Tales From The College: Assorted Nuts

[LadyofArc]

Only a few stories from recently, but they're good ones

We write government documents now?
Two students got pulled up for plagiarism, both of whom had work that was fairly similar to each other, but not quite enough for it to be considered out and out "collusion". Both of them however, had the same issue that resulted in them getting smacked with a plagiarism warning on their record.

The issue in their case was the fact that they had taken stuff from government guidelines (this was for one of our short courses) to work on their project (the project in question was preparing something for a mock client and they also needed to write a rationale) and not cited it. At all. While they did at least include it in their bibliography, you still need to cite government sources!

That's one way to appeal...

One of the appeals that's coming through is for a student who failed their course and failed it pretty badly. We received the actual appeal today - she spent a good chunk of it quoting a theory around education in the field she was studying.

We have very specific guidelines for appeal and she did not address these at all. Super manager promptly sent that back and quoted the grounds again. I was feeling kind of crummy so I didn't do this, but I was solely tempted to ask super manager if the student had at least cited her sources!

This is why we take notes...

We also have ANOTHER student who's appealing a fail grade, this one from them failing their clinical placement. They had a meeting with Super Manager and during it, it came out that apparently the mentor who assessed them disappeared for around 2-3 hours.

While we will be investigating that further, there are copious amounts of notes to back up the student's fail grade, so the grade will likely not be changing.

[Sliceanddice]

The first story reminded me of a story I heard from a classmate

For our class we had 'final' project that the teacher made due for a midterm instead.
We where allowed, and even encouraged to work together in pairs or groups of three. The only guidelines we had were:
1. Every student had to write their individual paper in their own words, even if they worked in a group
2. Every student in a group had to be credited as a writer in the paper.

Classmate had history of trouble with teacher for our class, partly because her focus area over lapped with only 1 or 2 other students we shares all our classes with so when we have class assignments that had the possibility of group work she always working with the same people, partly because like me she was a class outlier, partly because she generally did her work to the letter of the assignment without extra flurishs that some of the ECE students would do, partly she didn't get along with the teacher.

So they wrote this together, using the same resources, and similar quotes, and even though they wrote their own papers, they brained stormed everything together so some of the wording wound up similar.

The other two students submitted their papers and get passing grades easily.
My friend? Got accused of plagiarism. Almost got kicked out of the program.
It was along hard road to get the plagiarism claim removed, but the teacher still failed her for the class, because she didn't do her own work. So she had to retake it.

[skeptic53]

In a former life I taught high school English as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa. There was an annual publication the school put out that featured student stories, poems, etc. We cautioned the students over and over not to plagiarize. This was eons before the computer era, much less plagiarism detection software, but we had an obvious one. A student submitted a poem that contained the lines "I do my thing, you do your thing, and if we find each other, it's beautiful". Not quite as well known as "To be, or not to be, that is the question..." but close.

(FYI: not as well known is the next line of the poem: "And if we don't, it doesn't matter". They left that line off all the inspirational posters in the 1970's that quoted the poem.)

[LadyofArc]

This is why we take notes...

We also have ANOTHER student who's appealing a fail grade, this one from them failing their clinical placement. They had a meeting with Super Manager and during it, it came out that apparently the mentor who assessed them disappeared for around 2-3 hours.

While we will be investigating that further, there are copious amounts of notes to back up the student's fail grade, so the grade will likely not be changing.

So I have a slight update on this one. We got the actual appeal letter today from this student. Among other things, the student also claimed the following:

- The mentor who assessed them tried to ask another mentor who was on-site that day if they would assess the student...while that mentor was in the middle of spending time with their own student.

- The mentor discussed the student's grade with another student on that same ward

Yes, both of these claims are being followed up, however, since he didn't mention which mentor it was (there were three on-site that day), this is going to be very awkward...

ETA: Found out today who the mentor in question was. This is not looking good.

[wordgirl]

Oh wow, this thread brings back a memory I'd completely forgotten about.

I was a major in a writing discipline, but we still had to have sciences ... and I particularly wanted to take a particular biology course because it 1) had a lab (most labs were chemistry or physics) and 2) focused heavily on native flora and fauna and I've always had a deep geekly love for my home state.

The professor was every bit the rock star he was made out to be. Loved his subject, loved his students, loved teaching. But the grad student in charge of my lab section was a surly, bitter bitch; this actually worked somewhat in our favor, because Professor Rockstar would often take our section out exploring himself, rather than have Bitter Bitch do it. (He did this with every lab section but we got him about twice as often as other sections)

The lab grade was based on field journals, which were turned in four times over the course of the semester. The second time I got my journal back I had "SEE ME" scrawled across it and so I stuck around after lab -- only to have BB explode in my face that this was PLAGIARISM and she was going to have me up on CHARGES and I was going to be EXPELLED and yelly yelly yell yell yell.

The basis of her allegations was twofold: She deemed the writing "too good" for a college student, so I must have lifted my prose from somewhere, and I quoted Prof. Rockstar (properly attributed) in several places. Not surprisingly, Prof. Rockstar was pretty extensively published, and also not surprisingly, he liked to quote himself (nearly every professor develops a "shtick," often based on their own writing). So she was able to single out a few phrases, and one complete sentence, that were very close to writing of the prof. She wanted me to sign an admission of academic misconduct right then and and there and take an F in the course ... otherwise, she threatened to take me to academic court.

After I recovered from the full frontal assault, I managed an Oh Hell No, and insisted on going to see Prof. Rockstar. Fortunately, he was in his office. He motioned for me to be quiet and heard BB out, ranting and waving copies of his own published work in front of him ... then asked "Are you done?" when she finally ran out of steam, in a way that would have given most people serious pause.

Then he just took her apart. He pointed out that every passage she was pointing to was duly referenced as class discussion ... including two references from articles he hadn't even published yet. But I was really floored when he said "and surely it hasn't escaped your notice that, as an editor for (Campus publication), "wordgirl" is almost certainly a competent writer?" (I had no idea he knew who I was!) Then he very sternly reminded her that this was not the first time she'd done this, she was already under clear instructions to bring any plagiarism accusations to him before talking to students, and was she not aware that falsely accusing other students of violating the Academic Code was in itself a violation?

It might have been the best case of instant justice I was ever personally involved in

[marlovino]

What happened to BB?

[MoonCat]

Ugh, wordgirl's last story reminded me of the time I was accused by a teacher of cheating on a test. According to her, this one other girl and I had both put the same wrong answer down for a question. Not sure how I was supposed to have cheated, since I sat in the front row (right in front of her desk!) and the other girl sat one or two rows behind me. No way could either of us see the other's paper. I don't remember what happened, except that the two of us tried talking to the teacher.

[wordgirl]

What happened to BB?

Beyond getting chewed out in front of me, I'm not sure, honestly. She remained my lab instructor but didn't mess with me any more; anyone who showed up for labs and did the required amount of journalling for the lab got full credit, so my grade was only in play if she had successfully managed to somehow negate my journals.

The sad thing is, she was not a bad instructor. Her labs weren't as fun as the ones Prof. Rockstar ran but she was interesting and thorough. She just had some kind of major chip on her shoulder.

[Nunavut Pants]

It might have been the best case of instant justice I was ever personally involved in

Yum, yum! Instant karma for one!!!

[Jay 2K Winger]

It might have been the best case of instant justice I was ever personally involved in

Yum, yum! Instant karma for one!!!

That's the freshest serving of PWNADE(TM) I've seen in a while!

[Argabarga]

Labs weren't as fun as the ones Prof. Rockstar ran but she was interesting and thorough. She just had some kind of major chip on her shoulder.

That is the WORST kind of teacher, chips belong in brightly colored bags on store shelves, not the shoulders of your would-be mentors.

Uh, oh, that joke was too well written, guess I'm a plagiarist.

[wordgirl]

That is the WORST kind of teacher, chips belong in brightly colored bags on store shelves, not the shoulders of your would-be mentors.

Uh, oh, that joke was too well written, guess I'm a plagiarist.

Arga, anybody who questions your ability to write the shit out of something has NOT been paying attention

[AkaiKitsune]

That is the WORST kind of teacher, chips belong in brightly colored bags on store shelves, not the shoulders of your would-be mentors.

Uh, oh, that joke was too well written, guess I'm a plagiarist.

I know what you mean, my old history teacher (who was also my English teacher) was a complete bitch... and racist too. Needless to say as an English teacher she should have chosen her words more carefully before bitching me out about essays asking for my opinion on certain subjects gone over in class and accepted that yes, I can in fact use words bigger then three syllables. Doing so does not mean I'm plagiarizing from someone. It got bad enough that in an 'advanced' class I had to have my friend's little sister (12yrs old) proofread my essays and assignments to be certain they were dumbed down enough for the teacher to comprehend.

Incidentally, I only had to put up with her for a year and a bit before I promptly got kicked out of class for disproving her opinion that 'nobody except the Brits contributed to history in any meaningful way'. Her words, verbatim. Needless to say when you're in a class where only two of your classmates aside from yourself were actually born in Canada, it tends to rile everyone up.

I merely took The Art of War's lessons to heart (a book a previous teacher had given me. Probably not the best idea given that I was a highly intelligent student trapped in a classroom and bored out of my mind. My city doesn't allow for skipping grades even when you prove you're functioning 5 grades ahead by taking their finals and passing with better marks then the grade 12 students). Besides, what the school calls starting a riot I call taking a hands on approach to studying history. It's not my fault I was told to "do something constructive with my authority issues".

Constructive: root word, construct. Def, to build or create.

You would think as an English teacher she would know that.

So my fellow pissed off classmates built a Viking warship because we could. We did it all by hand (white oak is the asshole of trees) on account of not wanting to be discovered and not being able to afford power tools anyway.

Although raiding the teacher's end of year beach party was perhaps a bit unnecessary. But in our defense it was sorta for historical accuracy?

I and several others I know) used the experience when writing my History thesis years later. Even then, we had to recontact the Swedish company who had guided us through the construction and bring the video of our escapades in craftsmanship to prove we did in fact build it ourselves and yes we do in fact know what we're talking about and no we didn't just buy a ship off Craigslist and claim we built it.

The problem as I see it is schools are so focused on getting high scores for their students that they keep dumbing the courses down until an ape could do then and then claiming the teachers did real good at their jobs because everyone got high marks. Then, when someone goes above the basic supposed level of the course and shows they actually have more then two brain cells to rub together they are accused of cheating or plagiarism all because they're exceeding the reasonable expectations of their fellow classmates.

Oh and the stupid 'we can't move someone up a grade' attitude is just as bad as the 'we can't hold a student back, let's just pass them through anyway.' I graduated with people who could barely read and write not because of learning problems or a disability but because rather then forcing a student to take their studies seriously lest they get held back a year while their friends move on, they are taught that if they show up to class and occasionally write something they'll be pushed through anyway. The stupid attitude of 'we can't hold them back it will hurt their feelings' needs to stop. Does the school board really think the real world will give a damn about their feelings when the students have graduated? And the flip side which I got of the 'we can't move them ahead of their classmates. It'll make their classmates feel bad about themselves...and it'll stunt your social growth.' First of all, all the school is doing by that attitude is saying my intelligence and hard work mean nothing because even if they do acknowledge it they won't do anything about it, so why the hell put the effort in when I can get the same mark and be trapped in the same class with the same students for half the effort? Congrats you just gave me my first lesson on being lazy and not trying to hard because nobody actually cares. Great job teaching school! As for not stunting my social growth? I couldn't hold a conversation with my fellow classmates until high school because they weren't intellectually there yet. I would have to repeat the same sentence three or four times dumbing it down each time until I eventually stumbled upon my classmates limited vocabulary. How exactly is that not holding back my social growth? Congrats, I'm now the kid with no friends because the only people I can communicate with on an intellectual level are the teachers and the librarian.

I get that plagiarism is a big deal and all. Nobody wants their hard work stolen. But in a world of easily shared information and a huge amount of people living on this planet, do you really think that nobody has ever had a similar idea as you at some point? And consciously or unconsciously we all assimilate new information everyday. Which means our understanding and grasp of the world around us is constantly changing moment by moment. It's not hard to imagine that someone might see an article online, delve into it and come to conclusions based on numerous sources that lead to new information or a new perspective on that same information. It's how we evolve as a society. Look at what they did, see what works what doesn't and what can be improved on, then move forward from there. Is it so hard to believe that two people might come to similar conclusions without ever having heard of each other based on the wide variety of easily accessible information in this Age of Technology? When there's such a huge population?

Just saying maybe the teachers can give the students a little bit of credit? Most university/college students don't get where they are by being stupid. Ever thought of maybe sitting down and having a rational conversation instead of running shit through a computer, finding similarities, and assuming that they are purposefully copying another's work just out of laziness?

[Deserted]

Besides, what the school calls starting a riot I call taking a hands on approach to studying history. It's not my fault I was told to "do something constructive with my authority issues".

So, that's too long to add to my sig block here, but it's definitely going into my quotefile.

[AkaiKitsune]

So, that's too long to add to my sig block here, but it's definitely going into my quotefile.

Glad to know I'm not the only one with a quote file. Glad to help.

I think my top 3 currently are:

"Do things that make you happy within the confines of the legal system."

"These days everything is about efficiency. Look at Apple, all their products can connect to each other like a giant electronic orgy."

"A student said to his master: 'You teach me fighting but you talk of peace. How do you reconcile the two?' The master replied: 'It is better to be a warrior in a garden then to be a gardener in a war.'"

I've also been said I have a mildly disturbing sense of humour.