Once, I caught two students copying homework. Aside from copying word for word, the copier copied line for line as well. It’s too bad he had thinner handwriting than the person he copied from: the entire right 1/4 of the page was blank. I gave them zeros; they appealed to the professor. The professor supported me, and they appealed to the Dean. Overruled!
We caught a student cheating on a nomenclature exam one year in organic chemistry. The kid was punching away at his calculator when there wasn’t a single calculation to be done. The professor walked up behind him, and yoinked the calculator with all the names stored. You would think that this is a pretty open-and-shut case of cheating. But we were overruled by the Dean. He got a makeup exam and a verbal warning.
I will say that the availability of information on the internet does make it easier, with the anonymity tends to make people think people will get away with it.
Added to this, however, is the ‘nothing to lose’ mentality. When caught, the accused has two options- let it go, and get the F / Punished / whatever, or fight it. If they fight it and win, yay, they get the win. If they lose, they’ll get F / Punished / Whatever. There’s no down side to arguing it just in case.
Not saying I condone this- just trying to exaplain the mentality.
I hate. hate. HATE. cheaters. Especially university cheaters.
What the fuck, really? I mean, there were a tonne of cheaters in my high school. But in high school, there’s the guy who just really wants to get the fuck out of there so he can sell drugs out of his van down by the beach, so he buys a paper off a website and hands it in for English class, and I think sometimes the teachers were just tempted to turn a blind eye if it finally got this 20-something loser out of grade 12. Not to say that the straight-A perky valedictorians didn’t plagarize every now and then, but they usually had some intensely dramatic excuse and got to re-write the test or paper.
But university students? I’m fucking PAYING to learn this stuff! I’m paying for someone to tell me whether I’ve properly compared the racialization in Uncle Tom’s Cabin with that in Swallow Barn. I’m paying to learn how to study Supreme Court of Canada rulings and analyze them. And I’m paying a good amount, but I’m paying a bit less because of scholarships, which I won’t be able to keep if I cheat.
Not only that, but if someone cheats their way through Biology 12 just to finally graduate high school and be done with it forever, they’re not going to need to know that stuff, so I kind of understand. If some dumbass cheats their way through the first section of a 100 level Biology course in uni, how the fuck do they expect to pass the second section of the course? Did they think all the knowledge from the papers they stole would work its way into their brains? Were they planning on plagiarizing all the way through a degree or two? Argh it bugs me.
And for anyone who was never really taught about citing: Citation Machine. Awesome cite that’ll give you both MLA and APA style, for quite a few different resources (books, webpages, etc.)
Most universities also offer tutoring services, often for free. It can’t hurt to ask to see what might be available.
But most importantly, ask if there a course on how to use the library references and write research papers, and if there is, TAKE IT! I find that the majority of my students who have problems with this are transfer students who didn’t have to take this course when they started at our school, often because they had already taken several English classes at another university, or they talked their admissions officer into believing that they already knew all that stuff.
Also remember that the instructor/professor should also be available to help. I tell my students over and over again to ask me if they don’t understand what I am looking for, or if they need help doing the APA format, or if they have any other problems. Very, very few of them ever take me up on my offer, and I spend most of my office hours (when I am available specifically to meet with students) getting caught up on grading because no one ever comes in for help.
Both, but mostly the former. What I still don’t get is that they seem to think that I use a completely different Internet! :rolleyes: I’ve even said this during the first week of class–“I use the SAME Internet you do! Google is my friend!”–and they laugh. But then a few plagiarize and get caught anyway.
In one of my classes, there was a guy who was semi-famous for wearing t-shirts that ended up being accidentally appropriate for the day’s lectures. Day of the final he came in with a jacket on. After the final was passed out, he took off his jacket to reveal, white letters on a black t:
“Let the fucking begin.”
Half the class lost it. Thankfully, the professor was part of that half.
