University cheating: ever done it?

[DaShi]

My philosophy is to compete with them now so I don't have to later.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

My Turkish students cheat with shocking regularity, usually through plagiarism. Luckily, it's dead easy to catch -- usually the English is obviously beyong their ability, or there's some English colloquialism used that they're unlikely to know. My university, too, hands out draconian punishments for such cheating, so rather than hand them over to the Star Chamber I just fail them on the assignment; they're all so grade-hungry, and each assignment is worth so much (at least 20% of the course grade), that one F will completely screw them in the course -- and that's punishment enough.

Those, however, are the ones I can catch -- the downloaders, mostly. Turkey offers its own irritating variant on the plague of plagiarism: Turkish professors are paid so little (<$500/month) that they often make extra money by writing student papers! Students who use them are much harder to catch; easy to suspect, but hard to prove.

Still, my favorite plagiarism story here comes from my wife: she once had a student who turned in a paper that was downloaded off the internet, yet vehemently denied downloading it, even after she was confronted with the website it came from. The next thing you know, her mother has come to the university and both of them are alternately expressing outrage and begging for mercy. It turned out that they had hired a professor from another university to write the paper -- and he had downloaded it!

[Kuciwalker]

I had a bad day today. I've been teaching a course this semester and a while back I caught one of the students copying from the internet in their essay. It's not hard to spot: basically when something makes sense it's 90% probable it's been nicked.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by axi
The funny thing is that I'm expecting the first reports on a lab excercise I was assigned to teach this semester just after the holidays, so I'm going to find myself on the other side for the first time in my life. I hope that this experience will not change me drastically.

Good luck axi

I've teached one time at a seminar about journalism. Man, I had stayed up till late the night before preparing slides, notes, getting facts from the journalists union etc etc etc

It turned out I simply relied on what I know and simply talked with the students.

I was so anxious at the beggining, but things went so well, it is one of the most gratifying pleasurable experiences of my life I felt very good we got along so well with the students and that there was such interest and that I could do it.

(and having 18 year old girls coming after class and telling you what an attractive voice you have has nothing to do with it.... no sireeeeee )

I generally regarded teaching as a boring proffession (for me) but I can see it has its own great charm too

[orange]

Still, my favorite plagiarism story here comes from my wife: she once had a student who turned in a paper that was downloaded off the internet, yet vehemently denied downloading it, even after she was confronted with the website it came from. The next thing you know, her mother has come to the university and both of them are alternately expressing outrage and begging for mercy. It turned out that they had hired a professor from another university to write the paper -- and he had downloaded it!

HAHAHAH GREAT STORY

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Still, my favorite plagiarism story here comes from my wife: she once had a student who turned in a paper that was downloaded off the internet, yet vehemently denied downloading it, even after she was confronted with the website it came from. The next thing you know, her mother has come to the university and both of them are alternately expressing outrage and begging for mercy. It turned out that they had hired a professor from another university to write the paper -- and he had downloaded it!

That seems to mean your wife is a young hot Turkish babe

BTW, good story