Thread: Cheating Students! Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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Gave a (maths) test on Friday. There were four versions of the test, carefully passed out so that no student had the same version as the person sitting on either side.
And yet some students just happened to get the right answers from the wrong version of the test. The version the person sitting next to them was taking. And in almost all instances, they got one or more same wrong answer as the person next to them.
This means on Monday I have to get the administration involved, and call a boatload of parents to explain how their little angels cheated on a maths test. Gaaaaaa!
As if correcting tests weren't a bad enough way to start the weekend as it is.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
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Indeed.
Last semester I had 4 plagiarized papers (and this at an evangelical college). One was turned in 4 weeks late on the last day of class, making the necessary consultations, the signing of the forms, etc. all the more difficult to arrange. Bleh.
The kicker is, like most profs, I require them to upload their papers to turnitin. So what the heck did they think was gonna happen when you upload a plagiarized paper to turnitin????
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
One was turned in 4 weeks late on the last day of class
We have a simple system. Reports etc handed in late have marks deducted. The later it is, the more marks you lose. 4 weeks would late would be well into negative marks awarded, even if it was the greatest piece of original work ever produced.
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on
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From the students perspective, I can see it makes sense. They are judged simply on results, passing exams, qualifications, not on whether they actually know something. That its the core failing of the system.
But yes, what is the point of studying and then cheating to earn a qualification that you don't deserve? And if you do, don't do it in such a way that you will be easily caught, because that indicates that you really don't deserve the qualification. At least show that you have half a brain cell.
I presume all of the students will protest their innocence, and claim that they are the victims. Rather than admit the truth that they are losers.
And no, I have never cheated on an exam.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
From the students perspective, I can see it makes sense. They are judged simply on results, passing exams, qualifications, not on whether they actually know something. That its the core failing of the system.
True, alas. But then again knowing how to work (without cheating) within a system you don't like is good practice for life outside the academy walls.
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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If you cheat, at least get a commendation for original thinking when you beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
If you cheat, at least get a commendation for original thinking when you beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario.
Although finding the volume of a cone isn't nearly so intractable as the Kobayashi Maru.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
One was turned in 4 weeks late on the last day of class
We have a simple system. Reports etc handed in late have marks deducted. The later it is, the more marks you lose. 4 weeks would late would be well into negative marks awarded, even if it was the greatest piece of original work ever produced.
Yes, I have a similar system, although a less steep curve so there's still hope at 4 weeks. But a plagiarized paper gets 0 pts so that's moot. My point was just that turning it in on the last day of class only made dealing with the administrative and emotional messiness of meeting with the student before reporting it to the dean, etc., all the more logistically difficult.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
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When I catch someone cheating (it only ever happens with homework, they're never sitting close enough together to get away with it for tests) I mock them for a bit in front of the rest of the class just to give them a bit of encouragement not to do it again. What's troubling to me about Mousethief's class is that they're not smart enough to notice that the answer they're copying doesn't match the question.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
When I catch someone cheating (it only ever happens with homework, they're never sitting close enough together to get away with it for tests) I mock them for a bit in front of the rest of the class just to give them a bit of encouragement not to do it again. What's troubling to me about Mousethief's class is that they're not smart enough to notice that the answer they're copying doesn't match the question.
To do that they'd have to actually, you know, READ the question. What's hilarious is that a couple of the students actually showed their work (or rather of course their neighbor's work), complete with numbers nowhere evident on their own copy of the test!
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
When I catch someone cheating (it only ever happens with homework, they're never sitting close enough together to get away with it for tests) I mock them for a bit in front of the rest of the class just to give them a bit of encouragement not to do it again. What's troubling to me about Mousethief's class is that they're not smart enough to notice that the answer they're copying doesn't match the question.
To do that they'd have to actually, you know, READ the question. What's hilarious is that a couple of the students actually showed their work (or rather of course their neighbor's work), complete with numbers nowhere evident on their own copy of the test!
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Along the same lines as upload a plagiarized paper to turnitin.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
When I catch someone cheating (it only ever happens with homework, they're never sitting close enough together to get away with it for tests) I mock them for a bit in front of the rest of the class just to give them a bit of encouragement not to do it again. What's troubling to me about Mousethief's class is that they're not smart enough to notice that the answer they're copying doesn't match the question.
To do that they'd have to actually, you know, READ the question. What's hilarious is that a couple of the students actually showed their work (or rather of course their neighbor's work), complete with numbers nowhere evident on their own copy of the test!
It's almost as if you're disappointed that not only did they cheat, they demonstrated just how stupid they were by not even thinking about the cheating.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It's almost as if you're disappointed that not only did they cheat, they demonstrated just how stupid they were by not even thinking about the cheating.
Well as Screwtape says, you don't expect old heads on young shoulders.
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on
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I thought that was Miss Jean Brodie.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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Could be her, too.
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
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0 for the exam. Possibly 0 for the course. Suspension.
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on
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I would do the F on the exam and the suspension, but give them one more chance for the course. Just one.
The fake essay thing is unreal-- at least pay someone to write you a new one, if you don't take pride in your own effort. Definitely, teachers can track down a fake in milliseconds nowadays. As for me, I would rather suck on my own merit than be praised for someone else's.
Oh, and it's "Little garruls, I am in the business of putting oh-weld heads on young shoul-dahs, and all my garruls are the creme! de la creme!" (Sorry, I just loved that freakin' movie. Maggie Smith has always known how to devour scenery.)
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
From the students perspective, I can see it makes sense. They are judged simply on results, passing exams, qualifications, not on whether they actually know something. That its the core failing of the system.
True, alas. But then again knowing how to work (without cheating) within a system you don't like is good practice for life outside the academy walls.
We are interviewing at the moment (at work), and it is interesting to see the number of people (under 30s) who seem to think that ticking boxes means they can do things.
We had one recently who was working for a company that just takes graduates and charges them out. They don;t get too much real experience, but they can tick all sorts of boxes. This chap thought he could be a team leader, whereas in truth he would be struggling as a junior developer.
In truth, he will probably end up in management, with no real development experience.
Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on
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Exam cheats - I was once invigilating, when I mentioned to the senior that I had to pop out for a call of nature. I was sitting in the stall (OK, no more detail) when I heard someone come and sit in the one next to me. A few moments later, someone else came in and stood at the urinal, followed by a voice from the stall (hey xxx, is that you?) and the inevitable, depressing and ill-informed discussion on question 4.
Their faces as I emerged with a broad smile (OK, I said no more detail) were a picture, but back upstairs in mutual conversation with the senior they seemed to have recovered their composure - 'it's just his word against mine'.
The real comedy is that no action was taken, the university concerned being primarily motivated by keeping those fee-paying bums on a seat for the full three years. With this in mind the exam was already a comic exercise in pulse-checking - these zombies just needed a little extra help in demonstrating their vital signs.
Wishing as usual I had thought of the appropriate line at the time rather than on the bus home, I wish I had emerged with a couple of pieces of toilet paper on which to write their degree certificates.
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
From the students perspective, I can see it makes sense. They are judged simply on results, passing exams, qualifications, not on whether they actually know something. That its the core failing of the system.
True, alas. But then again knowing how to work (without cheating) within a system you don't like is good practice for life outside the academy walls.
We are interviewing at the moment (at work), and it is interesting to see the number of people (under 30s) who seem to think that ticking boxes means they can do things.
We had one recently who was working for a company that just takes graduates and charges them out. They don;t get too much real experience, but they can tick all sorts of boxes. This chap thought he could be a team leader, whereas in truth he would be struggling as a junior developer.
In truth, he will probably end up in management, with no real development experience.
I'm not sure it wasn't always thus!
Getting jobs nowadays however is all about selling yourself, so if you can kid yourself that you can do XYZ then convincing a load of others who got their position on the other side of the interview desk in exactly the same way shouldn't be too hard.
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
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Simple theft, when caught, i.e., shoplifting, doesn't seem to get much flexibility, and is dealt with formally via charging. Or perhaps cheating is more like a traffic violation, where you get fined and demerit points?
How serious is it?
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
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It's pretty serious when you build your reputation on work you have stolen from someone else and failed to cite them. And say things like "you don't need to cite things you heard in a lecture delivered to ........." I won't say who or where, but it was an amateur society of the sort of thing where amateurs are recognised contributors of the field.
Not done to me, but a friend.
[ 07. February 2016, 14:11: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
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I was once involved in a study where volunteer students were asked to attempt to answer a few questions and draw some diagrams (we were interested in how they interpreted some sentences). It was made clear that no grading was involved (the test was done anonymously) and that they could turn in an unfilled paper and get the small gift certificate. One person still cheated (we had randomized the order of the questions).
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on
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I took an on line university level free course on how to edit to improve the writing of your own professional writing. We reviewed each others' work. The discussion soon overflowed with reports of plagiarism. Many of us reported that over half of the submissions of "original work" were 100% plagiarized, some cleverly changing a minor word here and there so a search for an exact quote would not get a hit on Google. This was in a free no credit course, they still feel a need to plagiarize!
Several thousand in the class world wide (a Coursera class), which suggests the problem is worldwide.
A friend teaches for one of the legitimate on live universities. She said she ignores plagiarism that is 1/3rd or less of an "original work" essay because otherwise almost no one would pass the class.
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
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Mousethief
Empathy, it is the ability to copy mistakes that is the real give away. Over twenty years ago I was in much the same position except it was university and I was the assistant. The kids I had were, on the whole, bright. 100% was not unusual for some doing the homework. So the week I got a whole lot with 60% and the same errors I was pretty confident copying had happened.
Jengie
p.s. if you are going to copy off someone copy off the geek who gets 100%, it is really hard to prove copying if everything is perfect.
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
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It is form of fraud isn't?
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on
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Jengie, that's why the buggers used to steal my homework from my locker at school to copy the homework. Locker being a euphemism for something that couldn't be locked.
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on
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Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:
A friend teaches for one of the legitimate on live universities. She said she ignores plagiarism that is 1/3rd or less of an "original work" essay because otherwise almost no one would pass the class.
The software used by the University at which I marked would always indicate that e.g. the bibliography section had been plagiarised, because there can be no variation in a book title. Sometimes a long sentence which was simply a statement of fact would show up as plagiarised, when it was nothing of the sort (E.g. "Labour won a landslide victory in the 1945 General Election.") There is no way of stating that fact in a way that hasn't already been used before. I would think it would be possible to have an essay show up as 33% plagiarised, without there having been any plagiarism at all.
We worried about any essay which scored less than 20%, because that usually meant there was a problem with the student's ability to cite sources and compile a bibliography.
[ 07. February 2016, 19:43: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on
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quote:
We worried about any essay which scored less than 20%, because that usually meant there was a problem with the student's ability to cite sources and compile a bibliography.
I worried about essays scoring less than 20%, because my institution told me to pass the f*ckers anyway. So I left.
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on
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D'uh! I meant that an essay which the software showed as being less than 20% plagiarised usually had a problem with the bibliography etc. The software we used invariably showed the entire bibliography as being "plagiarised" when, of course, it wasn't.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I took an on line university level free course on how to edit to improve the writing of your own professional writing. We reviewed each others' work. The discussion soon overflowed with reports of plagiarism. Many of us reported that over half of the submissions of "original work" were 100% plagiarized, some cleverly changing a minor word here and there so a search for an exact quote would not get a hit on Google. This was in a free no credit course, they still feel a need to plagiarize!
Several thousand in the class world wide (a Coursera class), which suggests the problem is worldwide.
A friend teaches for one of the legitimate on live universities. She said she ignores plagiarism that is 1/3rd or less of an "original work" essay because otherwise almost no one would pass the class.
Of course, the "change a word here or there" thing doesn't work on turnitin, which is used in most universities, because it's looking for even sentence fragments and then overall similarity. Hence they got caught.
It is quite common, though far less than 1/3 of the class. I used to get about 2-4 per semester, but that went down a lot once I started using turnitin so they've got a heads up they're going to get caught. This last year the numbers went back up-- some, as noted above, so obviously going to get caught that it's a head-scratcher.
In talking with my students (we're required to meet face-to-face with students before referring to dean for their Ultimate Fate) I've come to believe that not a few really don't seem to think it's "plagiarism" if it's an online source. They're just so used to reposting, cutting & pasting, they honestly don't seem to realize it's copying someone else's work (even though its spelled out in bold print in the syllabus). The consequences at our place are pretty stiff even for first offense so it's a hard lesson to learn.
Most exasperating as noted above, but also mildly amusing, are the ones that seem to be absolutely thought-free. Those who borrow work from someone of a different gender then forget to go through and look for lines like "I love being an aunt". The one who cut-and-pasted a very well written rebuttal of CS Lewis' famous liar/lunatic/Lord, then went on to wrap it in a chirpy puff piece that made it very apparent she had no idea it was a rebuttal. Another student who cut and pasted something she got off of some website like Ask.com, the answer had an aside from the writer that said something like: "Mr. Ask was born in this city..."
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
D'uh! I meant that an essay which the software showed as being less than 20% plagiarised usually had a problem with the bibliography etc. The software we used invariably showed the entire bibliography as being "plagiarised" when, of course, it wasn't.
In turnitin, you can adjust the settings to avoid this, as well as to exclude items that are correctly quoting from a source using quotation marks and citation.
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Jengie, that's why the buggers used to steal my homework from my locker at school to copy the homework.
And you never wrote a decoy set? ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posted by RainbowGirl (# 18543) on
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In the degree I did the university had gotten so sick of plagiarism issues that in order to graduate you had to pass one final class. Where you stood up in front of your lecturer and basically undertook a verbal exam, demonstrating not only your knowledge, but your understanding and application of the theory. Because of the type of degree they could package it as proving you had gained the type of skills (public speaking, rebuttal etc) that were essential for the degree. I don't think many students even knew that the class existed solely to weed out those who had routinely cheated. I only found out after I started working in administration at the uni.
Every other unit in the degree had a failure rate in the realms of 20-30%, that unit had a failure rate of 80%. There was no exit pathway or other way to get a degree of any sort from what you had done. I know students who took the unit four times before they managed to pass it, and they only passed through going back and reviewing the course material from every other class they had taken. It was the type of classwork and theory that you couldn't pretend to know or bluff your way though, you either knew it or you didn't.
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on
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Of course, nothing is new. Decades ago the frats were famous for having files of papers to copy.
One of my profs said he was confident he would remember any student paper he's seen, and said if you turn in a paper that has previously been used in his course, and he recognizes it, you get an F, if he fails to recognize it and you prove it's been used in his course before, you get an A. I have no idea how many if any accepted his dare.
While I agree with a comment above that some sentences are just how something is commonly said, when a 5 page paper contains a two page block of text that perfectly matches a Wikipedia entry, that's not an accident.
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
While I agree with a comment above that some sentences are just how something is commonly said, when a 5 page paper contains a two page block of text that perfectly matches a Wikipedia entry, that's not an accident.
Of course, if the student wrote the Wikipedia entry... ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on
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My boss (he of bucket of snails fame) tried to claim it was part of my job to help his son cheat on his university application form. His little lamb wants to go to university in the UK so he suggested that he could write his thing in French and I would translate it into English. As if I didn’t know perfectly well that the university uses the forms to assess the level of candidates’ written English skills. I point this out; he says that his son has the TOEIC so it’s all fine. I don’t care. He bloody well doesn’t have the level of an English native speaker with a Master’s degree in literature and in any case he should put in the necessary work himself. This is called cheating and I see no reason why the poor little rich kid should get ahead of other more able candidates just because Daddy pulled some strings.
I said no (and FWIW have informed the HR who are ready to back me up if he mentions it again). He still hasn’t stopped sulking about it. Yes, I am preparing my CV. Entitled rich bastards ![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
.
Actually this fits in with a really interesting article I read a while back in Eurozine/la revue nouvelle on the subject of plagiarism. I won’t link, because it’s not in English, but basically the gist was, in a system where it’s all about getting a qualification rather than the intrinsic value of learning, many candidates see cheating as just “doing what they need to do” to get ahead. The wealthiest families can do it with impunity because they are the ones who have the means to pay “ghostwriters” rather than nicking their essays off the internet, and this enables them to get round plagiarism detection software. This acts a kind of social filter because students with lower social capital are much more likely to get caught, even though wealthier students are proportionally cheating just as much.
Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
While I agree with a comment above that some sentences are just how something is commonly said, when a 5 page paper contains a two page block of text that perfectly matches a Wikipedia entry, that's not an accident.
Of course, if the student wrote the Wikipedia entry...
. . . he probably plagiarized it from somewhere else.
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
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quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
basically the gist was, in a system where it’s all about getting a qualification rather than the intrinsic value of learning, many candidates see cheating as just “doing what they need to do” to get ahead.
This is one of the reasons I prefer exams over coursework.
Homework set throughout the course can be purely devoted to learning (if it doesn't count towards the grade, there's less incentive to cheat), and it's very much easier to invigilate an exam. (Mousethief's students were able to attempt to cheat because they were sat in a normal classroom within reach of each other. Put the students ten feet apart, and they can't make the attempt. Of course, this means you can't use your normal classroom.)
Sure - students can still memorize chunks of essay to regurgitate, rather than actually understanding the topic, but at least if they've had to memorize essay chunks then some of it might stick. RainbowGirl's viva is also a fine idea, although it's rather manpower-intensive, and has some weaknesses: you can't do "blind" (anonymous) marking, and it's difficult to cross-mark a sample to ensure even standards across multiple examiners.
Posted by Doublethink. (# 1984) on
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When I was at uni we were encouraged to form study gruops to revise for a statistics exam. We were told to work on old papers as exercises and we duely did. When I took the exam the questions were mathematically identical to one of the papers I'd been revising with (ie instead of saying for example "8 pilots did x" it said "8 runners did x".)
I, and everybody in my study group, got over 90%, I was incredibly embarassed as I thought everyone would assume we must have cheated. Though now that I think about it, the problem was the examiner had plagarised the previous paper (or been too lazy to rewrite his original paper in a more original way.).
My parents response to my telling them I had got over 90% in a university stats exam, was to ask why I hadn't got 100% - which may explain why some people cheat.
[ 08. February 2016, 15:28: Message edited by: Doublethink. ]
Posted by Yangtze (# 4965) on
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We used to have Collections at the beginning of every term - a short small exam I think designed to see if we remembered anything after the long vacation time. (Our terms were only eight weeks long.) We all cheated like crazy in them - but the grades didn't count for anything - even if we failed miserably it was just a chance for the tutor to say, buck up and pay more attention this term why don't you.
(Actually my entire degree was based on exams taken Mon-Fri in one week and it would have been hard to cheat there - the desks were about 2m apart from each other.)
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Yangtze:
We all cheated like crazy in them - but the grades didn't count for anything - even if we failed miserably it was just a chance for the tutor to say, buck up and pay more attention this term why don't you.
But they did count for something - a one-off "buck your ideas up" may only cause fleeting embarrassment, but a couple starts to look like grounds for formal sanction.
Posted by Helen-Eva (# 15025) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Yangtze:
(Actually my entire degree was based on exams taken Mon-Fri in one week and it would have been hard to cheat there - the desks were about 2m apart from each other.)
Me too only mine ended on the thursday. Wasn't it lovely when it was over?
Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
My parents response to my telling them I had got over 90% in a university stats exam, was to ask why I hadn't got 100% - which may explain why some people cheat.
Did we have the same father?
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Put the students ten feet apart, and they can't make the attempt. Of course, this means you can't use your normal classroom.
I have trouble wrangling enough chairs for every student in my class. Apparently $30K a year doesn't stretch to cover a chair. Wrangling a whole 'nother-- and much larger-- classroom is beyond my imagination.
Posted by Mertseger (# 4534) on
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
If you cheat, at least get a commendation for original thinking when you beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario.
Although finding the volume of a cone isn't nearly so intractable as the Kobayashi Maru.
Unless, perhaps, there's some Banach-Tarski shenanigans going on.
Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on
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Doublethink: quote:
My parents response to my telling them I had got over 90% in a university stats exam, was to ask why I hadn't got 100% - which may explain why some people cheat.
Did they ace all their tests at uni? Hmmm? Somehow I doubt it.
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Several thousand in the class world wide (a Coursera class), which suggests the problem is worldwide.
I have heard that plagiarism and intellectual property are, in some ways, a cultural idea. The president of my mother's college spent a year teaching as a visiting professor in China, and found that citing sources was a totally foreign concept to the students.
When I was an article editor for a journal in law school, I used to joke that, if you were editing the citations in a student paper which had been submitted for publication, you should start by googling a few sentences from the paper, because you could usually find the paper the student plagiarized and see how the original author cited the source. (That is a bit of an exaggeration- I think we only had one that was so bad that we had to retroactively reject it.)
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
When I was at uni we were encouraged to form study gruops to revise for a statistics exam. We were told to work on old papers as exercises and we duely did. When I took the exam the questions were mathematically identical to one of the papers I'd been revising with (ie instead of saying for example "8 pilots did x" it said "8 runners did x".)
I, and everybody in my study group, got over 90%, I was incredibly embarassed as I thought everyone would assume we must have cheated. Though now that I think about it, the problem was the examiner had plagarised the previous paper (or been too lazy to rewrite his original paper in a more original way.).
Frankly, if the questions on any exam are a huge surprise, either you weren't doing the assignments and paying attention in class, or the professor wrote an unfair exam. You still had to show your work, right? It's not like you were able to regurgitate the answers from memory.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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Re foreign students and citations--
In my experience with Asians, it isn't that they're plagiarizing (well, I've dealt mainly with college and grad school students), it's that the academic culture they come out of puts all the emphasis on creative thought and as a byproduct, people with a bunch of footnotes think they're going to be considered lazy thinkers. It took me forever to persuade Mr. Lamb that a citation was not a Bad Thing™. Whereas American education starts off with footnote-free creativity (in lower grades) and gradually moves up the ladder to the point where some grad papers are more footnote than text. Not that we don't value creative thought, but we distrust it in the absence of a bunch of supporting documentation. At least in academia.
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Apparently $30K a year doesn't stretch to cover a chair. Wrangling a whole 'nother-- and much larger-- classroom is beyond my imagination.
This is why you can only do it for exams, meaning things at the end of the year, or at the end of the degree. It's not terribly space-efficient.
This is more or less what I expect an exam to look like.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Apparently $30K a year doesn't stretch to cover a chair. Wrangling a whole 'nother-- and much larger-- classroom is beyond my imagination.
This is why you can only do it for exams, meaning things at the end of the year, or at the end of the degree. It's not terribly space-efficient.
This is more or less what I expect an exam to look like.
We don't have any more classrooms at the end of the year than we do in the middle of the semester-- do you?
Oh, wait-- you mean like qualifying exams, that sort of thing-- capstone exams for an entire degree program, rather than for a single course?
[ 08. February 2016, 21:46: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
We don't have any more classrooms at the end of the year than we do in the middle of the semester-- do you?
You have to gain space with scheduling. If a standard course is 3 hours of teaching time per week, you can reduce classroom occupancy by a factor of 3 by scheduling one one-hour exam in exam week.
That's the kind of thing I mean.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
We don't have any more classrooms at the end of the year than we do in the middle of the semester-- do you?
You have to gain space with scheduling. If a standard course is 3 hours of teaching time per week, you can reduce classroom occupancy by a factor of 3 by scheduling one one-hour exam in exam week.
That's the kind of thing I mean.
Yeah, our final exams are scheduled by The Powers That Be, and they in fact have done the reverse-- given us more time, but not more space.
Posted by american piskie (# 593) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Yangtze:
(Actually my entire degree was based on exams taken Mon-Fri in one week and it would have been hard to cheat there - the desks were about 2m apart from each other.)
The young have extraordinarily sharp eyes!
I once read a nice study which showed how one could extract from the marks obtained by students sitting in an m x n array the values of m and n.
Posted by Amorya (# 2652) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Of course, if the student wrote the Wikipedia entry...
…Then they'd score nothing for reusing the same work in two places. You do still have to cite yourself if you're reusing your own words!
Just like you have to cite the lecturer if you got something out of the lecture notes. And that applies to concepts as well as direct quotes. If your lecturer mentions a study that showed a certain result, you either look up the original article (and cite that), or you cite it "as cited in" the lecture notes.
The main rule is that the citation should be the thing you actually read.
I used to mark first year undergraduate psychology. It took many people quite a long time to realise that you couldn't say anything without either a citation or some demonstration of original research or a process of logical deduction. No "Most people believe the sky is blue" or similar — show me where you got the info from!
I once did a full plagiarism check on the 40 papers I was marking. No computer software to help me, I was only given hard copies. I found about 15 that counted as plagiarised by the strict definition. Three of those actually copied stuff. I sent back their papers alongside highlighted photocopies of the relevant pages from books, and let the admins deal with them. (They must have thought they were so clever, picking books rather than journal articles — the latter being searchable electronically. I just spent a lot of time in the library!) The other 12 it was mainly that their citations didn't quite cut muster, it didn't look like intentional cheating. So they got a helpful comment telling them how to not do it again.
The worst I got was an end of year project. The students were meant to work in groups to conduct an experiment, but do the statistical analysis and the writeup/conclusions by themselves. I had one pair send me one writeup with two names on the front. They tried to claim that nobody had told them they couldn't do that, but it was on the handout that explained the project, we'd mentioned it over and over again in the lectures, and if they'd come to the drop-in sessions they'd have been told it there too. At that point, my sympathy runs out!
Posted by gog (# 15615) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
RainbowGirl's viva is also a fine idea, although it's rather manpower-intensive, and has some weaknesses: you can't do "blind" (anonymous) marking, and it's difficult to cross-mark a sample to ensure even standards across multiple examiners.
We had this for one course, the viva was recorded so it could be standardised and the external examiner could hear a sample
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
:
If I wanted to cite this in a discussion somewhere, what is the source that I would need to cite? I don't think "I read it on a message board" would quite demolish the person in question.
From Amorya
quote:
Just like you have to cite the lecturer if you got something out of the lecture notes. And that applies to concepts as well as direct quotes. If your lecturer mentions a study that showed a certain result, you either look up the original article (and cite that), or you cite it "as cited in" the lecture notes.
[ 10. February 2016, 16:06: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
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see how to cite a post in UBB discussion. I would cite username, date, thread title and post number boards and give a url with date accessed.
Jengie
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
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Hmm, I still don't think that would make it quite clear to the person concerned, should the need arise, that his contention that there is no need to cite things heard in lectures to amateur groups. That they are fair game.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
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The insistence on citation has become a fucking disease. Thanks to a combination of the desire to fight plagiarism and the vast increase in the power to detect it, everyone has swung so far in one direction that you can't sneeze without being required to show who you're quoting.
The mindset that every sentence you write must be referenced actually discourages people from coming up with their own ideas or expression, because it discourages them from combining two separate elements and fusing them into something new. Because almost nothing anyone says is TOTALLY new.
Copyright doesn't actually protect ideas, only specific expressions of ideas. The proposition that you have to credit the lecture notes for concepts strikes me as absurd. What the fuck's left?
Posted by Doone (# 18470) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The insistence on citation has become a fucking disease. Thanks to a combination of the desire to fight plagiarism and the vast increase in the power to detect it, everyone has swung so far in one direction that you can't sneeze without being required to show who you're quoting.
The mindset that every sentence you write must be referenced actually discourages people from coming up with their own ideas or expression, because it discourages them from combining two separate elements and fusing them into something new. Because almost nothing anyone says is
TOTALLY new
Copyright doesn't actually protect ideas, only specific expressions of ideas. The proposition that you have to credit the lecture notes for concepts strikes me as absurd. What the fuck's left?
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Copyright doesn't actually protect ideas, only specific expressions of ideas. The proposition that you have to credit the lecture notes for concepts strikes me as absurd. What the fuck's left?
New ideas? One should not confuse copyright with plagiarism. One can plagiarize whole works without infringing copyright (e.g., just choose a work outside copyright or use the idea but rephrase it entirely in your own words and present it as your own work) and infringe copyright without plagiarizing (properly quote and cite the entire work). And then there is the opposite of plagiarism, citing something that doesn't exist or creating an entire work and claiming someone else (usually well-known and dead) wrote it.
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
:
The problem is to misunderstand the task. Plagiarism is to pretend that evidence that supports your idea is your own thought. In claiming the work of others, you weaken your argument as you end up asserting it instead of saying "X agrees with me". The task, therefore, is to find the evidence wherever, weight it and come to a conclusion based on that. Plagiarise and you lessen the positive evidence in your favour.
Jengie
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
The problem is to misunderstand the task. Plagiarism is to pretend that evidence that supports your idea is your own thought. In claiming the work of others, you weaken your argument as you end up asserting it instead of saying "X agrees with me". The task, therefore, is to find the evidence wherever, weight it and come to a conclusion based on that. Plagiarise and you lessen the positive evidence in your favour.
Jengie
Are you free this afternoon to come explain this to my class of university students? This is precisely what I have been struggling to convey lo these many weeks.
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
In claiming the work of others, you weaken your argument as you end up asserting it instead of saying "X agrees with me".
Pretty much. This is also why it's not necessary to provide citations for things that are common knowledge. I am entirely free to say "the sky is commonly thought of as being blue" without having to cite a study where thousands of random people were asked what colour the sky is.
But it has to actually be common knowledge, at least among your target audience. If you start by asserting that most people think the sky is green, then any arguments that you make based on that aren't going to be very persuasive.
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