I'd suggest you talk to your Dean about that.
My experience has been that (particularly in state institutions) the
benefit of the doubt goes to the customers (er, students) and that
the standard of proof required to administer sanctions approaches
that of criminal law.
On Dec 17, 2009, at 5:36 PM, Paul C Bernhardt wrote:
I'm not sure that proof beyond reasonable doubt is the correct
standard. We aren't sending anyone to prison.
Paul C. Bernhardt
Department of Psychology
Frostburg State University
Frostburg, Maryland
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Brandon [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thu 12/17/2009 5:33 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] It's that plagiarism time of year again...
The problem is that 'most likely' is not the same as 'proof beyond a
reasonable doubt' as the basis for sanctions against a student you
are accusing of cheating.
On Dec 17, 2009, at 3:54 PM, Beth Benoit wrote:
I think the key, John, is comparing performance records. The
bright student continued on to have an excellent exam. The poor
student, who was close to failing (and also happened to sit near
the good student) suddenly had an astounding performance. Applying
Occam's Razor here: What seems like the most likely explanation is
the most likely explanation. And he/she probably couldn't see her
neighbor's paper clearly enough to add the fine computation her
neighbor provided, so just gave the answer.
I continue to marvel, as you and I discussed this afternoon, that
all too frequently, the poor students don't realize that to
suddenly turn in an almost perfect exam, or as in Carol's student's
case, an excellent paper, is just TOO suspicious.
Beth Benoit
Granite State College
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 4:00 PM, John Kulig
<[email protected]> wrote:
Yes, that time of year again! I have never used Turnitin.com but I
want to introduce another problem I just encountered ...
Two students in stats both turned in an exam with the exact same
multiple choice answers(35 out of 39 correct, and both the correct
AND incorrect choices were identical). I have never seen this
happen before. One student was aceing the class and the other was
on the verge of failing. I have a pretty solid case of copying not
just on this point on other parts of the exam because the poorer
student also had correct AND incorrect answers on the computation
part out to two decimal places (including a "proportion of
variance" effect size of 2.15 which is bogus), all without
computation, just answers written down. Because I am grading non-
stop and need a diversion, I am intrigued with guestimating the
probability of the MC being identical on all 39 given no cheating.
It's obviously a low probability as my MC scores average close to
"optimal difficulty" level (in the 60 - 70% range), so it's not the
case that most people get most of them correct.
Anybody ever try to model this problem? I can assume they both knew
35 answers, get the frequencies of all the wrong answers for the
class, and assume people guess randomly when they don't know. But
they only missed 4. I can also regress this exam on previous exam
scores and show that the poor student getting only 4 wrong is an
outlier, but that may not be convincing enough .. and thoughts
would be appreciated.
If the student were brigher they should have changed a few answers
and scribbled a few computations here and there on the sheet!
--------------------------
John W. Kulig
Professor of Psychology
Plymouth State University
Plymouth NH 03264
--------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "DeVolder Carol L" <[email protected]>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 2:56:53 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada
Eastern
Subject: [tips] It's that plagiarism time of year again...
Hi,
I have a student who has done poorly on his exams but has turned in
a stunningly good paper. Frankly, I don't think he wrote it but I'm
having difficulty showing that. I have Googled key phrases but
nothing has turned up, so I don't think he copied and pasted, I
think he bought it. Can anyone give me some idea of what
Turnitin.com charges for an individual license? It's the only thing
I can think of, other than confronting the student, which will most
likely be my next step. I hate this stuff, it takes so much time
and really takes a toll on my enthusiasm for grading.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Carol
Carol DeVolder, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Chair, Department of Psychology
St. Ambrose University
Davenport, Iowa 52803
phone: 563-333-6482
e-mail: [email protected]
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Paul Brandon
Emeritus Professor of Psychology
Minnesota State University, Mankato
[email protected]
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Paul Brandon
10 Crown Hill Lane
Mankato, MN 56001
[email protected]
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