My brother is an American Studies professor. He once had a poor student on the football team who turned in a thesis-level paper on interracial marriage. It was obvious the guy didn’t write it. So my brother is questioning him about the paper’s contents and he can’t answer any questions. THEN my brother ask him, “when you go inside the front doors of the library, do you turn right or left?” Guy couldn’t answer.
But of course, it has a typical college athlete ending: My brother flunks him, coach calls and tries to pressure my brother (NOT the thing to do if you know my brother). So they take the guy out of the class, assign him to another instructor, and he passes.
And the moral of the story for all of us honest people? Guy joins the NFL, makes lots of money, and is on the 1985 Superbowl Champion Chicago Bears.
HA! I’ve had a few of those future NFL stars, although not in my computer programming classes! This was when I was working on an earlier math degree and was a TA in that department. My university has one of the more well-known football teams, especially in the 90s.
I know there’s one still in the NFL – he’s played for a few teams now. He used to sit in the back of a college algebra class that I was teaching, always trying to cheat on his quizzes. Except, he was cheating off the guy sitting next to him, one of his football teammates, who also happened to be failing the class.
If he was really creative he’d have printed it on the back of a t-shirt and then got whoever sits in front of him in class to wear it on exam day. A lot easier on the eyes.
The most common rule was a single sheet of 8.5x11 or A4 paper, one side only, hand-written. I can write in legible 4pt, though. It would take a while longer than printing it out, but I’d being doing it for shits and giggles either way… In most cases I only used the notes during final checking.
I’m starting to miss my high school science teacher. Not only would he allow a page of notes (I think it was both sides, actually), but in one class we were allowed to use the inside front and back covers of our textbook (chemistry–so a periodic table and other related tables), and he would write important formulas on the wall. With a red magic marker. By the red of the year, the walls were as red as they were beige, the colour of the paint. I think the school ended up painting over it (he’s not there anymore anyways).
I can’t find a linkable image, but at my old university the science students’ society made up t-shirts one year that had tons of common science formulas on it - printed upside down for easy personal viewing.
It found a similar image at [url=http://www.scienceteecher.com/physformlrg.html]this website*.
Well, if he’s too dumb to do the coding assignments, it’s not too much of a surprise he wouldn’t think to change usernames. Bear in mind you’re probably dealing with someone who made it all the way through grade school by cheating, and never learned to think.
You should have drawn the blond I went to college with. At least she had the decency to cheat by sleeping with the TAs. If you’re going to get a technical degree by fraud, at least you should have to work for it.
This thread reminds me of my first Anatomy test, where one of the students showed up wearing one of those T-shirts that had all the muscles and nerves on it. The teacher made him zip up his sweatshirt over it. I still remember the sight of 40 students simultaneously staring at their hans as they opened and closed their fists, trying to remember which muscles did what. Good times.
I can’t image having students bring their own blue books to class. That seems to be asking for cheating. Our professors always handed them out. I also remember seeing how much you could fit handwritten onto one 81/2 x 11 sheet of paper and stil have it be legible. Also, add me to the list of those who crammed info into their brain at the last minute, and started many tests by writing it in the test margins.
I just don’t understand that blatant kind of cheating, though. In high school French 5 and 6 were combined and the teacher gave the same exams each year. One year, one of the French 6 students copied the prior exam and handed it out to the class. I felt guilty, even though I could have kept my prior year’s exam and studied from it, and even though after the teacher found out, she said “I don’t mind you using the old exam, just don’t do it on the school copier.”
There’s another – more of a rant, and longer. I will type it up in a separate document (to avoid possibilities of hungry hamsters), and then paste in. A situation where justice did not prevail, and the one that convinced me of the worthlessness of the administration in enforcing their own honor code policies.
::: looks for gauntlet :::
::: gives up, looks for leather gloves :::
::: gives up, picks up old muddy gardening glove :::
::: fwaps Podkayne across cheek with gardening glove :::
::: hurls glove down to the ground in challenge :::
Heh. At the JC where I was picking up a couple of classes, students had to go buy them and bring them in. If you showed up without one, you couldn’t take the test.
Our students must come from the same gene pool.
Mine buy their own bluebooks, and a few just bring in stuff from the Internet and write it into the bluebook, word for word. Of course, I can easily Google such suspicious fare and find that it was plagiarized. They never even bother to change anything.
Yet another former student of mine was just suspended for plagiarizing more than once. He’s not allowed back onto the campus for any reason for an entire year.
According to the letter of suspension that they copied me on, he was under stress to get his work in on time and so did not do the citations properly even though he knew how. Sigh. “Time and study management,” anyone?
The other suspendee admitted that she had gotten her papers from other students.
Question for those profs who provide blue books: Do you have to pay for them?
Well, sorry it took so long. But here it is. This is part story, part rant. And it was an unfortunate eye-opener regarding what to expect out of the university administration.
I do not generally advocate expelling students for most Academic Honesty cases I see. But if I’ve ever seen a student who truly deserves to be expelled, compelled, repelled, propelled, and barbelled, not to mention drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered, flayed alive, whipped naked through the streets, and made to sit in the corner for 3000 years…. well… This is it.
It was a dark and stormy night… No. Scratch that.
This took place in the summer term of 1999. The protagonist and hero of the story is none other than yours truly, the Monstre[sup]TM[/sup]. The antagonist – a student in the class who will be known in this tale as Slimy Con Artist Bitch, or SCAB for short.
Now, SCAB was registered with the SDRC (Student Disability Resource Center), which helps make special arrangements for students with disabilities, such as extra time on tests (taking them at the SDRC office), interpreters for the deaf, Braille versions of tests for the blind, etc.
From early on, I got the impression of SCAB as a bit of a con artist. Not in anything major. But I got the impression that she was using the disability status as a means to make things more convenient for her desired schedule. For example, she brought a letter from them to get out of taking in-class quizzes (of the short 10-minute variety), citing that she had special circumstances that would make those impossible to take in the time given.
Now, I don’t ask what the disability is, and the SDRC letters don’t specify. Usually that is considered confidential, unless the student volunteers anything. Her disability kept changing, I presume to suit her convenience. Regarding the quizzes, she said something about having ADD. On a later date, it was anxiety attacks. When we took her to the Honor Court at the end of the term, the disability was apparently her eyesight. But I’m getting ahead…
SCAB also was a student who was to take her exams at the SDRC office – due to the “extra time” need, I presume. Such students were to turn in an exam sign-up form, with information about the instructor’s wishes as to how the test was to be delivered to them and then picked up or received upon completion. The student was supposed to see the instructor about this a week ahead of the exam time. I had 3 other students registered with SDRC at the time. All of them came to me about their midterm except for her.
I went ahead and dropped 4 tests off at the SDRC office for the Monday midterm, since I knew that all 4 were to take their test there. When I called Monday afternoon to check whether they were ready, I was told that SCAB had turned in her form with her exam date listed as that Friday. Unfortunately, the SDRC procedures were pretty lax at this time, as they didn’t actually require the instructor’s signature on that form. I e-mailed SCAB and told her very bluntly that she cannot schedule her own exam on whatever day she feels like it. I didn’t hear back directly from her, but SDRC contacted me on Tuesday and said she showed up that day to take it – should they let her? I went ahead and let her take it since it was only one day after the scheduled test. And at the time, I figured this was another of the “light con-artist” bits, trying to gain several days extra time to prepare. In hindsight, I should have picked it up on Monday evening and made her come see me about a re-test.
Oh, and she had perfect scores on her homeworks and on the midterm. I figured at the time that she was a good student, despite being pushy, demanding, and annoying .
The other Bad Thing[sup]TM[/sup] that happened at midterm was seemingly unrelated (subtle foreshadowing here?) I taught two back-to-back lectures, and a test went missing from the first exam period. I got back one fewer test than I handed out. With 80 students in each class, a person must have sat in the back and slipped out with the test while others were handing theirs in. I figured that it was somebody from the second lecture class, trying to get an advance copy before their test started.
I number my test copies, but after this incident I decided to have my Teaching Assistants help me proctor the tests. They were to check student IDs at the start of the test, then one was to stay at the back door, and students were to hand in their tests on the way out of the room. What if a student didn’t bring their ID? I gave my TAs a copy of the roster, with SSNs, and they were to verify the student’s SSN. Also, don’t let the student out the door unless they hand you their test. I will not be accepting them up front.
The ineptitude of many of my TAs is a rant for another time, another pit thread. Suffice it to say, a test was stolen from the first class session on the final exam day, as well. Among the students without their IDs was a guy I didn’t recognize, but the TA said he had identified himself and she had circled his name on the roster – it was a guy who I don’t believe ever attended, so it was only natural that there would be a few people I didn’t recognize among my 160 students, especially those who only show up on test days. Turns out this wasn’t him. And I found out later that she didn’t ask for his SSN, she put the roster down in front of him and let him point out “his” name. Since she started at the front, and he was in the back, he obviously just picked a name that wasn’t marked yet. And he went quickly out the door when I was busy with a question, and another student was handing in a test. My TA who was “guarding” the door said he claimed he had handed it in to me already and zipped out. (Maybe that pit rant on my TAs should come sooner than later…)
Meanwhile, back in SCAB land. SCAB had requested that she be allowed to take her final exam on a different day, due to having another test on the same day. I fell back on university policy which said that it would take permission from the academic dean to change somebody’s scheduled final exam day (mostly intended for the university-scheduled exam blocks for fall and spring terms, but convenient). She went and got the dean to send a letter giving her permission to take the exam on the Monday after classes (rather than that Thursday, the last day of classes). Later, I had my department look up her schedule, and she did not have two exams on the same day. There was one on Thurs, and one on Friday.
Now, I had already gone to my department’s Assistant Chair (David) about the stolen exam. I also let him know about this “exam rescheduling” business, and we both agreed that due to the missing exam, I should make up a different exam for her to take on Monday at the SDRC office. I did not suspect her of any foul play (other than being an annoying and haughty bitch) at the time. Again, I figured that somebody from the second lecture had pulled off the test grab from the first exam session. This was just a precaution.
I drop off a makeup test on Monday morning. Only reason I went to campus that day, in fact. When I went to the SDRC office to pick up SCAB’s completed test the next day, I open the envelope, and what did I find? A completed test, but NOT the make-up that I dropped off. A copy of one of the original tests given on the regular exam day. Now – all of those tests are already graded and filed away, and I had all the original test copies in my possession (all numbered) except for the one that was stolen.
Yes, we dragged her ass to an Honor Court Hearing. She brought a lawyer with her. The Academic Honor Hearing Panel process is to form a panel of two faculty (one from the department the course is in, one from outside), two students, and an official from that administrative office as a tie-breaking vote if needed. As it turns out, selling the students is nigh impossible. And even in the cases where they judged students guilty (those were students who admitted it), they let them off easy with make-up assignments, and take-home ones at that.
Asst. Chair and I presented the facts regarding the final exam, as well as the information about the stolen midterm and her signing herself up for a later midterm time (not with my approval). SCAB claimed she didn’t know about any other test, that’s just the one that SDRC gave her. She tried a whole plethora of defenses… speculating that maybe I just made a mistake and dropped off a copy of the original test (I am 100% sure of the test I dropped off – it was the only reason I went to campus that day)… insinuating that she was being set up…. she even tried the racism card – accusing me of discriminating against her based on her nationality (I didn’t even know she was from Egypt until that day)…
After the hearing, the panel deliberates and then sends out their verdicts and decisions in writing afterwards. We got the write-up later, which claimed that they found both stories credible (I don’t know how this is possible – and I don’t know how much more proof there could possibly be than “This wasn’t the test I dropped off for her”). Basically, they acquitted her based on not having a direct connection between her and the unidentified guy who stole the test.
My department and I took a firm stance at that point. “Fine. But we still don’t have a valid test for her. She never took the test that I made up and delivered. The one that was picked up from SDRC was never graded, it was turned over to the Honor Panel as part of the evidence in the case. We need her to come take a final exam.” She refused this, and went to the dean, who said to give her the A (since that was where her other grades stood). I said I would not personally sign my name to any grade form listing her grade as an A. The dean basically put that grade through, himself. I (and my department chair) refused to do it.
I’m quite sure that mine wasn’t the only class that SCAB was pulling this shit in. That is, of course, not something I have evidence of, given that I have nothing to do with her other classes. But this showed me that she’s nothing but a con-artist, and she was abusing the Disability Center to do it. I remember seeing that she graduated Magna Cum Laude a year or so later, and I’m sure she’s off pulling cons out in the business world, too. Would not surprise me in the least if she ended up in jail some day.
Most of all, I was disgusted by the “Honor Court” process and the university policy that requires the instructor and student to either have a signed agreement on how a student is to be penalized for an Honor Code violation, or to take it to the Honor Court if it can’t be resolved internally. It’s quite obvious that the administration is more concerned with not getting sued, and with making sure that graduation numbers look good. Actual education seems to rank much lower on the list as far as they are concerned.
When I was teaching programming (college-level), one of my students lifted his whole final project off of a Web site. The only thing he changed was the copyright notice (more details in this post).
Our students had to sign a form at registration agreeing to a code of conduct. Among the provisions: all work must be your own. I reported the incident to the Dean’s office and failed him.
I have to wonder if he thought this through at all. I checked every program the students wrote pretty thoroughly (only 30 students in the class–I can do that), and he should have realized the program he downloaded didn’t look anything like his own coding style.
On top of that, if he could find it online, why did he think I couldn’t?
The sad thing is that he would have passed the class if he had just done his usual mediocre job.
