When persistence isn’t a good thing… December 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, teaching.Tags: cheating, grades, teaching
2 comments
I unfortunately have to turn in some forms describing how I caught some students cheating.
This is frustrating because every semester since I started teaching, I have managed to catch at least one cheater. I keep hoping that I’ll get through a semester without dealing with this issue, but I suspect that the reason I might not catch any cheaters is because they’re getting better at it or I’ve overlooked something. It would be nice, however, if it meant that they’d actually stopped.
I’m very confused why students would cheat in my class. I have a very open policy where I encourage them to talk with each other. I basically tell them I think they’ll learn a lot from each other. My big no-no is doing the copy/paste routine and then submitting it as one’s own work. I am very explicit about this. It seems ridiculous that someone would do this given they can talk to each other and look over each other’s shoulders. Apparently it’s too much temptation, however, and some students can’t seem to stop themselves from taking a final step over the boundary into unethical land.
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