slap in the face, and you still feel sorry for him! If he respected you, he’d give you his best work. Instead, he figured your class wasn’t worth the effort of writing a real paper and that you were too stupid to catch him.

[sup]1[/sup] L.A. Story. Dir. Mick Jackson. Written by Steve Martin. Tri Star, 1991.