Sunday, February 2, 2014

From the department of #fail


Not that you might think that students in my classes would toe the line about avoiding plagiarism. I just picked this gem out of a submitted exercise. The directions stated: "You need to write up to a half a page in your own words (that means *no* Wikipedia copies) summarizing the lecture and answering any questions asked."

Any questions?

4 comments:

  1. > Any questions?

    Yes - how do you react as a teacher if something like this happens in your class?

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  2. This is a second semester student, so I am operating on the assumption that I can teach right now. The student has stated that s/he was "forced" to use Wikipedia, because he doesn't have time and cannot come for a consultation. I have now requested that s/he write a 3-5 page paper within 48 hours on why plagiarizing is not a good idea for a student. If s/he submits a non-plagiarized paper, I will only discount this part of the grade assessment (it is 20% of the final grade, so a pass is still possible). If I do not receive a paper or that paper is itself plagiarized, I will assign a fail for the entire course.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for your reply. A "Besinnungsaufsatz" seems to be a good way of giving a final warning for a second semester student.

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  4. Even warning the class orally and by email didn't help - I found another one, this time copied from a fellow student, in the last submission. I wonder how many I didn't find...

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