Stupid students who dont know they are stupid

[sighyoung]

so I gave her some kind of 'D.'

If she had just asked for another kind of D, she might have ended up with an A. Stupid students indeed.

Well, Bobby Petrino's coming back to Louisville, and he grades based on curves.

[sighyoung]

I just finished dealing with a student who plagiarized. She started last semester well, and easily should have gotten a B+ in my class or higher, but she stopped coming to class and plagiarized on her final paper. This wasn't a case of a phrase here or phrase there, but whole paragraphs cut and pasted onto the page. I've never seen plagiarism this obvious and extensive. (I double-checked and found instances of plagiarism on an earlier paper, but it wasn't nearly as obvious as the final paper.)

Well, with all the plagiarism, I failed the student for the paper and the course.

Well, the [expletive] hit the fan. She was texting me every five minutes demanding clarification, threatening to take the case "to the highest levels" and threatening to have me professionally disciplined, yada yada yada. Then I realized that I hadn't cc'd her on the reason for the failure, which I always intend to do. I forwarded the e-mail I had sent to the dean's office, which included her papers and the websites from which she cut and pasted her work. Suddenly, radio silence.

So today, I got word that she'd taken the plagiarism case to the Student Grievance Committee. She claimed that she had accidentally sent me a draft version of the paper rather than the final version, and presented the committee with the "true" version of the paper.

Well, not only did the committee find that the student had turned in "a heavily plagiarized assignment," but her alibi "was a moot point as there were also elements of plagiarism in the second version." Geez Louise.

By the way, she's a Political Science major on the pre-law track, so she's possibly got a lot at stake here, but if that's the case, why plagiarize in an easy class? And how on earth does turning in a "draft" that is clearly plagiarized prove you're doing any kind of original work? Worse yet, she couldn't even remember what she had stolen when she turned in the fake "final" draft. What a moron.

[stlouie_lipp]

I just finished dealing with a student who plagiarized. She started last semester well, and easily should have gotten a B+ in my class or higher, but she stopped coming to class and plagiarized on her final paper. This wasn't a case of a phrase here or phrase there, but whole paragraphs cut and pasted onto the page. I've never seen plagiarism this obvious and extensive. (I double-checked and found instances of plagiarism on an earlier paper, but it wasn't nearly as obvious as the final paper.)

Well, with all the plagiarism, I failed the student for the paper and the course.

Well, the [expletive] hit the fan. She was texting me every five minutes demanding clarification, threatening to take the case "to the highest levels" and threatening to have me professionally disciplined, yada yada yada. Then I realized that I hadn't cc'd her on the reason for the failure, which I always intend to do. I forwarded the e-mail I had sent to the dean's office, which included her papers and the websites from which she cut and pasted her work. Suddenly, radio silence.

So today, I got word that she'd taken the plagiarism case to the Student Grievance Committee. She claimed that she had accidentally sent me a draft version of the paper rather than the final version, and presented the committee with the "true" version of the paper.

Well, not only did the committee find that the student had turned in "a heavily plagiarized assignment," but her alibi "was a moot point as there were also elements of plagiarism in the second version." Geez Louise.

By the way, she's a Political Science major on the pre-law track, so she's possibly got a lot at stake here, but if that's the case, why plagiarize in an easy class? And how on earth does turning in a "draft" that is clearly plagiarized prove you're doing any kind of original work? Worse yet, she couldn't even remember what she had stolen when she turned in the fake "final" draft. What a moron.

Professors give students their cell phone numbers now? That must suck.

[sighyoung]

I just finished dealing with a student who plagiarized. She started last semester well, and easily should have gotten a B+ in my class or higher, but she stopped coming to class and plagiarized on her final paper. This wasn't a case of a phrase here or phrase there, but whole paragraphs cut and pasted onto the page. I've never seen plagiarism this obvious and extensive. (I double-checked and found instances of plagiarism on an earlier paper, but it wasn't nearly as obvious as the final paper.)

Well, with all the plagiarism, I failed the student for the paper and the course.

Well, the [expletive] hit the fan. She was texting me every five minutes demanding clarification, threatening to take the case "to the highest levels" and threatening to have me professionally disciplined, yada yada yada. Then I realized that I hadn't cc'd her on the reason for the failure, which I always intend to do. I forwarded the e-mail I had sent to the dean's office, which included her papers and the websites from which she cut and pasted her work. Suddenly, radio silence.

So today, I got word that she'd taken the plagiarism case to the Student Grievance Committee. She claimed that she had accidentally sent me a draft version of the paper rather than the final version, and presented the committee with the "true" version of the paper.

Well, not only did the committee find that the student had turned in "a heavily plagiarized assignment," but her alibi "was a moot point as there were also elements of plagiarism in the second version." Geez Louise.

By the way, she's a Political Science major on the pre-law track, so she's possibly got a lot at stake here, but if that's the case, why plagiarize in an easy class? And how on earth does turning in a "draft" that is clearly plagiarized prove you're doing any kind of original work? Worse yet, she couldn't even remember what she had stolen when she turned in the fake "final" draft. What a moron.

Professors give students their cell phone numbers now? That must suck.

I didn't. But she was texting constantly to my e-mail address, assuming that I would drop everything and cater to her. This is why I don't access my work e-mail account on my cellphone.

[stlouie_lipp]

I just finished dealing with a student who plagiarized. She started last semester well, and easily should have gotten a B+ in my class or higher, but she stopped coming to class and plagiarized on her final paper. This wasn't a case of a phrase here or phrase there, but whole paragraphs cut and pasted onto the page. I've never seen plagiarism this obvious and extensive. (I double-checked and found instances of plagiarism on an earlier paper, but it wasn't nearly as obvious as the final paper.)

Well, with all the plagiarism, I failed the student for the paper and the course.

Well, the [expletive] hit the fan. She was texting me every five minutes demanding clarification, threatening to take the case "to the highest levels" and threatening to have me professionally disciplined, yada yada yada. Then I realized that I hadn't cc'd her on the reason for the failure, which I always intend to do. I forwarded the e-mail I had sent to the dean's office, which included her papers and the websites from which she cut and pasted her work. Suddenly, radio silence.

So today, I got word that she'd taken the plagiarism case to the Student Grievance Committee. She claimed that she had accidentally sent me a draft version of the paper rather than the final version, and presented the committee with the "true" version of the paper.

Well, not only did the committee find that the student had turned in "a heavily plagiarized assignment," but her alibi "was a moot point as there were also elements of plagiarism in the second version." Geez Louise.

By the way, she's a Political Science major on the pre-law track, so she's possibly got a lot at stake here, but if that's the case, why plagiarize in an easy class? And how on earth does turning in a "draft" that is clearly plagiarized prove you're doing any kind of original work? Worse yet, she couldn't even remember what she had stolen when she turned in the fake "final" draft. What a moron.

Professors give students their cell phone numbers now? That must suck.

I didn't. But she was texting constantly to my e-mail address, assuming that I would drop everything and cater to her. This is why I don't access my work e-mail account on my cellphone.

Smart man.

[cardinalkarp]

I just finished dealing with a student who plagiarized. She started last semester well, and easily should have gotten a B+ in my class or higher, but she stopped coming to class and plagiarized on her final paper. This wasn't a case of a phrase here or phrase there, but whole paragraphs cut and pasted onto the page. I've never seen plagiarism this obvious and extensive. (I double-checked and found instances of plagiarism on an earlier paper, but it wasn't nearly as obvious as the final paper.)

Well, with all the plagiarism, I failed the student for the paper and the course.

Well, the [expletive] hit the fan. She was texting me every five minutes demanding clarification, threatening to take the case "to the highest levels" and threatening to have me professionally disciplined, yada yada yada. Then I realized that I hadn't cc'd her on the reason for the failure, which I always intend to do. I forwarded the e-mail I had sent to the dean's office, which included her papers and the websites from which she cut and pasted her work. Suddenly, radio silence.

So today, I got word that she'd taken the plagiarism case to the Student Grievance Committee. She claimed that she had accidentally sent me a draft version of the paper rather than the final version, and presented the committee with the "true" version of the paper.

Well, not only did the committee find that the student had turned in "a heavily plagiarized assignment," but her alibi "was a moot point as there were also elements of plagiarism in the second version." Geez Louise.

By the way, she's a Political Science major on the pre-law track, so she's possibly got a lot at stake here, but if that's the case, why plagiarize in an easy class? And how on earth does turning in a "draft" that is clearly plagiarized prove you're doing any kind of original work? Worse yet, she couldn't even remember what she had stolen when she turned in the fake "final" draft. What a moron.

I'm not sure how you go about checking for plagiarism, but as recently as a few years ago when I finished my degree blatant plagiarism was damn near impossible. Papers had to be submitted through a website that contains a database of millions of papers, articles, and information and the teacher basically can see the percentage of a persons paper that matches other works w/ in the database. If a person flat out plagiarizes it clear as day. Is that how its done at your college sigh?

[tlombard]

There were no databases at the time but in HS one of our teachers caught one of my classmates turning in a history paper that somebody else had turned in to another teacher years earlier. Exact same paper. I still have no idea how he caught that one but our teachers were on top of their game.

[sighyoung]

I'm not sure how you go about checking for plagiarism, but as recently as a few years ago when I finished my degree blatant plagiarism was damn near impossible. Papers had to be submitted through a website that contains a database of millions of papers, articles, and information and the teacher basically can see the percentage of a persons paper that matches other works w/ in the database. If a person flat out plagiarizes it clear as day. Is that how its done at your college sigh?

We have that as an option--websites such as Safe Assign--although I've hesitated using it because students' papers become a free part of the company's own databases. But I do something like that by searching phrases and clauses in Google, DuckDuckGo, and/or other search engines. There are often telling changes in style or argumentation that just seem odd, and necessitate checking. Sometimes a student interprets something in such a goofy way that it has to be from some website, because the assertion just makes no sense at all.

For example, one student made the dumbest historical generalizations about the 1950's when writing about Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"--they didn't make any sense at all, and certainly didn't resemble what the class had discussed. So I checked it out and *BOOM* plagiarism galore. It didn't help that the student had skipped the final third of the class, making plagiarism likely and necessary.

Or another student went on and on about a really minor character in a slave narrative written by Harriet Jacobs. This character is so minor that nobody even notices the person, who isn't even in the excerpts in the anthology. Only a scholar would notice this kind of thing. Plus the student's style went from skidmarks in underwear to this beautiful, ornate prose style. Plagiarism.

Or the student who usually writes so little that she could be accused of writing in Morse Code, who suddenly turns in a top-notch 25-page lesson plan on Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

My wife had a student who plagiarized from scholarship that completely contradicted the student's thesis.

I may miss plagiarism in the first paper, but by the third or fourth paper (after seeing drafts and revisions of the prior papers), I have a good sense of students' style, citation habits, interpretive quirks, and so on. So it's easier to detect over time. But some instances of plagiarism are glaring.

[Arthur Dent]

I'm curious: do you feel like you are threatened by these crazy student complaints to college administration, or is it more just a frustrating waste of your time?

[cardinalkarp]

I'm not sure how you go about checking for plagiarism, but as recently as a few years ago when I finished my degree blatant plagiarism was damn near impossible. Papers had to be submitted through a website that contains a database of millions of papers, articles, and information and the teacher basically can see the percentage of a persons paper that matches other works w/ in the database. If a person flat out plagiarizes it clear as day. Is that how its done at your college sigh?

We have that as an option--websites such as Safe Assign--although I've hesitated using it because students' papers become a free part of the company's own databases. But I do something like that by searching phrases and clauses in Google, DuckDuckGo, and/or other search engines. There are often telling changes in style or argumentation that just seem odd, and necessitate checking. Sometimes a student interprets something in such a goofy way that it has to be from some website, because the assertion just makes no sense at all.

For example, one student made the dumbest historical generalizations about the 1950's when writing about Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"--they didn't make any sense at all, and certainly didn't resemble what the class had discussed. So I checked it out and *BOOM* plagiarism galore. It didn't help that the student had skipped the final third of the class, making plagiarism likely and necessary.

Or another student went on and on about a really minor character in a slave narrative written by Harriet Jacobs. This character is so minor that nobody even notices the person, who isn't even in the excerpts in the anthology. Only a scholar would notice this kind of thing. Plus the student's style went from skidmarks in underwear to this beautiful, ornate prose style. Plagiarism.

Or the student who usually writes so little that she could be accused of writing in Morse Code, who suddenly turns in a top-notch 25-page lesson plan on Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

My wife had a student who plagiarized from scholarship that completely contradicted the student's thesis.

I may miss plagiarism in the first paper, but by the third or fourth paper (after seeing drafts and revisions of the prior papers), I have a good sense of students' style, citation habits, interpretive quirks, and so on. So it's easier to detect over time. But some instances of plagiarism are glaring.

Yeah, I'm sure after seeing a students writing style and the quality of the of how they comprise a paper finding plagiarism almost comes second nature to long time professors.