Hi, Sarah and other dear teachers.
I don't know how many of you know this about me, but I'm sure I've mentioned it before; I am dislexic and I have ADD. I take Ritalin about every two hours during the work day. Also, my mother was a learning specialist. I end up referring, on average 2 or 3 students per semester for testing and many of them are juniors and seniors. When I notice red flags--given my background, I'm pretty good at detecting them where others don't--I call the student in and tell them my biography before I suggest testing. I make it clear in my discussion with them that being diagnosed with ADD changed my life in profound and important ways and that diagnoses often change people's lives. I've only had one student turn me down when I offer to set up an appointment with disability services for them. However, my success at getting students tested isn't the issue at hand.
I'm a little fuzzy on something in your account, Sarah. If you were a dean, reviewing the grades this student received on the material she handed in, what grade would you calculate? If she was handing in failing material for the semester, she should have failed the course, even if you are an adjunct and even if her other professors are giving her B's. No one benefits from the mercy C--not you, not your department, not the student and not the university. Of course, that's really easy for me to say from my tenure track position at a selective, private liberal arts college, but it's a standard that I upheld when I was a graduate student at UConn too and I would hope I would maintain it where ever I was.
I have bamboozled students into admitting that they had cheated even without any concrete evidence and it's remarkably simple to do. When you see syntax or vocabulary that is above that student's comprehension, type it into the word processor in your office and call the student in. When s/he arrives, show him or her the screen and ask him or her to tell you what it means. When the student can't, you've got him or her dead to rights. "I fail to see how you could have written that if you don't know what it means. Would you mind explaining that?" When they can't, you say, "I think someone else wrote this for you. How do you respond?" It's a little stunning how quickly they cop to it when they're on the hot seat. Where you take it from there is another issue altogether.
After a bad experience with the dean's office when I flunked an athlete at UConn, I started offering students the option to withdraw from the class rather than going to the dean. Every one of them took me up on the offer.
If a student is learning disabled and refuses to get help with the learning issue, s/he is going to have to get some evidence that sooner or later, s/he is going to be held accountable and it's a hell of a lot better to happen in school than at a job when the boss discovers it on an important memo.
Anyway, I know this was a bit rambling, but it's the end of the day. Here's hoping it was coherent enough to be helpful. As always, A.
Department of Sociology
Willamette University
900 State Street
Salem, OR 97301
Phone: 503.370.6313
Fax: 503.370.6512
"It's not enough to know that things work.
The laurels go to those who can show HOW they work."
>From: Sarah Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: TEACHSOC: Fw: TEACHSOC: plagiarism
>Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 21:14:57 -0400
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Sarah Murray
>To: Marty Schwartz
>Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 6:42 PM
>Subject: Re: TEACHSOC: plagiarism
>
>
>I'd like to add something regarding both academic dishonesty and support from the administration.
>
>I had a student last semester who presented as a mentally challenged individual -- not only in her extremely deficient academic work, but in the way she interacted with peers, the way she moved, her overall demeanor. Her parents came to meet me once, the way I do with my 4th grader's teachers, and also "spoke" to me through their daughter (my student); I had the strong impression they would do anything to get her a college degree, including doing her work for her.
>
>The irony is that we have a support program for students with learning disabilities, but this girl WOULD NOT sign up for it at my suggestion (I'm sure succumbing to the advice of her parents who obviously felt she'd be stigmatized.) Other students I knew who received special help were far less disadvantaged intellectually than this student.
>
>Even in a non-competitive enrollment situation, I couldn't figure out how this girl had gotten to be a senior in college, but it turns out her father taught at a local community college, got her in there, and had her transfer to this state university. When I say there was a gap between the work she performed in class and the work she "produced" at home (done, I'm sure, by her parents) that is the understatement of my lifetime.
>
>I am only an adjunct but feel a duty to uphold academic standards, especially as I see them slip into oblivion, so I talked to the assistant chair of the soc. department and another colleague who didn't seem to know how to react to this situation, and then called the chair of the student's department (she was a women's studies major).
>
>I was told that this student had higher than a 3.0 average, so somehow she had "managed to do very well" up through her senior year!! Right then I knew I was fighting an uphill battle. In my view, if this girl and her parents (for she was treated like an 11 year old child) did not want to avail themselves of the services provided for students with obstacles, I think she should've gotten the grade her work warranted -- an F. But in this market-driven environment, where the customer (I mean student) is always right, I knew there was no point in pursuing my inclination, and gave her a C. What good is this college degree when any job interview this girl goes on will end in disappointment, as her deficiencies are immediately obvious? Wouldn't the student's time and the parent's money be better spent honing life skills (she could not drive, had no friends, had never worked outside the home at 22, and was cheerfully oblivious to all of it, and super confident in her "abilities")? I believe this whole charade was a disservice to her, the other students in the class, and the university at large. She came away being able to articulate absolutely nothing we covered in class -- and this was a "fun" Soc. of Family course.
>
>
>What would anyone suggest I should've done instead??
>Sarah Murray
>William Paterson U of NJ
>----- Original Message -----
> From: Marty Schwartz
> To: teachsoc
> Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 4:15 PM
> Subject: TEACHSOC: plagiarism
>
>
> A couple of quick comments:
>
> I think that Mikaila Arthur makes a number of very good points. The issue is made more simple at my university, which has a rule that you can set up any policy that you wish on plagiarism, but that it can only be enforced if it is distributed in writing the first day of class. Personally, and this is more ideology than informed practice, I figure that by the time someone becomes an advanced student in a selective admission university they should know the basic rules of plagiarism. I just tell them if they are not confident of what this means, to get on line or hike over to the reference librarian who has loads of suggestions.
>
> 2. Nevertheless, as Del points out, some amazing things happen. I once had a student copy an entire paper out of a book that our university library did not hold, but another university in town did. As I happens, it was my field and I had read the book. When I failed the student, she complained about me to the dean, who called me in to hear her complaints. It turns out she claimed that she believed that this was the way to write papers and that she had always written them that way. I must have greeted this with a sullen sneer or something, because she said she would be back in 20 minutes. She returned with 9 term papers, each of which was obviously copied out of a book (bad enough when a semi-literate open admissions student sounds like Saul Bellow, but when she sounds like a Nobel prize winning chemist ......). Each had no written comments except an A on the front page, and perhaps a "good job."
>
> 3. Aside from graduate seminars, I have given up research papers. When the university switched our sophomore classes from 35 to 100, and at least in criminology assigned me commonly 40 to 60 student upper division classes, I quit assigning loads of papers. I can barely live through essay exams, as long as they also expect me to be nationally active, work heavily with students and former students, publish and get grants, etc. Now that I am getting pretty old, I find that a 70 hour week is all that I can handle, but the university is still trying to balance the budget by accepting 2000 more students and cutting the adjunct and graduate assistant budget.
>
> I have found it easiest to assign a large number of small papers, such as "find three research articles in peer reviewed journals published since the last time I taught this course, and write an essay that summarizes them, critiques them, and explains how they treat the subject as compared to our assigned readings." Not likely to get that from the web, or to borrow it from their older brother.
>
> Besides, as others have pointed out, in 30 years of teaching in a variety of environments and six years of chairing a very large department, I have only seen a very occasional case where a student was accused of cheating and the dean/judicial board/grievance committee, etc. did not back the student. I believe in taking extreme steps to create environments where cheating is not possible, since the chances of the university backing me up are so slim. Anyway, I hate scenes!
>
> Marty
>
> Martin D. Schwartz
> Professor and Research Scholar
> Ohio University
>
> Visiting Fellow, National Institute of Justice
> Co-Editor,
> Criminal Justice: The International Journal of Policy and Practice
