I had my "formal" in-class review this week. My director had emailed me a few weeks back that Chef Jim would be coming to observe my class sometimes soon. I replied to both of them welcoming to visit and informing them that the last two weeks before the final (this week and next) the students would be giving their presentations on their final papers. Given that he came last night I am not sure how much of a review of my teaching skills he could have done. Of course it also had to be on the night that I did not prepare a lesson plan since we just had presentations and review for the final in the remaining time. Moreover, three of the students who signed up to present this week asked to move to next week. So, all in all, we'll see how it turns out.
I suspect one of my students just about cheated on his final paper. After reading over them this week, I was pleasantly surprised by the paper on diabetes LB wrote. As I was reading all 3.5 pages I was intrigued by sophisticated language and well written, cohesive sentence structure. Until I got to the last sentences, which read as follows, "PLEASE FINISH UP WITH YOUR THOUGHTS HERE...BLAH BLAH BLAH." This is pretty obvious that he did not write this and did not even take the time to read the 3.5 pages that whomever else wrote. I brought it to the attention of my director and we met with LB last night before class. LB was defensive, of course and told the director that a sister proof-read the paper for him and he forgot to look at it. LB also said this was paper was turned in for a biology class last quarter - I don't know if that makes me feel better or not. The director said LB was caught cheating before and fessed up to it and he felt LB would be honest about it and left it up to me to decide what to do. Grr...with that, and given that fact that even if I gave LB 110% on the paper, I don't think they would get better than a C. So with that, no other hard evidence and the fact that there are misspelling and grammatical errors, I am not going to give LB a zero. I do not think it was blatantly plagiarized, but I do think LB wrote a small portion that was extensively beefed up by said sister.
2 comments:
Cheating drives me CRAZY!!! I had to deal with some of it as a TA at a school you and I both attended. The problem is... the professors do nothing about it! The red tape behind getting a student to pay the consequences for their actions is just so much that it is not worth the trouble for so many teachers.
I can't believe this kid had been caught cheating before and didn't suffer any consequences! I'd have done the same thing, though. Like Kirstie said, dealing w/it is such a nightmare.
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