Need help with a situation


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It's possible for a 'C' student to turn in 'A' work. Maybe they just acutally worked hard on it. Innocent till proven guilty right? If you don't have the proof you can't do anything about it but pass them and give them a lecture and hope it has an impact on their morals/ethics.

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id be pretty careful about in class assessment, on the one hand they should know the stuff and should be able to rattle off loads and write a good essay but on the other hand im assuming that they had several days if not weeks to write this essay. The students could find stats, facts, sources and information about their chosen subject but when they have an in class essay randomly given to them they might not remember all the information or they may simply choke.

Its really unfair to everyone in the class to give them an in class assessment as it may help you determine whos cheating but it might also lead to major under performance from those who genuinely did well in the first place. Your best bet is to keep checking, perhaps typing up some clearly plagarised sentences from suspicious essays and let neowin help you out with your search. Failing that i would recommend that you compare the current essays with past essays and those who clearly have changed their writing style too much should just be giving a Fail or D, whatever suits you.

You bring up a good point. I have another meeting tomorrow with my deparment head about this and I am going to discuss all this with her. I can't give any specific quotes right now as the papers are at school and I am home for the night.

I will be back tomorrow and let everyone know how my meeting went.

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id be pretty careful about in class assessment, on the one hand they should know the stuff and should be able to rattle off loads and write a good essay but on the other hand im assuming that they had several days if not weeks to write this essay. The students could find stats, facts, sources and information about their chosen subject but when they have an in class essay randomly given to them they might not remember all the information or they may simply choke.

Its really unfair to everyone in the class to give them an in class assessment as it may help you determine whos cheating but it might also lead to major under performance from those who genuinely did well in the first place. Your best bet is to keep checking, perhaps typing up some clearly plagarised sentences from suspicious essays and let neowin help you out with your search. Failing that i would recommend that you compare the current essays with past essays and those who clearly have changed their writing style too much should just be giving a Fail or D, whatever suits you.

I don't think that this would be such a bad thing for the people that actually did it, im pretty sure they can remember enough. Now for the one's that didn't do it, is going to be difficult and you're going to be able to tell. Im pretty sure this is the best option you have, it has happen to classes i been in, and the class always does good when they do their work. Good luck and see which option fits best...

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im not talking bout grade,s im talking about writing style, fluidity and use of grammar and sentence structure, these things dont change overnight or even in a week or two, it can often take years so if an essay is completely differant stylistically from a previous one from that pupil then you can guess that its a bit suspicious.

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I don't think that this would be such a bad thing for the people that actually did it, im pretty sure they can remember enough. Now for the one's that didn't do it, is going to be difficult and you're going to be able to tell. Im pretty sure this is the best option you have, it has happen to classes i been in, and the class always does good when they do their work. Good luck and see which option fits best...

To me as I think about it, it does seem like the right option.

I will report back tomorrow as to me decision.

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It's possible for a 'C' student to turn in 'A' work. Maybe they just acutally worked hard on it. Innocent till proven guilty right? If you don't have the proof you can't do anything about it but pass them and give them a lecture and hope it has an impact on their morals/ethics.

He stated that there is still one test leftt o be given, so if the students actually did their work it, this should be a breeze.

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when you chuck in statistics or numbers in an essay as a key point for your argument will you then be able to remember these facts a week or two later without any warning? i think not.

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im not talking bout grade,s im talking about writing style, fluidity and use of grammar and sentence structure, these things dont change overnight or even in a week or two, it can often take years so if an essay is completely differant stylistically from a previous one from that pupil then you can guess that its a bit suspicious.

That is exactly the discussion that the department is having now.

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when you chuck in statistics or numbers in an essay as a key point for your argument will you then be able to remember these facts a week or two later without any warning? i think not.

Im pretty sure, that if the paper takes 2-3 weeks and the statistics are important, then people wont forget that easy. I been in this situation is not fairly hard, im not saying i remember everything because is not true, but to remember key points and important numbers is rather simple.

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well, unlike you i learn the statistics for my essays then i dont need to think about them again. for example, from a recent essay:

Single parents account for 27 percent of family households with children under 18.

More than two million fathers are the primary caregivers of children under 18,

a 62 percent increase since 1990.

One in two children will live in a single-parent family at some point in childhood.

One in three children is born to unmarried parents.

Between 1978 and 1996, the number of babies born to unmarried women per year quadrupled from 500,000 to more than two million.

I handed the essay in with those facts on the 19th of dec and ill be ddamned if i could remember them before going to the site i quoted them from.

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Im pretty sure, that if the paper takes 2-3 weeks and the statistics are important, then people wont forget that easy. I been in this situation is not fairly hard, im not saying i remember everything because is not true, but to remember key points and important numbers is rather simple.

That is basically my thoughts on doing the in class exam on Wednesday.

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wel, seeing you are 100% sure that they copied the work, say to them

"i know you copied this work, i found the paper that you plaguerized on the internet, seeing that i am a nice teacher i will give you one more chance to prove to me you deserve more than a fail for this assessment. you will both stay in after school (or come in someday they dont usually if ur teaching in uni), you will sit for 2 hours in exam conditions, and write a paper on (the same topic but different question that they will be able to answer easily if they did the work).

see you ....day"

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well, unlike you i learn the statistics for my essays then i dont need to think about them again. for example, from a recent essay:

Single parents account for 27 percent of family households with children under 18.

More than two million fathers are the primary caregivers of children under 18,

a 62 percent increase since 1990.

One in two children will live in a single-parent family at some point in childhood.

One in three children is born to unmarried parents.

Between 1978 and 1996, the number of babies born to unmarried women per year quadrupled from 500,000 to more than two million.

I handed the essay in with those facts on the 19th of dec and ill be ddamned if i could remember them before going to the site i quoted them from.

See though, you used those quotes from a site and I hope properly cited those. I doubt that you used them and tried to pass it off as your own work.

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^ ^ ^

fair enough.... there is a possibility that one C grade standard student might hand in a good piece of work, but two??? at the same time??? i think not. :)

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yea i cited them and used them in my bibliography. however, what im saying is that if you were to spring a suprise in-class test upon me without any warning i would not remember these facts and even if i had worked hard to find these facts i would not remember them and my essay mark would suffer as a result due to the fact that i needed those statistics for a foundation to base my argument upon.

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wel, seeing you are 100% sure that they copied the work, say to them

"i know you copied this work, i found the paper that you plaguerized on the internet, seeing that i am a nice teacher i will give you one more chance to prove to me you deserve more than a fail for this assessment. you will both stay in after school (or come in someday they dont usually if ur teaching in uni), you will sit for 2 hours in exam conditions, and write a paper on (the same topic but different question that they will be able to answer easily if they did the work).

see you ....day"

Problem with that, when you teach on the High School level and are dealing with minors/new adults, it is district policy that you have concrete evidence before you openly make a statement like that.

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well, unlike you i learn the statistics for my essays then i dont need to think about them again. for example, from a recent essay:

Single parents account for 27 percent of family households with children under 18.

More than two million fathers are the primary caregivers of children under 18,

a 62 percent increase since 1990.

One in two children will live in a single-parent family at some point in childhood.

One in three children is born to unmarried parents.

Between 1978 and 1996, the number of babies born to unmarried women per year quadrupled from 500,000 to more than two million.

I handed the essay in with those facts on the 19th of dec and ill be ddamned if i could remember them before going to the site i quoted them from.

Well i've had my share of teachers in high school where if you have to do a paper and they give us a month of so to do it, then we best believe that some of what was in the paper was going to be in the final exam. Is not because they think we cheat, is because not only were we suppose to study the material but we were suppose to know it, learn it (as you said). I been three years out of high school and in college ever since, so i can't really tell you i even remember the stuff i had to do. My teachers were not as good as Athletic, if one of my teachers suspected of anyone one of us cheating or plagirism then we were all going to get an exam on the paper, and for rest of us that didn't cheat it was fairly easy to do the exam, because we knew the material, it wasn't anything that we didn't know. The teachers read the papers and then made an exam, it was only essay, and everyone got the questions that their exam was on, so it wasnt that everyone had to do everyone else's.

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wel, seeing you are 100% sure that they copied the work, say to them

"i know you copied this work, i found the paper that you plaguerized on the internet, seeing that i am a nice teacher i will give you one more chance to prove to me you deserve more than a fail for this assessment. you will both stay in after school (or come in someday they dont usually if ur teaching in uni), you will sit for 2 hours in exam conditions, and write a paper on (the same topic but different question that they will be able to answer easily if they did the work).

see you ....day"

wrong - b/c if they *did not* copy this from the Internet they'll call your bluff faster than you can say uncle.

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yea i cited them and used them in my bibliography. however, what im saying is that if you were to spring a suprise in-class test upon me without any warning i would not remember these facts and even if i had worked hard to find these facts i would not remember them and my essay mark would suffer as a result due to the fact that i needed those statistics for a foundation to base my argument upon.

I understand what you are saying and that is going to weigh in on my decison. Unforunately, while I would like to continue this because I am getting some great insite here, I do need to get to bed as I have my last day of morning athletics to cover before school picks up.

So, feel free to continue this debate if you like, I will read everyones' comments in the morning. And hopefully I will have a decision made.

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wrong - b/c if they *did not* copy this from the Internet they'll call your bluff faster than you can say uncle.

thats what i was about to say, :D , got stuck replying tho...

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