Friday, March 17, 2006

Plagiarism this year

(Apologies -- bad language ahead!)

Sadly we've just wasted a few more hours of valuable time (student+staff) convicting 9 students of plagiarism: They (or the person who did the work for them) copied it off the web.

So 9 students wasted ¼ of the 1st term of their 2nd year plus I (in my zeal or refusal to let them get away with it) wasted many hours of my time building cases and wasted several hours for each of 3 other staff members in and after the hearings themselves. Stupid!

Next year? No more bloody coursework!! Sorry, I know that continuous assessment is supposed to cater for diversity but in doing-so opens the door to those too lazy to learn the stuff and too cowardly to admit they don't know it and accept a poor grade (is an honest "F" better than an academic misconduct "Z"?!) So next year the coursework will be assessed using a computer-based test & I apologise in advance to those that are disadvantaged by this ...

Stop press! Some dumbass who was in my class in the 1st term has submitted 2nd term coursework instructions verbatim to rentacoder.com -- including the submission instructions! Cretin.

There was much wailing & gnashing of teeth & moaning & rude, disrespectful behaviour when my colleague announced the paper coursework would be assessed in a computer-based test as a result. Admittedly they'd had a shock but it's weeks before the deadline so lots of time to prepare & no excuse for being rude or disrespectful.

Horrifyingly, I think they don't even care that if we didn't do something about it there'd be a cheat getting an "A" dishonestly when they get whatever grade they deserve ... they just want to pass :-( Increase your self respect! Raise your expectations! Help us to not let the cheating fuckers devalue everyone's degree!

1 comment:

Fay Smith said...

You calmed down yet? :)

It's frustrating as hell I know. I see how much time it takes for staff to deal with plagiarism cases. We'll be using 'turnitin' soon to detect (and hopefully deter) plagiarism, and collusion. But I think it will become more and more common, and so lecturers will have to assess in more traditional ways - back to exams.

I wonder how many of these cheating students aren't discovered, and I wonder what sort of jobs they go into, and whether they plagiarise in that job too.