Wednesday, April 16, 2014

DTFO

Okay.  We are about three weeks out from the end of semester.  Almost done. 

I have a colleague who I help with his online class's grading from time to time--he's older, has eye dryness problems that cause pain and damage if he's not careful, and has more on his plate than he needs because he's one of the department's go-to guys. 

So, he emails me today, and asks me to pick up with what they turned in last night.  Easy stuff--Thoreau's Walden.  My colleague asked some easy questions to make sure they'd read and comprehended the piece.

And one of his students...three weeks from the end of the semester...on a simple, short, three question post, copied and pasted from Cliff Notes. 

Okay, dearie.  I understand that the end of the semester is always rough.  I get that.  Most of the professors on campus simply don't think about all of the homework that will be piled on you right at the end.  Most of the professors don't think about what kind of grading that sets them up for, and a few who do know, don't care. 

I get that.

That said, my colleague has had those assignments posted all damn semester.  A couple of his students have already finished the class's work.  She easily could have, too, but instead chose to plagiarize.  Copy and paste plagiarism, even. 

With maybe twelve posts to go. 

And this girl threw away a high B/low A in so doing.

She needs to either re-prioritize her life and the things she chooses to do, or drop the fuck out.

My colleague forgives a not-done assignment before he does a plagiarized one. 

4 comments:

  1. People need to learn not to put short-term benefit over long-term pain or risk, which is what this student did by cheating. Yea, I know a lot of the cheaters think they won't get caught, but there's always the chance they will. (And plagiarizing Cliff's Notes is ALMOST as dumb as plagiarizing Wikipedia - and I have caught people who plagiarized from Wikipedia).

    I hope she learned something from this. Some of the students don't, and they either justify it ("Well, I was really busy") or they blame the professor in some way.

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    Replies
    1. If she were my student, I'd have told her to stop bothering with doing the work because she had already failed, and I wouldn't grade anymore. It's what I do with the ones I can tell did it on purpose.

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  2. I always loved the guy in my senior seminar in CIS that lifted a couple paragraphs out of the book. The book was co-written by our instructor. Apparently the 101 and 201 classes hadn't weeded out all the stupid.

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