So, at the Dean's request, I'm teaching a senior-level online course in basketweaving this summer. One of my scholars is a lazy, not-very-smart former football player, who can't graduate because his average is below 2.0.
His wife, however, is (was, actually) about a 3.4 student who graduated last year.
I know with metaphysical certainty that she's doing the online work, but, of course, I can't prove it. I mentioned this to the Dean. He doesn't have my certainty, but he did acknowledge that I'm "probably right."
I'm watching him (her, actually) on the off chance that she'll screw up and give the game away, but, let's face it, you don't have to be all that smart to pull this off.
Your suggestions?
Just mark all papers from him "I have reasonable suspicion you are cheating but I CAN'T PROVE IT."
ReplyDeleteKidnap the wife for the duration, keep her in an abandoned saw mill. Wear a lumpy bag with crudely cut out holes for your eyes, talk with a weird lisp or accent when you are around her; wear gloves. She'll say the Elephant Man took her.
This depends on your discipline and what exactly it is that you're grading. If it were me, and I was absolutely sure, I would grade the essays much, much harder. So hard that s/he demands to know why s/he's not doing well.
ReplyDeleteI'd make up shit if I had to. Split every hair. Any excuse to give the lowest possible grade I could remotely rationalize. Squeeze hard enough to make her squeal.
Of course, since it's not supposed to be "her," he's going to have to be the one that complains. First "he'll" do it in writing. Repeat the shit you made up, only more slowly. And if s/he demands more explanation--
Then you say you need to meet for an in-person conference to "talk in detail about your work." Which of course only he could attend. Which he wouldn't, since he's not doing the work.
Just lather, rinse, repeat. Plagiarists do not, in general, have the faculties to grade-grub. They will deny the plagiarism, but rarely will a plagiarist bitch about a bad grade.
The wife will eat out her own liver when she gets these bad grades, because she won't be able to confront you directly and do anything about it, and because she thinks of herself as a "good" student, an opinion you'll quickly challenge.
She'll sense you're being unfair, but she'll be hamstrung. She might also sense you know she's doing the work--but what of it? She can't do anything about that, either.
Her husband will have to defend her work for her, and if she's that smart, she also knows he's dumb as a bag of hammers and that he's incapable of doing so.
All this might actually have the side benefit of causing some marital strife, which is all the two of them deserve.
But this is a serious mind-fuck. Only attempt it if you have balls of steel, and you are absofuckinglutely sure that the wife is doing the husband's work. Otherwise, you're persecuting the innocent.
To my mind it would be better if you hadn't told the dean anything, but that can't be helped. Such matters are best kept to oneself.
And if all you give is multiple-choice tests, you're screwed.
My suggestion would be to let it go. You can't catch every brat, and unless some actual proof falls into your lap, you shouldn't exhaust yourself trying.
ReplyDeleteDepending on the course, I would follow Stella's advice and have a sit down conference with the student, asking him to explain various parts of his online work and how he came to his conclusions.
ReplyDeleteI had a somewhat similar situation (in mathematics) and asked the student to walk me through a similar problem that he solved. He had no clue where to start, yet, had a complete and perfect solution to his online work. Case closed.
Wow. Props to Stella---you are really energetic! I am jaded and probably lazy---but I would not go to this much trouble. I teach online---Comp and Lit and other (slightly) more advanced English classes. I get asked fairly often how I could do it when it is "probably" (according to the online haters) their spouse or someone doing all the work? My response is sort of a variant on "I don't care." A dear friend of mine who left Community College English proffing to be a Dean at a fairly prestigious four year (amazing---a combo of luck and incredible ambition) had a great quote on this: "If that is the case, then they married well!"
ReplyDeleteIt is not really that I don't care. I do a few things to try to make this kind of thing harder---like having discussion prompts weekly, weekly one page papers, and several longer essays which they have to do over drafts. So in other words, if they are having another person do their work, that person is gonna find it a full time job! And if some of their work is of a very different quality that, say the longer essays, I am all over it. Splitting hairs, as Stella said. But let's face it, a motivated smarty pants wifey could make it her mission to do ALl the work and ace the class. And my feeling on that is: Shit Happens.
My office mate and I spar on this all the time. He makes his students come in for several exams. He has to make himself available for them at lots of different hours. It makes his on campus time about triple what mine is. He takes their driver's license as proof that they are who they say they are. I tell him, they could give you a fake ID too. Just sayin'.
On another note, I told this story here before, but when my daughter was younger, she made a friend from a foreign country. We have a rather large community of people from that country in our area. We went over for the requisite play date, and the mother's level of English was very high. It turned out she was an English teacher in her home country. And she had a great side business here in the States: she attended college English classes (live ones) for women from her country who could never pass otherwise. They were very smart about it---arranging things so that the English classes would all eventually transfer to whatever location the "real" student would eventually attend. Pretty clever. I was sort of floored that she'd tell me all this, knowing I was working as an adjunct at a few of the places where they were running this scam.
So I guess what I am saying is: cheating happens and we cannot always stop it. All we can do is try to be attentive to see if there ARE any obvious signs----but I just would not sweat it beyond that.
I guess if I were motivated to make a big thing out of this one, I'd get the wife's work from one of her former proffie's, and try to find some obvious similarities. But listen, at my school they'd consider that weak even if I hired an FBI expert to do it (or would that be CIA?).
Stella - You're absolutely right, that is some serious mind-fuckery right there. I mean, incredibly manipulative, psychological warfare type shit. Goddamn is that cold. And it's a long-game, too! None of this 'one off' *gotcha* stuff. No way. You gotta be in it for the long haul.
ReplyDeleteYou're not by any chance moonlighting as an interrogation specialist, are you?
In-class essay exams.
ReplyDelete'Nuff said.
@J. Harker:
ReplyDeleteI've never actually been faced with the exact situation that the OP describes. That's just what I'd consider doing if I could swear on my life that the student was cheating. The circumstances are complicated because it's an internet class. Ordinarily I'd just innocently ask to see the student in person during my office hours, where they crack pretty easily if they haven't done the work.
The in-person meeting (or test, or in-class writing) is definitely the first step toward unmasking this kind of skulduggery. But, unless your institution requires an in-person component to online classes (some do, for just this reason), it's hard to require it, and the approach Stella suggests (though a marvelous example of effective psychological warfare) is an awful lot of work, and might, indeed, get you in trouble, given the fact that you've mentioned your suspicions to your Dean (once again I observe: some Deans get much, much more involved in their professors' day-to-day pedagogical business than others. It's almost enough to make me appreciate mine, who, from all available evidence, simply doesn't want to be bothered with anything that doesn't have to do with Advancing the University's Reputation Through Research Excellence).
ReplyDeleteAlso, as Bella points out, there are ways around even such precautions. The football player would probably have to find a substitute who resembles him a bit more closely than his wife presumably does (and might, in fact, have trouble finding a ringer at all; such is the price of even localized fame); still, having a ringer take an exam for you is an old, old method of cheating, and not just among those who speak English as a second language; I seem to remember a Kennedy being ejected from an Ivy-League school for having someone else take a Spanish final for him. That was when Ivy League schools still expelled students for cheating. I'm pretty sure that there's still a thriving business in SAT-taking-by-proxy among certain brilliant and young-appearing 20-somethings, despite the ETS's best efforts.
In the end, for me at least, it all boils down to a variation on Beaker Ben's (I think it's his) maxim: "don't care more about their educations than they do." I certainly turn in every plagiarist I catch, and would happily write up a cheating charge against someone who I could prove wasn't doing hir own online work, but the bottom line is that if they end up with a diploma that suggests they have certain skills, but without the skills to match, for whatever reason (cheating, refusing to believe that it's important to retain information and skills beyond the end of the course, killing brain cells through excessive consumption of recreational substances), that's their problem. The football player's wife can't hold down two jobs (and, most likely, take primary responsibility for a family), so eventually he's going to have to do his own work. At that point, she may have to try tutoring him, rather than doing the work for him, which, as all of us who teach know, is far, far harder.
It was Ted Kennedy that got someone to take a test for him.
ReplyDeleteI generally don't care about a student's education more than they do, if what they're doing is slacking. But plagiarism has become so rampant--it's a scourge--that I think it's undermining the entire educational process for all students and it has to be routed out with extreme prejudice. When others get away with plagiarism, honest students lose heart, and sometimes the incentive to stay honest themselves, because cheating pays off.
That's why I care so much about it. Because it's gotten to the point where plagiarists actually brag about what they've done. There's no shame in it.
If there's no shame, there must at least be punishment, because if things keep going the way they are, no student anywhere will have qualms about academic dishonesty--their own or that of anyone else.
Before I arrived at my current institution it had a "reputation" for a certain online subject that no one wants to take but is required for many degrees. At a previous institution this "reputation" was openly flaunted to the extent that the following exchange between students was overheard in an administrative office: "Take Gerbil Milking online through [Sawyer's Future Employer] because it's all online and if your roommate is a Gerbil Milking savant they can do all the work and you'll get the grade. My 'A' only cost me two pizzas and a 12 pack of beer."
ReplyDeleteSince arriving at my current institution (I like saying that; it sounds so... Institutional) I've shared that story with the Dean of Rodent Wrangling and the VP of All Things Academic. There are now policies in place that all online courses have at least one proctored test/lab/demo so that a student has to appear in person SOMEWHERE and produce I.D. before they are allowed to attempt the test/lab/demo. The number of students enrolled in Gerbil Milking from that previous institution have dropped significantly as a result.
I caught two cheaters in an online class last year. Turning in identical work, misspellings and all, within minutes of each other. Called each in to discuss, separately. The first one burst into tears, said she'd let the other one "borrow" her work. The second one informed me, indignantly, that of course their work is identical. They have the same initials.
ReplyDeleteWell, duh. How could I have not noticed that before?
Annie, I had a similar situation a couple of years ago. As per our college's policies, I went the formal route. Before the adjudication board, both students claimed that they had no idea how the numerous identical passages (including mistakes) had found their way into their writing. Sadly, the student whom we suspected to have been poached from stated that she felt her friendship with the other was more important than any questions of academic integrity. So, they both got dinged -- although the poacher received an additional penalty.
ReplyDeleteLucy, I don't know, that's a kind of moral clarity. At least she knew what her priorities were. If a student says X is more important than Y, with Y being my class or academic integrity or whatever, and is willing to take the consequences of that, well, then, I take it I have an ethical being before me. Granted, she lied first, which isn't as impressive.
ReplyDeleteStella is a diabolical genius!
ReplyDeleteI have had very similar situations. This is what you do:
ReplyDelete1. Write to the student telling him that you're wondering if he's getting any "help" on his work. They usually confess to this because they still don't grasp that this is a form of plagiarism. If he says yes, ask him what sort of help, steering him toward some nonesense like, "They're my ideas but my wife helped me put them into words." Then remind him of the definition of plagiarism, fail him on all work he got "help" with, and report him to the dean. If he says no, go to step 2.
2. Ask him to come to your office to discuss his work with you. While he's there, tell him that you have some concerns about the level of his work. Ask him to verbally explain some of his online ideas. Ask him to define some of the more difficult words he used. Give him twenty minutes to write a synopsis of some of his previous work. Take writing sample to dean for a fun compare and contrast game. (If it turns out that the student really is a good student, you can apologize and then say, "Wow, that's how good your work was! I didn't think a student could do that. Take it as a compliment." Students whose work really was their own usually walk away quite pleased.)
3. In-class exam, baby, with picture ID. And always have a comment on your syllabus stating that students have to receive X grade on in-class work to pass.