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| Congratulations! True Love is in the air |
Two weeks ago, I gave a test. Run of the mill. Nice and broad question -- the best answers did not need to use intense knowledge of the material as much as they required deep thinking and critical analysis. Someone who failed to come to class could use Captain Logic and ace the exam by engaging critically with the concepts of the question itself. I've graded the exams, they included a broad span of great to godawful, whatever. Next.
But wait. Over the weekend, the following snippet appeared in the Student Newspaper's "missed connections" section.
You were in sitting next to me in my [Basket Weaving Studies] class. We were taking the first exam. You had a cheat sheet slipped under the test and I'm pretty sure it saved me from failing. I haven't seen you before or since. Can we meet outside of class? You: red shirt and jeans. Me: [university tshirt] with [fraternity ballcap]. Your call.
Awwwwwwwwww. Missed Connections! Well:
A) I hope this becomes True Love
B) I actually know exactly who both of these students are
C) The two students sitting next to each other submitted an almost identical summary of the readings without any analysis. It was a pretty strong argument for a D, since nothing either of them said answered the question.
SO: should I encourage this budding romance by calling them both into my office at the same time? I could put flowers and chocolates at my office, then arrive late and allow them to get to know each other in the hallway. They could swoon and do a meet cute dance. Swap phone numbers. Add each other as friends on their StupidPhones. Do jello shots. Make dates and plans.
Then I can arrive, see their happy in-love faces, and fail them for cheating.
I'd just fail both of them and staple a copy of the "missed connection" ad to each test. No way they'd dispute the grade.
ReplyDeleteI like Bubba's suggestion. Maybe draw some hearts around the big fat "F".
ReplyDeleteHow are students so dumb? They think they can cheat on tests and advertise it in the college newspaper? Oh, the hubris...
Oh my god, that is delicious! Go with Bubba's suggestion and then tell us all how it came out.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'll start reading the campus paper. How awesome. I would only add that after doing what Bubba, Marginalia and Harpy suggest, submit something to the campus paper:
ReplyDelete"I caught you both cheating on the exam. I really want to get together, just the three of us in my private office. Maybe, if things work out right, we can bring the dean of students into the mix. Looking forward to getting to know you."
You can't do anything on the basis of that ad. You can't do anything because it doesn't prove anything. You can only use the tip the ad provides to construct a snare that will entrap the two cheaters in the future. If you want to bring them into your office, that's fine. But they won't admit anything, and both will profess complete ignorance about the ad. They might say "It was probably a fellow student who hates us" or something like that. And there's no way you could prove them wrong. So your best bet is to lay low and plot how you will catch them next time. Or, simply use the evidence of the test, without mentioning the ad.
ReplyDeleteI like Bubba's approach, but fear that Stella has a point. I'm also pretty horrified that the student newspaper printed the piece, but, given issues of press freedom and confidentiality, the only thing you can probably do about that is to write an op-ed or letter to the editor pointing out how badly the "missed connections" entry reflects on the school and its students, to current faculty, potential employers, etc. If you've got tenure, you might want to make that a letter to the editor of or op-ed piece for the local newspaper (not the campus one).
ReplyDeleteAs for the students, I'd give them the Ds the exams earned, independently and together, or start whatever process you have for making honor charges on the basis of the similarity between the two. If you usually start the process by bringing the students to your office, separately or together, then do that. Don't mention the ad, but I don't see why you couldn't just happen to have a copy of the campus newspaper, folded with the "missed connections" section outward, in a prominent place on your desk, as if set aside after reading over lunch.
I am terrified of popping my head up, but these comments have riled me a bit.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am not comprehending throughout the site, is the terrible conditions in which many of you seem to teach.
What does it mean you "can't" discipline these students, not just this story but elsewhere.
Are the majority of writers at CM non-tenured or contingent?
I have ultimate authority in all of my classes, and I give it to my TAs as well. The bullshit is batted back at students regularly. We don't tolerate even one of the so-called snowflake maneuvers.
Yes, I have misery in my job as well, but it's more about the college itself, the insane colleagues and administrators. (I love when Walter talks about his colleagues. They sound like mine.)
But as I said, I don't have some of the same problems many of you seem to have.
A student jerks me around, and there is swift and just penalties. It never happens again.
I've dropped students from classes. I've had one cross word with a Dean in one case, but in the end it was my call.
If we don't have that right, I don't know how any of us can teach worth a shit.
Just my opinion. I love this page, and wanted to play along a bit.
Roger, very glad you posted. Please do so more! I wish we talked about this very issue more often.
ReplyDeleteNation-wide, approximately 47% of all faculty are indeed adjunct. Every interaction with a student could be followed by a sudden, and unexpected, dismissal. Every semester is a separate contract with no obligation to renew.
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/highered/aa_partimefaculty0310.pdf
So this site ends up hearing a lot from adjuncts with few options and no job security. But there are tenure-track review complaints and publishing misery and entitled students for even the most secure and tenured folks as well.
For those of you who suggest that I ought not use this newspaper article to reprimand my students, never fear. It's a "missed connection." Not a confession. And I changed the wording for anonymity as well. The original does not include quite the bold statement. But I love the idea of painting hearts around the grade or forwarding the missed connection to my class email "Does anyone want a hookup??"
ME: rolling in the aisles.
I forgot to mention that the font of the newspaper quote was a nice touch.
ReplyDeleteThis was delicious!
ReplyDeleteRoger, you sound like you work at a delightful institution.
O Roger, you lucky lucky bastard!
ReplyDeleteHere at the University of Tuktoyaktuk (Tuk U!) the faculty are not allowed to penalize cheating ('tis express forbid!). Instead, all allegations must be brought before a university level committee. The procedures for said committee are laid out in a two page flowchart that makes the Windows Vista operating system seem like a model of clarity. Hardly anyone bothers for anything but the most egregious offenses.
Outcomes range from the Draconian (good student automatically fails class and can't graduate because their room-mate copied one assignment), to drilling the professor a new euphemism ("You caught two students talking during the exam and they handed in identical test papers? How could that be anything but an innocent coincidence? After all, one of them is the son of a local luminary!").
Roger welcome! We thirst for your happy tales of life on the outside!
@Monkey: I wouldn't encourage people like this to breed, it'll only cause trouble for the next generation.
ReplyDelete@Roger: You have it lucky, count your blessings. Far too many of us have an Incompetent Dean of Students who does seemingly everything he possibly can to circumvent us from enforcing discipline or standards. He does absolutely nothing whatsoever whenever I send him screamingly obvious evidence of plagiarism (copies of the student paper and the plagiarized source, precisely and clearly referenced, of course). Reporting student plagiarism to him is like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon: in essence, he allows cheating, and the worst part is that his higher-ups appear to condone it, enthusiastically, particularly whenever a student athlete is involved.
Tenured Full Prof at an R1 here, with no ability whatsoever to drop students from my class. I can't imagine where you teach, Roger.
ReplyDeleteBut do keep us posted!
Roger, I share your befuddlement--and I think we all do--but at some schools, regardless of tenure, the Dean of Ethics or whomever makes sure to keep cheating in check by reporting low numbers of cheaters. Not by stopping cheating, just be reporting low numbers.
ReplyDeleteAt my school, a semi-famous Ivy wannabe in the mid-Atlantic, I brought dozens of examples of plagiarism to the Dean, and she responded by referring me to the school's legal counsel so that I would know where to turn when/if the students responded to my "accusations" with lawsuits.
I then had to begin the process of prosecuting the cheaters, and each cheating case probably took me about 10 hours to deal with. And I was never allowed to do anything worse than fail a student for the class (not that I was ever allowed even to do THAT). I usually pursued some kind of punishment for each of these--failing the paper, at a minimum--but I know lots and lots of profs who just offer the student a chance to rewrite the exam. Which is an extension, not a punishment. The school has made it so difficult to prosecute cheating that most profs don't have time for it, and the Dean of Whatever gets to report low annual numbers.
Based on surveys that go around every so often, I think about 25-50% of the students on my campus have cheated at some point during college. That's 1000-2000 people. The academic ethics office sees how many cases of cheating per year? About 40.
Roger, treasure your good fortune. And keep busting those cheaters.
Just for comparison: I'm a full-time, non-tenure-track/contingent faculty on a multi-year contract at an R2 (which would like to be an R1). We have a reasonably workable system (it takes me 1-3 hours to fill out paperwork and assemble originals and sources that show what happened -- usually on the lower side these days thanks to the ability to print out reports from plagiarism-checking software; after that, the honor council and the Dean and sub-Dean who deal with such matters take over, and usually persuade the student to admit responsibility, and accept reasonable consequences, without a hearing). I've had no problem whatsoever getting reasonably strong penalties (fail/retake the class for a major paper in a writing class; twice as many points off as would have resulted from simply not answering the question on an intro to lit take-home exam with several plagiarized sections), and feel confident that, if I were to call a situation similar to what Monkey describes to the attention of the relevant Dean/sub-Dean, I would receive some useful guidance, and others involved -- e.g. the student paper -- would at least receive expressions of concern from the Dean/sub-Dean.
ReplyDeleteBut I've adjuncted at other schools (some decidedly superior in the public mind to my currrent one) where the process isn't so efficient or supportive. My graduate institution -- one with a long-established honor system in which it takes much pride -- did follow through when, in my first semester of teaching, a student plagiarized a substantial portion of a paper on marijuana legalization (yes, I no longer allow that topic, or persuasive papers in general). The process was time-consuming and a bit scary for a first-time teacher, but worked (student flunked assignment; notation was put in his file that would result in considerably harsher penalties should he repeat the offense). By contrast, a small public SLAC (yes, they do exist) with a student-run honor system completely failed to follow up on the case of one roommate who stole a paper from another, thus putting the innocent party into a tailspin in the middle of finals. And a quite selective religiously-affiliated private university decided, after lots of paperwork and a hearing, that they couldn't figure out which of my students had extracted a completed take-home-exam from the stack in my department mailbox (yes, I know; poor practice on my part, but as an adjunct in the pre-digital turn-in age I had limited options) and copied it, even though the sequence of events seemed pretty clear to me, and to the victim. In that case, I suspect that the fear of litigation may have played a role (as it may in closing the SLAC case without result once the student board had delayed too long).
And I absolutely believe those who report far worse experiences, especially in schools where "retention" is now the watchword. I'd guess that that's the force limiting cheating/plagiarism enforcement at less-selective schools, while fear of litigation is the primary factor at more-selective ones.
And no, I can't drop people either. I *can* flunk them, with no questions asked or flak received, for not completing work, but I can't drop them.
Beaker Ben, your ad is brilliant!
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of "big fat F with copy of ad stapled to the paper."
ReplyDeleteI teach at a 4-yr & at a community college as well. Far easier to deal with cheaters at the CC than the 4-yr.
At the CC, I can issue an F and send an e-mail to my dean explaining why a student rec'd the F in case they appeal it.
At the 4-yr, I have to have all kinds of documentation (a confession helps), then submit everything to the Honor Council along with a punishment recommendation (which may not be "student should be expelled" for a 1st offense - I have no problem with that). The Honor Council then takes 6-8 weeks to deal with it; the most common punishment is that the student must take an online "student ethics" course.
These different cheating approaches are really interesting to me, because my online university supports my findings of cheating absolutely (perhaps they are desperate for authenticity, so they take such things seriously?) while my mortar school is always side-stepping, with tons of paper work and absolute proofs etc (fear of reprisal and alumni threats? Maybe).
ReplyDeleteI'm an adjunct at an R1 and I come across a cheater most semesters. At our school, the instructors get the first shot at punishing the student, but we can't drop anyone from our roster. We can fail them, however. Basically, if the student agrees to the instructor's sanction, it's imposed and the paperwork (OPTIONAL!**) is filed with the Dean after the fact. I tell the student, "Here's what you submitted, here's my proof of cheating, here's my sanction. Sign here to agree to my sanction. If you don't, you may appeal to the University Academic Integrity committee, who will then launch a full investigation into the matter." I don't know if that's exactly what will happen, but it sounds good and intimidating. No student has ever refused to sign the confession/agreement, but I've also never brought iffy cases to this level. If the instructor feels like filling out the one-page form and attaching proof of cheating to send along to the Dean, he sends a letter to the student's permanent address with a warning that his office knows about the offense and that the student will be subject to additional penalties (including suspension or expulsion) if it happens again.
ReplyDeleteI've run into only one little bump in the road of punishing cheaters (and this was while I was a grad student teaching fellow). My chair asked that I only fail the assignment for the first offense rather than assign an F for the course. His rationale was that, despite having this policy on my syllabus I hadn't included the URL for the university's definition of academic integrity on my syllabus (and, so, the poor dears might not know what cheating entails?). Fine. I've fixed my syllabus since then, but I've also adopted a policy that feels more fair for me to enforce: 1st offense fails the assignment, 2nd offense fails the class.
**I wish more proffies would submit the paperwork so that repeat offenders can be tracked. As it stands now, any professor can make a decision for each case of plagiarism, but students usually get a fresh start with each professor since so few seem to report anything to a central spot (i.e. Dean's office).
I'm having similar experiences as AdMonk ... I'm adjuncting primarily online at present and those programs have a pretty solid no tolerance policy.
ReplyDeleteIt may be they are striving for legitimacy.
Perhaps they are more accepting of the online anti-plagiarism services.
Dunno.
I am unsure about one thing, which is problematic particularly online. When a program says it keeps records of borderline/full-fledged infractions so to make sure a particular student isn't being given the benefit of the doubt by multiple instructors, do they really?
I can accept there can be a teachable moment ... maybe two ... in an academic career. When when incident #3 rolls around? Does anything come of that?
Well, break time's over and I must now look at Armond the Author's latest submission where he skirts plagiarism by stringing together multiple quotations and calling it original analysis.
Dr. Jekyll: I nominate this for Post of the Week. Further, this post points out the need for another tag, "Just when you thought...". This type of post is why I keep coming back to CM.
ReplyDeleteProf. Hyde: I keep coming back in hopes that Beaker Ben will finally send word that my order from the chemist has arrived.
I am at a SLAC and have to get a confession from the students, which requires hours of meetings (many tearful 'come to Jesus' moments... mostly on my part), fill out paperwork with evidence, AND go before the judicial committee to explain my case, if I want to do anything other than make the student redo the assignment/paper. A record of this is kept in their 'permanent record' in the Academic Dean's office.
ReplyDeleteIt is a huge burden on professors (we all have the same procedure, regardless of rank or hiring status) to do what should be done, which is kick their little butts out of class with an F and pray for a lightning bolt from above.