I recently gave an exam in my online Theories of Personality course. Two (of only 16!) students cheated on the exam. The question was about the application of evolutionary principles to personality and both of them copied their answers from creationist websites. :rolleyes:
To make matters worse, one of them cheated on the first exam. I gave her a 0 for that exam. This time, she fails the whole course.
Any other teacher-types have any stupid student stories to share? I hear venting is good for you.
That’s unbelievably dumb. If you’re going to cheat, use an accurate source. :rolleyes:
Would they use Mel Brooks’ “History Of The World” for an in depth analysis of the French Revolution?
While I don’t disagree with the stated premise of the thread, I’m not sure that this counts as being stupid rather than perfidious and lacking in independent thought rather than stupid per se. There are a fairly limited number of creationist arguments (which themselves minor variations on a few basic themes), and given the lack of experimental veracity of the claims it is difficult to spin them into something sophisticated. Copying word for word is, of course, ill-advised but this is precisely what dogma requires.
I have to admit, however, to some curiosity regarding “the application of evolutionary principles to personality”; given widespread disagreement among biologists, sociologists, and psychologists regarding the components, influences, and fundamental origins of cognitive ability and trait expressions, I would find it very difficult for even an expert in cognition theory or evolutionary psychology to say anything definitive regarding the influence of inherited characteristics of personality as compared to learned or socialized impulses except on a very gross level that wouldn’t essentially be parroting opinions expressed by one pundit or another.
**Two and a Half Inches of Fun **, an incomplete would just mean they could finish the course later. I think you mean failing the class.
My online class is sort of a consortium between several bricks and mortar universities, so the students have different “home” universities from which they will obtain their degrees. These different universities have different policies regarding punishment for cheating, so they let us set the punishment in our classes. I have chosen get a 0 for the first offense (which dooms the student to no better than a C) and fail the course for a second offense. To be honest, no one has been that stupid before.
I never cheated in a class so I don’t really know, but I thought students that cheated were given an incomplete with a note of their transcript and no way to ever remove the incomplete.
A friend of mine was the Editor of a book published several years ago, one of the pioneering ones in a fairly new section of the subject. Lately he was a visiting professor at a university, teaching that subject.
You guessed it: a student in his class turned in a paper, with sections plagiarized from his book. Did they really think he wouldn’t recognize something lifted from his own book?
No, he mentioned it in class, as one of the optional readings, with a little bit of discussion about his editing of it and how & why he decided to create the book. So they must have known that it was his book (or they were just not paying attention during class – that’s possible too).
But even so, they should have noticed the name – it’s an unusual one. Or maybe recognized the picture on the back cover of the book as being their professor!
Hehe, since he mentioned it in class, you assume that that fact filtered into their brains and lodged there long enough to make an impression?
OK OK, given that, then I assume that it’s really just one of those “the book is soo long and he can’t remember everything he put in there word for word.” Hell, that’s the best I can do. It’s probably more along the lines of “don’t care, fuck the prof, hopefully this’ll work.”
sigh… yes, I do want to be a teacher. Why do you ask?
Or possibly the simple “I don’t really GET the plagiarism thing - giving this guy a research paper based on his own book will be flattering, I’ll get an A for sure.” Granted thats "I don’t get plagiarism on the stunningly stupid level, but if you’ve copied other people’s essays and believed it valid research through high school without ever getting caught - or even never wrote a decent research paper in high school (which happens - and surprisingly often from what I could tell) you may honestly not know better.
And yes, the syllabus almost always explains plagiarism in detail, and they often go over it in orientation for this reason too, but “they can’t mean that, I did that for my senior paper in high school and got an A.”
At the University of Maryland when I was there, you got an XF grade if you were caught cheating and the professor pursued it as far as they could. That grade meant “failed due to academic dishonesty” (I suspect this was explained somewhere on the transcript). If you took a class on ethics, you could get that grade changed to a regular F (that may have just been for the first offense).
It’s good, but it’s nothing to lose your head over. . . .
I cited Woody Allen’s Love and Death in a college paper once. Tho’ not for what it has to say about the Napoleanic Wars; it was for an English Lit class in Comedy.
Guess it’s no great surprise rank-and-file Creationists are so intellectually lazy that they’d copy someone else’s information rather than give the matter any thought themselves.
I honestly think some cheating happens because we admit students who just aren’t capable of college-level work. Cheating is their only option, frankly. I strongly suspect that is the case with most of the students I have caught cheating over the years. The material is just too hard for them, so they cheat because they are so desperate to get their degree and better their lives. It is sad, really, but it doesn’t stop me from being angry at them. Cheating is no better than stealing.
