What is the “eraser” of which you speak? Some sort of PowerPoint function?
Sigh. I do a bit of part-time teaching in a country other than my own. The students are post-graduates, and the subjects I teach are in or very closely related to the subjects they graduated in. I have had a surprisingly large number of occasions when students had double-plagiarised - multiple students copied from a single student’s work, and the single student had himself plagiarised from Wikipedia. For God’s sake, people…
No cheating in either of these stories, or at least I hope there isn’t, because they both did very poorly.
I once had a student with the chutzpah to complain to the department head about my class, because “it was supposed to be an easy A”. Never mind the fact that this particular student had more math background than most of the rest of the class (according to the questionaires I gave the students on the first day) and that she nonetheless did significantly worse than anyone else. It warmed my heart when the head (who also happens to be my advisor) told me his response to her.
Another story, this one recent. I’m currently TAing a physics lab, and a couple of weeks ago, we had our first lab on circuits. It’s pretty basic stuff, just light bulbs and a power supply, and it’s designed to be a first introduction to the material (they haven’t seen it in class yet at this point). So everything they write down in their lab books has to be based on their observations in the lab, and on the model they’re developing (under guidance) as they go along. The lab ends with a black box with 3-6 light bulbs and the wiring hidden, and they have to figure out how it’s wired.
Well, this one student comes into lab early, to get a head start. No problem with that; I was in the room anyway, and there was a table of equipment free. After a bit, he comes up to me, says he’s almost done, and asks which black box is the hardest. Again, nothing remarkable here: A student will often ask for a challenge. But as he’s going back to his seat, he asks “These power supplies turn on in the back, right?”. Meaning, he hasn’t even turned on the power yet, and he thinks he’s done? I ask him about it, and he says “Oh, yeah, I didn’t need to observe anything, I already know what happens.”. This would be bad enough: I try to explain to him that if he’s not making observations, but just going by how he thinks things should work, he’s doing philosophy, not physics. But what makes it worse is that he doesn’t even know what he’s doing (or avoiding doing): He’s consistently getting the worst grades in the section.
I’ve had a few courses where one day the teacher announced “today’s subject is not part of the curriculum, you may leave if you want.” Thing is, even though it wasn’t part of the curriculum, it went over concepts that were, so staying helped put into an interesting perspective things that until then had been very dry.
For example, we had a day in “transfer of matter and energy” (3rd year Chem Eng) where the subject was “how do things fly”. Were we going to have a question bout how a Sikorski helicopter flies? No. But trying to get right the high pressure-low pressure diagrams on a sparrow’s wings vs a kite’s wings and without the pressure of ohmygoditgoestothetest was a lot more fun than doing it on a set of pipes 
And it helped us assimilate the concepts a lot better. That day’s work was completely conceptual, no math. Once you have the concept right, you can look at your math and say “yeah that looks about right” or “ohshit I must have screwed up somewhere because NO WAY this is right”.
I’ve worked as an editor in a volunteer publication and had writers turn in stuff containing a high percentage of material plagiarized from me. They called it “homage”, I called it bullshit.
Back in pre-college (I was lucky enough to attend university level courses between my junior & senoir high school years) I had this history professor who was great. He had the driest sense of humor-I LOVE dry humor. But, I had him right before lunch right at my sleepiest part of the day. In a warm room with a humming a/c. And he put me to sleep-within 15mins of class starting I was snorking, shifting, doing my darnest to stay awake but would fail utterly. And try taking notes while snoozing.
I wish I could take him back to the room with me at night because his voice was marvolus. And I had horrid insominia. I managed (sorta) on 4hrs of sleep per night with weeknend naps. I barely passed because I did ask to read classmates notes and read the assigned book.
Then I had him again. Because he was an excellent prof and he was an institution on campus. But I was still only sleeping from 2am to 6am every night. So same thing but quicker-10minutes and I was fast asleep most days. I am so lucky that the man did not humiliate me. I passed because I took notes and read the assigned book-but barely.
My insominia is mostly gone-I sleep from 11pm to 5am most nights. The kitty wakeup service is an excellent alarm clock :dubious: .
Sheesh. Even the modern, high-tech classrooms in my building have erasers.
Kids these days.
Robin
Back in my salad days, I worked as a TA for Freshman Zoology. Now, the college where I got my undergrad had a required cycle of classes for anyone planning to obtain a Bachelor’s of Science degree (in any discipline) as well as any pre-med, nursing or “sports medicine” major. (I place sports medicine in quotes because, at that school, sports medicine was the degree previously known as “physical education”. It was the preferred degree being sought by the vast majority of our college athletes.) Now, there was a cycle of fundamental classes offered in each major discipline (biology, chemistry, physics and math), all of which were required of the aforementioned students. The biology cycle was collectively known as “freshman biology” and consisted of four half-semester courses covering a basic survey of Zoology, Botany, Cellular Biology and Microbial Biology.
Each of the cycles was designed to allow any student completing a given cycle to be reasonbly conversant in the basics of a given discipline - so as to allow them to take the vast majority of more specialized upper-division courses (most of which were offered on a rotating basis and might not be available each year). The secondary purpose was to give all people who were expecting to graduate with a bachelors of science at least a nodding acquiantance with the principles of most of the major branches of science (for example, the physics courses also touched on astronomy and the biology courses also touched on ecology, etc). The whole system was actually reasonably effective. However, as one might expect from half-semester survey courses, they were very intensive.
Each course in the cycle also featured a required lab section. I was the TA coordinator for the Zoology section, which meant (among other things) that I was in charge of the lab section. The rules of the Frosh Zoology Universe were that the lab section accounted for 25% of the final grade, however, if one failed the lab section, you automatically failed the course. No appeal. This was a harsh rule, but the professor insisted upon it - and had enough tenure (and notoriety in his field) that he could insist on anything his heart desired where it came to his classes and receive it).
The lab grade was based on two things: a quiz given at the beginning of each and every lab (covering the material the students were supposed to have reviewed prior to lab detailing that day’s scheduled material) and a final (which was comprehensive and covered the entire animal kingdom from sponges to humans - to the extent each was covered in lab). The quizzes were 10 questions and very, very cursory in nature. The final was three hundred questions and not at all cursory. The questions were mostly fill-in-the-blanks. Because this test was widely acknowledged to be the single most heinous test on campus, I and the other lab TAs offered vast numbers of study aids, extra tutorials, review sessions, and anything else we could to help people out. That test was diabolical. I should know, I wrote most of it.
Now the reason I was the TA of the lab section was that when I took it, my scores were ridiculous - also the professor was my academic advisor and really liked me.
My second semester as TA, several members of the football team turned in copies of the written portion of the lab final that were not only copies of the previous year’s test (the test changed every year - a fact these brain trust members were evidently unaware of), but were handwritten in my own personal handwriting.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. They turned in a photocopy of my exam from the previous year, doctored to show their names. Because there was no way I would recognize my own handwriting. :smack: Yes, the original the doctored exam had my name written on it.
Just for extra fun, they got the copy of the previous test *from me * - as part of a package of study aids, along with the indication that while some test questions are repeated, the majority are not - or at least are so changed as to make their stunt pointless. :dubious:
The entire offensive line of the school’s football team as well as a smattering of other starting players failed Frosh Zoology that semester. Their coach was not pleased.
He actually showed up screaming and redfaced in my office - sure I was out to get his boys. Until I showed him the exams they handed in - complete with the original package of study aids and a copy of that semester’s exam. Then he got very, very apologetic.
I had all their smiling, happy faces sitting in front of me for the second half of the semester Frosh Zoology - looking quite fit from all the extra calisthenics their coach saw fit to impose.
I’d like to defend myself on this. I got D’s in my first two organic chemistry classes. And let me tell you, I was in the mid-3’s for my GPA. Organic Chemistry was like running full tilt into a wall.
I needed it for my major, and my major was decided by my mother, who was paying for my college edumacation.
I eventually dragged my next test up to a C. And then suddenly one day - CLICK! I got it. I managed to score B’s on the rest of the tests.
You have got to be kidding me if you really expect everyone in organic chemistry to do well right away…however, if that was their final test or something I could see it. But I think the learning curve for orgo chem is kind of steep.
Maybe it was part of the “Human Orgasm” presentation. Plus it depends how sex is defined. Footsie, hand job? That’s what modesty panels are for. 
Good coach.
Ah, okay – I didn’t get that he was getting his info from another research paper.
Ditto ditto ditto (and now I teach it!)!
I have finally realized that I cannot care more about a student’s grade than they do.
I’ve posted this one before, but it’s so stupid it bears repeating.
The second year I was teaching, I had a particularly low class of juniors/seniors in (high school) chemistry. Nothing was sinking in; they were freaking about their grades; I wasn’t sure how to get them to get it. So, I lobbed 'em a puffball assignment to boost grades. It was near the time when Nobel prizes are announced, so I gave them each a (chemistry) Lauriate and said, " give me a bio." I caught 6 (of 24) students plagiarizing. Normally, when one or two students plagiarized, it was reeeeaaaaal simple: zero. However, this was in the middle of a huge issue across the school. I honestly believe that many of them had not been taught much about plagiarism. (I had to explain to one otherwise bright student that barely paraphrasing with citations was still plagiarism.)
So, being the softy that I am, I said that I’d treat this version as a rough draft (also 'cause most of the rest of them sucked), and they had to turn in a final worth twice as much. Those that plagiarized the first time, got a zero on the RD, but could bring it up to the 60’s range by hard work on the final copy. Most did just that.
But I had one kid that just didn’t learn. On the day after I graded the final versions, this kid comes in asking (in a cheery voice), “Didja grade the final copies?” To which my reply was a very pissy “yeah.” (Not my style at all.) To give him credit, he picked up on the cue right away. He asked why I seemed upset, to which I replied (again, quite pissy), “you know.” You see, the first time he turned in a report, it was plagiarized right from the web. The second time, it was again plagiarized (verbatim) from the web, but this time straight from the Nobel prize site.
But it gets even better. See, he was expecting a good grade, because (as I found out later), he had paid his sister to write it for him! :eek: But, she was just as lazy as he was! :smack: And copied it for him.
You can’t make up shit like that, I tellsya!
P.S. If I ever see him again, I’m going to ask him if he got his money back.
Part of my job TAing was “tutoring in any kind of chemistry (and often other sciences)”. The Chem Org that was taught as intro was absurd and the tests held no relationship with the material taught. The material taught was just collections of reactions, no explanation, no structure by groups, nothing. Made no sense to me, and I’d gotten a 99% in the ACS’s exam.
My own Chem Org from college was very well structured; I sucked at synthetic design and always will but hey, I’m also the one student yearly that actually understood mechanisms! According to The Divine Professor, it seemed to be “one or the other”.
I love this. My students constantly falsify their lab data, and when I ask why they tell me that the lab didn’t do what it was “supposed” to do, so they had to fix it… :smack:
I was an SI in college for some first-year chemistry and astronomy classes- kind of like a TA but on a lesser scale; you just held optional study sessions a few nights a week. And at mid-semester we passed around evaluation sheets asking what could be done to boost the attendance at the sessions, and several (very studious, I’m sure) young men answered “Get hotter SI leaders.” I love when I take someone’s education more seriously than s/he does.
We have the kitty wakeup service too. But have you found a way to turn it off on weekends? Because I have to tell you, I simply haven’t.
True story from my campus: A female student received a grade of F on her paper because it had been completely plagiarized.
Her defense: "Well, I let my boyfriend write it for me, but I didn't know he was going to plagiarize it!"
Missy, your first mistake was *letting your boyfriend write it for you.*
I always tell my students never to trust significant others or siblings in this regard.At my university, lack of intent to plagiarize, and lack of knowledge of what constitutes plagiarism, and forgetting to cite the author of work you used, are not allowable defenses against a plagiarism complaint.
A couple of lecturers I am working just told me this…
A guy who was brought in a cheat sheet for his closed book maths exam…
He handed it in together with his answer booklet.
4th college grade; for Electronics lab we had to pair up. Most labs in that school are part of a course, in order to pass a course you must pass “lab (if any)”, “theory” and “problems” separatedly. There’s three ways to flunk a lab:
- ethical problems,
- missing the lab test because you were in the ER,
- not having studied for it at all (one of my classmates achieved this, the first student ever, and the school had existed for 80 years at that point).
My partner was a guy who was missing only the Electronics lab in order to graduate. He’d passed everything else and even has his thesis written. I didn’t have any problems with him while we were doing the physical work; I found it amusing that I was a better solder than him (he’d taken that lab 4 times) but that simply meant it was often me doing the soldering and him the note taking.
When we had to write the report, we split it by resources. He had access to an electric typewriter, so after we’d written it down in longhand he was to type it; I’m very good at graphics so I was going to prep those.
When we meet again to staple it all together, he tells me I have to redo several graphs because he’s doctored the data, as it didn’t match the theory.
I asked him, in no particular order:
- do you think Dr Bek is stupid? He’s been teaching this class for 25 years, he knows reality doesn’t match theory!
- are you trying to screw up my career? I don’t care what you do to yours, but leave mine be!
He refused to re-change the data. I told him I’d tell Bek, this was MY life he was trying to throw down the drain. He still refused. He finally said he’d do it after I’d knocked on Bek’s door and while Bek was saying “yes? Come in!”
I went in, damnit. Bek’s response to my tale: “again?”
My classmates agreed it was the right thing to do. As one put it “our reputation as a good school is based on graduating good people. He’s not up to standards!”