Yes, it's been a difficult couple of days. I've had a couple of plagiarism problems in my evening class, and last night I had to talk to the students involved.
One problem was with a married couple who turned in identical homework responses. They know this isn't acceptable, and I e-mailed them to tell them they were getting zeroes for the assignment. Last night the woman of the couple completely snubbed me. She passed me in the hall before class and gave me her best insolent face, not responding at all to my greeting. After class the guy came up and apologized while she stood out in the hall steaming. It was very odd.
Another student copied his entire paper (these are working adults) from a website, then DENIED it. I showed him the website and the paper together,yet unbelievably he insisted it was a coincidence that his paper and the website were identical.
Tracking all this down, printing it out, and comparing the documents took me hours. I was tired, cranky, and left school to another snowstorm. My 20-minute ride home took over an hour. Teaching is such a rewarding profession.
My class today was better, but I'm still a little dejected.
Difficult Students=Difficult Days
February 22nd, 2011 at 07:40 pm
February 22nd, 2011 at 07:44 pm 1298403840
February 22nd, 2011 at 07:54 pm 1298404454
I had a prof in grad school that I had an ongoing dialogue with. She insisited that it was plagierism if a student used the same topic for different classes and then submitted papers similar in nature written by the same student for different classes. That rubbed me the wrong way (and I wasn't even one of the students who did that), but at least I was respectful about my position.
Don't let the turkeys get you down!
February 22nd, 2011 at 09:06 pm 1298408790
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:05 pm 1298412307
Unfortunately, I think the average person can rationalize a fair amount of cheating. IT would certainly get me down if I Was in a field like teaching.
So, UGH!
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:09 pm 1298412580
Laura,
In my courses we can't do research essays on a similar topic across courses. For example, in one class I did a paper on privacy issues in the library. One of the questions in Capstone was very similar. I wanted to choose it because I already had most of the research done for it ... but I didn't, because the school clearly states it would be a form of plagiarism. Actually, I think I saw something about it in the APA 6th ed. book ...called self-plagiarism I think.
February 23rd, 2011 at 02:15 am 1298427302
February 23rd, 2011 at 01:22 pm 1298467335
I am worried, because ever since 9th grade, teachers have been wanting to keep my daughter's papers for examples, but now in college, I think some of my daughter's papers should be published. Not sure how to approach the subject with some of these professors.