Topic: Bang Your Head on Your Desk - the thread of teaching despair!

[EdnaMode]

Dang, ALH! That's beyond egregious and things like that make me happy that I don't teach a lot of courses that require papers aside from lab reports. Not that we don't have our share of cheating here in the world of engineering.

My head/desk incident today was when a student, a super senior at that, had the wherewithal to ask me if he would earn a 0 on the work he didn't turn in. I told him if there was nothing for me to grade there was no grade for him to earn. He didn't ask for a late submit for partial credit, didn't offer any excuses as to why the work wasn't turned in, just wanted to know if he'd earn a zero.

Yes, there are dumb questions. And in my head I can hear a friend say, they are no dumb questions, only dumb people. Not feeling very charitable during this last week of class.

[mythbuster]

Edna, are you sure the student wasn't being litigious? Because no grade may be different in Stu's mind than a zero. It certainly is interpreted differently in the LMS gradebook!

[EdnaMode]

Edna, are you sure the student wasn't being litigious? Because no grade may be different in Stu's mind than a zero. It certainly is interpreted differently in the LMS gradebook!

I have it set up in the LMS that if there is no submission, a grade of 0 is earned. He should know this (being a super senior and having had classes with me before), and if he didn't before, he knows it now. And in the syllabus it states that any work not submitted before the dropbox closes will earn a 0. It's not going to tank his grade, he's right in the middle of a C. In fact, I didn't tell him this but I'm sure he can figure it out, even if he'd earned 100% on the work he earned a 0 on, it would not improve his grade up to a B- or even a C+. Just one less thing for me to grade.

[sinenomine]

Yes, there are dumb questions. And in my head I can hear a friend say, they are no dumb questions, only dumb people. Not feeling very charitable during this last week of class.

I have a pad of post-it notes that say "There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots."

[FishProf]

During an open-note exam today.  "Question X says to use examples not discussed in class.  Can we have a list of what was discussed in class?"

"You do.  In your notes. Right?"

[spork]

[...]

I give up. Though in a completely uncharitable way, I'm kind of tickled to have gotten this from this student:  all semester she's been waving her "in my AP classes we did this/that/the other" in my face to show that I clearly don't know what I'm doing (when in fact, her AP teachers were wrong, e.g., requiring documentation of only direct quotes, etc.). She's run to my chair several times and gotten sent away, tail between her legs, so let her run to the chair with this one, too.  Not nice on my part, I guess, but still. And my chair is more fed up with AI than I am, so I'm sure she'll unload on this student.

20+ years ago I worked at a university where this kind of repetitive lying could and did result in serious consequences. I remember one case in particular, of plagiarism. I sent documentation to the university's academic honor committee, to which I later gave in-person testimony during a hearing. The student was also present at the hearing, to provide his side of the story. The committee, composed of both faculty and students, decided in my favor and against the student. It was his third offense. He was expelled.

[kaysixteen]

Indeed.  Perhaps we ought to bring back the glorious 19th c American term: 'rustication'?

[apl68]

Indeed.  Perhaps we ought to bring back the glorious 19th c American term: 'rustication'?

Let's not.  I kind of like the fact that today's automobile bodies tend to suffer less from rustication.

[RatGuy]

Student who hasn't attended since the midterm and submitted a woefully short final essay decides to try his hand at the final exam. Mathematically he can't pass. Part of me wonders if he'll be better served doing something else at 8am on a Wed. The other part of me is curious to see what his answers will look like.

[fishbrains]

[...]

I give up. Though in a completely uncharitable way, I'm kind of tickled to have gotten this from this student:  all semester she's been waving her "in my AP classes we did this/that/the other" in my face to show that I clearly don't know what I'm doing (when in fact, her AP teachers were wrong, e.g., requiring documentation of only direct quotes, etc.). She's run to my chair several times and gotten sent away, tail between her legs, so let her run to the chair with this one, too.  Not nice on my part, I guess, but still. And my chair is more fed up with AI than I am, so I'm sure she'll unload on this student.

Kind of a side note: With our influx of dual-enrollment students who think their high school teachers could do no wrong, I started bringing a paper copy of the MLA9 Handbook to class to let them know that each instructor should not just be making things up--that if you learn MLA (or APA) formatting here at a community college, it should be the same wherever you go.

This seems to work, although we once had raging debate about whether to put brackets around the student's use of ellipses in a direct quote. According to the Handbook, we were both kind of wrong and kind of right.

[the_geneticist]

Student who hasn't attended since the midterm and submitted a woefully short final essay decides to try his hand at the final exam. Mathematically he can't pass. Part of me wonders if he'll be better served doing something else at 8am on a Wed. The other part of me is curious to see what his answers will look like.

Ah, time for the classic "grade until it matters!".
My money is on stu made a 'calculated decision', but is very bad at math (risk/reward analysis).

[EdnaMode]

I have an assignment where students are to calculate [engineering stuff] using three different types of software. We discussed in lecture, and it is stated explicitly in the assignment that I expect the values to be slightly different, and half of the points on the assignment are an analysis of why the numbers are slightly different. Fully a third of the class submitted their assignments with lovely charts and tables that listed the values, but had no explanation of why there were differences. Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough that that was a main point of the assignment, but it's in the instructions, and on the rubric. **sigh** Maybe the students are just as tired as I am because it's the last week of the semester. I feel like a toddler in the back seat of a car on a road trip asking 'are we there yet?'

[FishProf]

We are doing peer-editing of the semester long papers.  They are doing a grant proposal on a topic of their choosing.  They have done a proposal, a cocktail-party talk, a poster presentation and will submit a paper and do a conference style talk, all on the same subject.  The deadline for getting me a rough draft for feedback was last week.  2 students did so.

In class today, a student came up to me and handed me his paper, asking me to review his rough draft and give him feedback at that moment.  He was utterly bemused when I refused.  He could not understand why I would not review HIS paper a week late, in front of the class.  They were not amused, as he has been a distraction all semester.

[AmLitHist]

[...]

I give up. Though in a completely uncharitable way, I'm kind of tickled to have gotten this from this student:  all semester she's been waving her "in my AP classes we did this/that/the other" in my face to show that I clearly don't know what I'm doing (when in fact, her AP teachers were wrong, e.g., requiring documentation of only direct quotes, etc.). She's run to my chair several times and gotten sent away, tail between her legs, so let her run to the chair with this one, too.  Not nice on my part, I guess, but still. And my chair is more fed up with AI than I am, so I'm sure she'll unload on this student.

Kind of a side note: With our influx of dual-enrollment students who think their high school teachers could do no wrong, I started bringing a paper copy of the MLA9 Handbook to class to let them know that each instructor should not just be making things up--that if you learn MLA (or APA) formatting here at a community college, it should be the same wherever you go.

This seems to work, although we once had raging debate about whether to put brackets around the student's use of ellipses in a direct quote. According to the Handbook, we were both kind of wrong and kind of right.

You reminded me of a guy I had last spring who plagiarized on three successive papers, despite the policy that the first time earns a zero on the assignment and the second, an F in the class. I reminded him of this between papers #2 and 3, but he said he would stay in and take the F, wanting to get a chance to practice and learn so he might be more prepared when retaking the class. We can't drop students or force them to drop, so, OK. . .

After the third plagiarism, which I duly reported to Admin, I told the student that he would be getting a nasty letter from the VCAA and might well get called in to talk with him. I told him I was just curious:  why, after we covered MLA documentation all semester in class, and after I'd worked with him a lot on it, did he continue to fail to include any in-text citations at all? His answer:  "I don't believe in it. So I'm not going to do it." He said he was going to tell the VCAA as much, too.

That one is in my "when you think you've heard it all" file, too.

[the_geneticist]

[...]

I give up. Though in a completely uncharitable way, I'm kind of tickled to have gotten this from this student:  all semester she's been waving her "in my AP classes we did this/that/the other" in my face to show that I clearly don't know what I'm doing (when in fact, her AP teachers were wrong, e.g., requiring documentation of only direct quotes, etc.). She's run to my chair several times and gotten sent away, tail between her legs, so let her run to the chair with this one, too.  Not nice on my part, I guess, but still. And my chair is more fed up with AI than I am, so I'm sure she'll unload on this student.

Kind of a side note: With our influx of dual-enrollment students who think their high school teachers could do no wrong, I started bringing a paper copy of the MLA9 Handbook to class to let them know that each instructor should not just be making things up--that if you learn MLA (or APA) formatting here at a community college, it should be the same wherever you go.

This seems to work, although we once had raging debate about whether to put brackets around the student's use of ellipses in a direct quote. According to the Handbook, we were both kind of wrong and kind of right.

You reminded me of a guy I had last spring who plagiarized on three successive papers, despite the policy that the first time earns a zero on the assignment and the second, an F in the class. I reminded him of this between papers #2 and 3, but he said he would stay in and take the F, wanting to get a chance to practice and learn so he might be more prepared when retaking the class. We can't drop students or force them to drop, so, OK. . .

After the third plagiarism, which I duly reported to Admin, I told the student that he would be getting a nasty letter from the VCAA and might well get called in to talk with him. I told him I was just curious:  why, after we covered MLA documentation all semester in class, and after I'd worked with him a lot on it, did he continue to fail to include any in-text citations at all? His answer:  "I don't believe in it. So I'm not going to do it." He said he was going to tell the VCAA as much, too.

That one is in my "when you think you've heard it all" file, too.

Wow.  What I'd give to be a fly on the wall for that conversation! 
Honestly though, it would be really useful to get the same sort of training the VCAA folks get. 
I'd need practice too.  Otherwise I might laugh and squirt tea out my nose!