No, it’s not unheard of. My general relativity prof put a different set of students in charge of the solutions each week. The difference in this case is that the grader didn’t know how to do the problems, and was giving us grades based on how much of the problem set we’d turned in, not how correct it was. Because he didn’t know how to do the problems, some of the “solutions” he photocopied were flat-out wrong. Actually, that was partly what upset my friend so much–she knew her solution to this problem was incorrect, and really wanted to know the correct way to do it. So when she saw her [wrong] solution in the official copies, she felt cheated.
Yes, it was weird…the weirdest part for me was listening to that apology speech he gave in front of the whole class. I didn’t expect the professor to make him do that. That was hardcore.
I teach introductory geography courses at a community college. In one of my courses - World Regional Geography - students are required to write a paper pretending that they have taken a trip around the world, written in first person journal format (or, alternatively, as letters home to friends or loved ones).
Of course, students are required to use outside sources to help in writing the paper - one can’t write about visiting Paris, France, for example, if one has never been there. I try to keep things simple for them - one item they need to provide is a bibliography of the sources they referenced for information about the locations they visited. However, I do specify that the bibliography provided MUST be in some standard format (MLA, APA, etc.).
In addition, I allow students to use Internet sources. But I caution them that if they provide Internet sources in the biblography, then they MUST be in some standard format. I simplify things even further by telling them (in class) all that’s required for a properly formatted Internet source in the bibliography is the name of the Internet site, the URL, and the date accessed. It is NOT sufficient to just provide the URL (Example: http://www.someplace.com) in the bibliography.
To further make things easier for students, I provide each of them a sample copy of the travel paper assignment, along with a properly formatted bibliography (with peroply formatted Internet sources included). I reiterate to students several times during the quarter that a paper with Internet sources that are not properly formatted in the bibliography will be severaly penalized (reduction of a letter grade or more).
I even go so far as to say that at least one student in the class will screw up their bibliogaphy by not properly formatting Internet sources. And EVERY quarter - and I’ve been teaching this course with the paper requirement for more than 5 years - at least one student provides me a biblography full of Internet URL’s and nothing more.
Kudos for being mature. As a student, the students who bother me are the ones who don’t show up for classes consistantly, and ask you for notes cuz they see that you are a good student. Not that I mind lending my notes, but I don’t like being the one who pretty much helps someone to get a grade they don’t deserve. I mean, a legitimate excuse, I understand. Being too hungover to attend a class in the morning and therefore consistantly skipping it I don’t. Anyway, this is sort of just my rant, because I want to be a prof someday, and it bothers me when some people show so little respect for education that they don’t come to classes and expect to pass.
Good luck on the class. Profs like that annoy me as well; you should definately get better feedback on your work. If this is an English/ Literature class, this is vital! My advice is if you cannot get traction with the professor to meet, go over the lecturer’s head to the dean/ department head. Sometimes, they can help you . Close copy the dean/department head on emails as well, so that he/she is apprised of situation. Remember, these people do work for you; your tuition pays their salary, so if your expectations are reasonable, you have every right to complain!
Oh man, I just finished Paradise Lost. Satan’s character is supposed to seem attractive, because sin has to be made seductive! if it were entirely unreasonable, there would nto be temptation!
I work in my university’s First Year Writing Studio for my graduate assistanceship. 99% of the students who come in are good eggs. Then there is Davros. Davros has been at the uni as long as I have (six years). He has failed one of his two required freshman comp courses twice. He took it again this semester. He came to the Writing Studio expecting us to write his papers for him. We told him no and showed him strategies for writing a better paper, the same as we do for every other student. This was not enough for Davros. You see, Davros has cerebral palsy. The cerebral palsy is not a problem, his attitude towards it is. He takes advantage of his misfortune and tries to get by on sympathy. An example: He demands that one of the GAs type his paper for him. She explained that we only help students learn to revise and edit their papers, we do not write or type them. He looks her straight in the eye and says, “But don’t you feel sorry for me?”
No. No we don’t.
I witnessed him chasing after his comp instructor one day because she refused to extend the due date for one of his papers. To this day he still has not completed the first two papers that were due back in August! He tried to turn in the paper late and she refused to take it. Davros has failed and I certainly hope he won’t be returning.
The sad thing is that his sympathy ploys work. That’s the only reason I can figure why he’s hasn’t been knocked out on academic probation a long time ago.
I teach PE…PE for crying out loud. And a mighty popular little group of PE classes too (according to the instructor evals and what the students say). Minimal homework (I hate it myself, so do the bare minimum the Univ will let me get away with).
So basically, all the students have to do is a coupla silly throwaway assignments, and then show up and have fun. AND to top that all off, it’s a “short class”. They get their measly credit in less time than other classes.
And I make sure, during the intro class to let them know that if, for any reason, they think attendance might be a problem, that they should audit before the deadline.
But it never fails, I always get one or two, having made it to a grand total of 2 or 3 out of 25-30 classes, who come to me 3 classes before the end of the semester and wonder if there is “anything they can do”.
Sigh, yes, invent a time machine, go back to the beginning of the semester, and “SHOW UP FOR THE CLASSES”!!!
PE for crying out loud, PE with an easy, EASY instr., how can you fail that?
Sigh…I’m done now.
And I hate giving those Fs too, for PE…grrrrrrrr, how can you get an F in an easy A class?
Where I am, it’s the college that has the zero tolerance policy, and we are assured repeatedly that it’s okay to turn in plagiarists, cheaters, forgers, etc.
It’s a good thing the little dorks make it so easy. Why don’t they understand that Google is our friend and that we use the same Internet that they do–and that it’s very easy for a prof to locate plagiarized papers when they just cut and paste pieces of them from this and that website? Why, why, why?
Okay, back on track now: I’m p/t too, but I guess we are working under different systems. I mean, this is a college that had a group of students deported for operating a forgery ring. (They were forging phony early registration dates to get priority for adding classes. Fat lot of good it did them.)
Psst…Hey, Manatee, they’re hiring FTs here next fall. Ya wanna move?
I failed a PE class once. I got sick in the middle of the quarter (after the drop deadline) and missed too many classes to pass the class. I didn’t go back and try to pass it though; I just accepted the No Pass. (Why don’t they just call it “Fail?” ) The teacher had even warned us, “If you are going to miss a lot of classes, make sure to drop before the deadline!” Well, I didn’t count on getting sick, I guess. I could have attended them anyway–I didn’t have the flu or anything that would require me to be bedridden–but I didn’t want to force myself to do something that would make me feel even more miserable.
The only thing that bothers me about it is that the major code for PE (PHYE) is very similar to the major code for physics (PHYS), so I’m afraid some day someone will look at my transcript, and think I failed something critical. (Not that PE is unimportant–but it was an optional class; all my other classes were for my Master’s degree.)
So my transcipt looks like this:
PHYS ### A
PHYS ### B
PHYS ### A
PHYE ### NP
Heh. The aforementioned spouse does academic tutoring for students who are struggling with their coursework, a number of whom are dyslexic in some form. Some of them are having genuine problems and simply require a different approach to the material than their classroom instructors are taking in order to learn the material, which is fine (and which is why she does it). Some of them, however, attempt the piteous “I can’t do it – I’m dyslexic” plea. At which point she looks them in the eye and says, “I’m dyslexic too – and I have a PhD”. Laziness and self-pity are not valid excuses.
She recently had an exceptionally whiny student who read just fine until she was assessed as having mild dyslexia – then she started claiming that she was missing classes because she couldn’t read the train station signs. :dubious:
I had this experience while taking a “sure A” freshman intro sociology class. The professor asked us in class what the correlation might be between living in a pastoral society and having a monotheistic religion. I think he was shooting for the “God as shephard” connection. However, one student volunteered that since pastoral societies traveled around a lot, they could compare all the world’s religions and pick the best one.
When I actually began teaching classes, what bothered me the most was the sheer audacity of some of the plagiarism I saw. These students might have well have just told me to my face, “I think you’re a clueless idiot, but if you want me to go through the motions, I will.” Example: Class of 30 students with a take-home essay question. Two of the returned papers are answered in exactly the same handwriting. We’re talking three pages here. C’mon, at least have the decency of copying your girlfriend’s essay instead of making her actually write it out for you.
My dad is dyslexic. He’s read the entire LOTR trilogy three times. He reads the paper every day. It took him a year to read the Rumpole Omnibus, but by gum he got through it.
I guess what I’m saying is, you speak the truth. Preach it, Doper!
That’s great! It tops the two friends I had in one class who plagiarized from the same source. Neither one could explain why their papers were damn near identical to each other, and to a particular web page.
In part, it’s that audacity that got me thinking about my OP in the first place. I’ll confront students with web pages and passages from their essay that are identical, and they have the gall to tell me that it’s a coincidence–“We must have been thinking alike; after all, we’re writing on the same topic.”
No, you weren’t thinking alike. The person that you copied from was original and motivated; you are lying, cheating, thieving scum.
In my experience, many college freshmen haven’t any idea what a quality composition is supposed to look like or how to do it. It’s fine to say you want quality, but they don’t know what that even means. Do you give them scoring rubrics with explicit criteria, a few exemplar compositions, and do self- and peer-assessments to make sure they know what they’re going for?
I teach hands-on software classes at a local business-degree-type university, and I do get some real doozy students…
This term, I was teaching an Oracle SQL class. We had problems with the Oracle server for the first few weeks of class, so two weeks ago, I told the class that I was giving a blanket extension on all homework assignments, as long as they were turned in by last week. This is literally the FIRST time in my entire 15+ years of teaching that I have given blanket extensions on homework to an entire class, and I even told them that. Not seconds after I had announced this to the class, one student raised his hand and asked if I could assign any extra credit… Fortunately, the rest of the class just looked at him as if he was crazy. (For the record, I have given extra credit even less often than I have given blanket extensions on assignments. Every syllabus I give out even states flat out that I do not give extra credit.)
The majority of my students are computer science majors, since I teach in the Computer Science department. Amazingly, though, there is only a small percentage of my students who can actually send e-mail to me. They don’t seem to understand that spelling is important when sending e-mail, and that it has to be sent to the correct domain. (PLEASE, my username is ONLY six letters long. It can’t be THAT hard to learn it!!!) I even spend at least half of one class period at the beginning of every class I teach on how to use e-mail, and how my e-mail address is spelled. (It’s also printed on every syllabus I hand out.)
Tonight, my Oracle class was giving their final presentations, where they had to stand in front of the class, explain what their database was about, then run scripts to create tables, add data, run queries, etc. This assignment was given to them about six weeks ago, and we have discussed it ad nauseum every class period (the class meets once a week) for the last three weeks as the groups put together their databases. One group came up to do their presentation tonight, but all they had were SELECT statements that displayed the data in tables. When I asked where the script was that actually created the tables and added data, etc., they told me they hadn’t saved it. After all the presentations were done, they told me that they had never read the project assignment handout I had given them six weeks earlier, so how could they possibly have known that they were supposed to save all the scripts??
I have to keep reminding myself that I am in the teaching profession because I LIKE teaching…
There’s nothing like giving students handouts with a schedule of the days their assignments are due, reading through it with them, and mentioning that the first assignment will be due on the fourth day of class – asking if they all understand that it is due, and asking them if they have any questions – telling them specifically how the first day’s lesson will give them what they need to complete the assignment, then explaining how the second day’s lesson will help them with the assignment due the fourth day, and reminding them that there is an assignment due the fourth day, spending part of the third lesson demonstrating how the lesson will be uploaded into the courseware for peer review before the next class, and giving them time at the end of class to work on their assignment, sending at least two e-mails remind them the lesson is due, and asking many times if anyone has any questions about the assignment due on the the fourth day, and still, no matter how many times you mention it, and how many ways you convey that fact, having a student give you a completely bewildered look on the fourth day when you ask if they have their assignment ready.
I teach a course called Computer Concepts, which is a remedial course on hardware, software, and networking for Computer Science students who have never touched a computer before deciding that they want to make $70 grand a year as a computer programmer. (And yes, one of the topics we discuss is that you need years of experience before you can even dream of making that kind of money!! If you could do it with an Associate’s degree, I certainly wouldn’t be teaching right now.)
For this class, I ask them to write five short (max 500 words) research papers, where the focus is mainly on getting them to write complete sentences AND learn to cite and reference their sources correctly. I spend a LOT of time before the first assignment emphasizing that a URL is not a complete reference, and I actually give failing grades to papers that only provide URL information. (And yes, I do provide a sample paper, and reference formats that I expect them to use.) Nonetheless, I have students who are STILL providing ONLY the URL even on the fourth or fifth paper for the class.
This term, I spend an entire class period on nothing but how to format references (our school requires APA format), and why it is important, a week or so before the first paper was due. They didn’t get it, so I spent another half a period going over the same material again after I returned the first set of papers. After that, I told them to come see me outside of class if they didn’t understand. (Not a single student has come to see me outside of class this term.) We’re in the last week of classes now, and their last paper is due tomorrow. By happenstance, we were talking about copyright law vs computers today, and the topic came up of how to properly cite and reference references. They acted like they had never heard any of this before, so I spent another half period talking about providing references to their sources. We didn’t even get to talk about EULA’s or file sharing at all, which is the heart of the topic that I planned to cover.
I’m in engineering, not anything artsy, so I never have to bother with essays and the like. However, there’s one thing I’ve always wondered about with regard to handing work in…and since there seems to be a lot of profs here, its the perfect place to ask.
What is the consensus on “re-submitting” your own work? Like, submitting the same short story for two different classes? I am assuming that it is your own work. Is not tolerated at all? Does it depend on the particular situation/nature of the class/nature of the assignment?
In highschool I was always very tempted to hand in an essay I did in a previous year. I never did, but always thought, “hey, it IS my work, how can they tell me I can’t hand it in?”.
The difference in this case is that the grader didn’t know how to do the problems, and was giving us grades based on how much of the problem set we’d turned in, not how correct it was. Because he didn’t know how to do the problems, some of the “solutions” he photocopied were flat-out wrong. Actually, that was partly what upset my friend so much–she knew her solution to this problem was incorrect, and really wanted to know the correct way to do it. So when she saw her [wrong] solution in the official copies, she felt cheated.