Grrrrrrr, fellow classmates

[DrPizza]

I'm working my butt off for an online class. I'm amazed at the writing skills of some of the students in class - either they are incredibly gifted writers, or they bothered to re-write their responses several times until it was excellent. Their vocabulary and sentence structure is simply amazing - it puts mine to shame.

Oh? They're copying and pasting everything?


So, do I question the instructor on this?
It really irks me that I'm spending hours on my work, and these people are spending a couple of minutes to copy and paste from some websites. Yet, we receive equal credit.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Unless you've got proof to show that they're guilty, don't bother. Focus on your work.

 

[ndee]

Wait, aren't you a teacher?

 

[arcenite]

If you can prove that it did infact come from somewhere else, I would definately bring it up.

 

[arcenite]

Originally posted by: ndee
Wait, aren't you a teacher?

Teachers can goto school too

 

[Yossarian]

I thought teachers had tools these days to check if people were cutting and pasting from online sources.

 

[Cattlegod]

is it so hard to believe that you are 'average'?

 

[TallBill]

What class is it? If its something generic, which I doubt it is, then its really not the end of the world. Although, with a professer thats already probably not checking...

 

[NiKeFiDO]

however, since you can bring it up, email the teacher anyway and cause a rucuss (sp?).
since yoor teacher won't want to make a big deal and have to bother with a bunch of BS, he will say i cant do anything without proof.

yay for life


...profit

 

[SacrosanctFiend]

Do you have irrefutable evidence that they're plagiarizing, or are you just assuming? I wouldn't bring it up unless you can prove it.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: SacrosanctFiend
Do you have irrefutable evidence that they're plagiarizing, or are you just assuming? I wouldn't bring it up unless you can prove it.

The questions being answered are "discussion questions" intended to provoke discussion among the students. The intention is to create some discourse which will lead to newer insights. I don't think the intention is to create elegant responses that all but the most skilled of writers can produce without a lot of editing.

So, when I read a couple of responses this week, I simply clicked on Google and entered some sentences. (If I didn't *know* they were plagiarizing, I would have posted, "I feel like such a moron in my class, the other students are so much smarter than I am.*)
Amazingly, *EVERY* google search I attempted for a phrase turned up that exact same phrase. And, just by some weird coincidence, those sites had the 2nd, 3rd, 4th,... sentences that the other students submitted as their own work.

Since I had "hard" evidence, I decided to do what everyone here does. I quoted their response (for posterity) and included a link to their response.

Yes, I am a teacher (for whoever asked) and teachers don't stop learning.

6 years ago, I used to give out extra credit projects. I returned one girl's "project" back to her. She asked why it didn't have a grade on it. I told her to look at "her" page closer. It was just a printout of a website. I included the header and footer. Her paper didn't.

 

[BustaBust]

.

 

[Zap Brannigan]

What topping of pizza did you get your doctorate in?

 

It's school, the least amount you can do to get through it is what you should do.

 

[Zap Brannigan]

My guess is mushrooms. Teachers should be drug tested on a regular basis.

 

[0roo0roo]

anonymous tip time

 

[MrBond]

Originally posted by: Yossarian
I thought teachers had tools these days to check if people were cutting and pasting from online sources.

There are programs, but they're generally not free or provided by the school district. Most teachers use Google.

I remember back in 8th grade, our algebra teacher made us do reports on famous people in math. The day we turned them in, he had us all read our reports in class (since they were short).

Two people had the exact same report, word-for-word. This was before the internet was very wide-spread, so I'm not sure what exactly they copied theirs from, but they didn't even try very hard.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: SacrosanctFiend
Do you have irrefutable evidence that they're plagiarizing, or are you just assuming? I wouldn't bring it up unless you can prove it.

The questions being answered are "discussion questions" intended to provoke discussion among the students. The intention is to create some discourse which will lead to newer insights. I don't think the intention is to create elegant responses that all but the most skilled of writers can produce without a lot of editing.

So, when I read a couple of responses this week, I simply clicked on Google and entered some sentences. (If I didn't *know* they were plagiarizing, I would have posted, "I feel like such a moron in my class, the other students are so much smarter than I am.*)
Amazingly, *EVERY* google search I attempted for a phrase turned up that exact same phrase. And, just by some weird coincidence, those sites had the 2nd, 3rd, 4th,... sentences that the other students submitted as their own work.

Since I had "hard" evidence, I decided to do what everyone here does. I quoted their response (for posterity) and included a link to their response.

Sounds like you already resolved the situation?

Yes, I am a teacher (for whoever asked) and teachers don't stop learning.

6 years ago, I used to give out extra credit projects. I returned one girl's "project" back to her. She asked why it didn't have a grade on it. I told her to look at "her" page closer. It was just a printout of a website. I included the header and footer. Her paper didn't.

Nice job

 

[myusername]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Since I had "hard" evidence, I decided to do what everyone here does. I quoted their response (for posterity) and included a link to their response.

awesome

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: SacrosanctFiend
Do you have irrefutable evidence that they're plagiarizing, or are you just assuming? I wouldn't bring it up unless you can prove it.

The questions being answered are "discussion questions" intended to provoke discussion among the students. The intention is to create some discourse which will lead to newer insights. I don't think the intention is to create elegant responses that all but the most skilled of writers can produce without a lot of editing.

So, when I read a couple of responses this week, I simply clicked on Google and entered some sentences. (If I didn't *know* they were plagiarizing, I would have posted, "I feel like such a moron in my class, the other students are so much smarter than I am.*)
Amazingly, *EVERY* google search I attempted for a phrase turned up that exact same phrase. And, just by some weird coincidence, those sites had the 2nd, 3rd, 4th,... sentences that the other students submitted as their own work.

Since I had "hard" evidence, I decided to do what everyone here does. I quoted their response (for posterity) and included a link to their response.

Sounds like you already resolved the situation?

Yes, I am a teacher (for whoever asked) and teachers don't stop learning.

6 years ago, I used to give out extra credit projects. I returned one girl's "project" back to her. She asked why it didn't have a grade on it. I told her to look at "her" page closer. It was just a printout of a website. I included the header and footer. Her paper didn't.

Nice job

The sad part of it was that it would have taken me about 1 hour to read all of the reports I received and give grades on all of them. Ultimately, because the sentence structure and vocabulary didn't sound like the students', I searched the internet to see if the papers were plagiarized. The student that I described above was the one I suspected would have the biggest issue with me accusing her of plagiarism. And, hers was the worst case. (EVERY paper was plagiarized; I couldn't find the source for one of them though.) But, the rest of the students at least edited out some sentences here, and took out things like "refer to diagram 1.1" They went to a *little* effort to make it not 100% obvious. (hers was 100% obvious; theirs was 95%)

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: mugs


Sounds like you already resolved the situation?

Yeah, that's what I decided to go with. I've got to give the prof a call tomorrow or Tuesday, so I'll point it out. I also have to deal with the issue of being marked "not in attendance" for last weeks class" (based only on entering the class site) yet I had the assignments submitted on the class site during the week. Weird.

 

[Xyo II]

sounds to me like you need to email them some viruses (virii?), those dirty American devils.

 

[chambersc]

so what was the final solution, I wanna hear how the professor handled this. PLEASE tell me it involves expulsion!

 

[LordMorpheus]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I'm working my butt off for an online class. I'm amazed at the writing skills of some of the students in class - either they are incredibly gifted writers, or they bothered to re-write their responses several times until it was excellent. Their vocabulary and sentence structure is simply amazing - it puts mine to shame.

Oh? They're copying and pasting everything?


So, do I question the instructor on this?
It really irks me that I'm spending hours on my work, and these people are spending a couple of minutes to copy and paste from some websites. Yet, we receive equal credit.

Hold up here - they are better writers than you are, therefore they are cheating?

sorry, read your response. Does your school have a student justice thing you can go to with this? If not, maybe email the prof.

 

[ed21x]

my school uses turnitin.com. I don't believe that it is all that expensive to register a class for it.