Board 8 > Caught some students cheating in my class. What would you do?

(+) Yeah! (+)

LordoftheMorons posted...

I'd probably give them zeroes on the exam and tell them that if they can either accept that or take their chances with the university's formal academic dishonesty process

Oh yeah, I like this angle. If they want to play innocent and escalate things then it's on them.
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I teach high school, not college. But I think a zero is appropriate. It was an open book, open note test. They might've thought it was fine to collaborate. Maybe ask them about it, see if they admit it easily. If it was a genuine mistake, giving them a warning, and maybe a drop of letter grade (In this case from an A to a B) might be fair. Of course if it was made absolutely clear they couldn't collaborate, then a zero is a more appropriate punishment.

Aecioo posted...

real talk tho

what sport are they student athletes for, how much revenue does it bring in for your school, and how good are they at that sport

consider this, part-time instructor

This is important. If they are student athletes for anything that brings in big money for the school (football mostly, but other sports as well), you better believe you can get in some sticky situations yourself.

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b7
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I'm curious as to what happened with these students. TC should provide a status update once everything is said and done

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besides the obvious gang bang, I would talk to the higher ups at the school. I wouldnt want to make a decision without precedent or backing. Is there a standard punishment? Is your evidence good enough?

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Last time I saw you were like...an accountant or something? Then you had a job in vegas?

You being a teacher is random to me

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neonreaper posted...

*cue porn music*

you bastard, got me in the morning

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Aecioo posted...

real talk tho

what sport are they student athletes for, how much revenue does it bring in for your school, and how good are they at that sport

consider this, part-time instructor

Guy on the hockey team, guy on the swim team, girl on the soccer team. Hockey guy is one of my sharpest students and clearly gave out the answers, but I got the feeling the other two are more successful athletes. Girl's also very pretty so one or both of these guys are probably jockeying for the college handy. I doubt any of these sports bring money into the uni.

Punnyz posted...

Last time I saw you were like...an accountant or something? Then you had a job in vegas?

You being a teacher is random to me

I still do that but also teach part time on the side (finance with a bit of accounting thrown in, so it's related).

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wow bunch of nerds ITT
academic cheating is a-okay. if you cheat and dont get caught, you earned your grade
you got nothin on those kids. when did you become the MAN huh?

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But they did get caught.

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but did they really? they have plausible deniability

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MysticBrohan posted...

wow bunch of nerds ITT
academic cheating is a-okay. if you cheat and dont get caught, you earned your grade
you got nothin on those kids. when did you become the MAN huh?

This is a next level dumb take. I'm assuming you're also one of those people that couldn't scrape together enough brain cells to pass your classes too?

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BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

This is a next level dumb take. I'm assuming you're also one of those people that couldn't scrape together enough brain cells to pass your classes too?

This is pretty much right in line with a typical Brohan response.

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Brohan is right. How do we know who was behind the computer? Maybe someone else took the test for them and cheated. We can never be sure.

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A college professor caught me one time cheating. He gave me a 0% for the exam and said, "Good luck passing now". However, he didn't report me.

I passed with a 71%. It took a ton of effort. There were only 5 tests for that guy though.

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Brohan is def right but these kids did get caught so it's a moot point

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Pretty much every institution will have a process to follow in the case of academic integrity violations. For most schools, this involves meeting with the students prior to any punishment being administered. At the meeting, you need to explain what you are accusing them of and allow them to respond. Presumably, this will need to be a zoom (or some equivalent) meeting.

I have caught many students cheating over the past decade. Some will confess right away. Others will deny. Most will say they thought they were following the rules and will give some flimsy explanation.

I also gave a take home exam a couple weeks ago, though I wrote five separate versions. I recommend giving them different exams next time.

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junk_funk posted...

I passed with a 71%. It took a ton of effort. There were only 5 tests for that guy though.

"only 5"
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Are these students majoring in this field of study?

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You have to do something to teach them the rules of real business -- cheating is fine so long as you don't get caught. But when you eventually do (and they did), expect to face consequences.

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Like a bailout.

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Exactly. You should give them each $50 and a stern talking to. They'll learn their lesson.

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Fail them for the test

If they get away with it, they could blab to other students and then you'll have more people cheating because these idiots bragged about it. And you just know they will.

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i have a relative that's been teaching at a college forever. i'll ask them what they would do in this sort of scenario

kind of surprised you're not already familiar with the school's procedures. it's really hard for students to suffer any severe consequences if they go through the motions

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MysticBrohan posted...

wow bunch of nerds ITT
academic cheating is a-okay. if you cheat and dont get caught, you earned your grade
you got nothin on those kids. when did you become the MAN huh?

In what world do you live in where the cheaters don't grow up to be the MAN?

Stomp these MANlings while their young

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I had a phone call with the department chair. He said that this behavior has been so widespread since we've switched to online instruction, and there's no clear-cut guidance. He suggested that I warn them (because I can't let them think it's clear sailing to do the exact same thing on the final) and... that's it. Just warn them and hope it dissuades them from repeating the offense.

Not terribly thrilled about that, but it's what I was leaning toward anyway (no perfect solutions here) because bringing it up to academic affairs is apparently a terrible process even with iron-tight evidence.

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I think there really has to be some punishment, even if you want to make it less severe than giving them zeroes. With just a warning they still came out ahead from cheating (which is a pretty bad lesson).

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so basically everyone passes because it's too much work to change systems.


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The American Way

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Kinglicious posted...

so basically everyone passes because it's too much work to change systems.

FFDragon posted...

The American Way

Yes.

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One of them (swim team guy) just completely admitted to it.

...surprised it was that easy.

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I went to my supervisor about it, she said she would support whatever decision I made. That was honestly really tough. The reason I went to her was because I didn't have a strong feeling about what I should do, and I was looking for guidance. In the end I decided to penalize the students who cheated (in terms of their grades) but I didn't take it beyond that. Maybe I should have, I don't know.


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CaptainOfCrush posted...

One of them (swim team guy) just completely admitted to it.

...surprised it was that easy.

I think most of them do. 6 out of 7 did for me in my cheating incident (some extremely upset and apologetic, some who were very blase and probably did this all the time and saw getting caught as the risk they took by doing this).

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Make them take a lesson on The Guru by forcing them to podcast for your The Show and then fail them anyway.

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BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

This is a next level dumb take. I'm assuming you're also one of those people that couldn't scrape together enough brain cells to pass your classes too?

yeah but i cheated so it didnt matter enjoy your cells

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A second student - the soccer girl - came clean (through lots of uncomfortable tears).

I decided to punish them with a feather-slap on the wrist. I will lower their exam grades from 90% down to the class average of 67%. The girl is the only one who I have spoken to about this (I set up a WebEx meeting that both guys missed) and she said it was very fair, cried a lot, and apologized to me.

This is the shittiest part of this job, and I barely punished them.

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You have no balls

I would have thrown the book at them, to the fullest extent

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Just shut the fuck up you greasy shit

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Yeah that happened with a few of the students I talked to as well, which made me have to shift into how it doesn't mean their life is over, it doesn't mean they're a terrible person, just to learn a lesson and not make the same mistake again etc.

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...that's pretty okay honestly.
they cheated but are ultimately getting a D on the test due to the circumstances. that's a solid middle ground. if they were good enough to get higher on their own, they should've gone for it. it ensures they pass but they also get hit with something light.

much as it may suck to say, don't feel bad for the tears there. a mix of real, crocodile, and stress is gonna embody that.


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I am sure he bell curved. Though, if your class average is a 67% then you probably didn't teach the material well enough or your test didn't correlate to what you taught well enough.

Only times I see classes with scores that low are classes where they purposely try to weed out students and where teaching was minimal in large lecture classes.

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I remember taking a math class once where the average score was about 40%

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Corrik7 posted...

I am sure he bell curved. Though, if your class average is a 67% then you probably didn't teach the material well enough or your test didn't correlate to what you taught well enough.

Only times I see classes with scores that low are classes where they purposely try to weed out students and where teaching was minimal in large lecture classes.

I honestly think most of my classes have had averages in the low 70s


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Corrik7 posted...

I am sure he bell curved. Though, if your class average is a 67% then you probably didn't teach the material well enough or your test didn't correlate to what you taught well enough.

Only times I see classes with scores that low are classes where they purposely try to weed out students and where teaching was minimal in large lecture classes.

This is definitely not true in many disciplines. Adequately testing the material in some subjects is not conducive to having 90 averages. In my upper div physics classes test averages in the 60-70 range were typical regardless of how well the classes were taught (and occasionally they'd be much lower... my upper div classical mechanics final had an average of like 35 or something!)

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I honestly think most of my classes have had averages in the low 70s

Your average should be about 75 to 80% depending on the scale used for grading.

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i once took a television studies class where the average was so low they just gave everyone 2 extra points for a test (i.e. if you had a 4 you got a 6) >_>

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As a former TA don't name them specifically. Just send an email to all the students at the same time to knock it off because next time you'll punish those that are guilty.

Those who did wrong know they were wrong. It also let's you avoid the annoyance of having them lie to you with stupid denial/threatening to sue or some shit depending on who their parents are, blah blah blah.

Save the e-mail, you may need it in the future to prove you gave fair warning.

All three have now come clean. I essentially told them what you told your students, @LordoftheMorons . They're not bad people and they can easily recover, but I needed to punish them so that hopefully they learn something about not continuing this behavior.

Corrik7 posted...

I am sure he bell curved. Though, if your class average is a 67% then you probably didn't teach the material well enough or your test didn't correlate to what you taught well enough.

Only times I see classes with scores that low are classes where they purposely try to weed out students and where teaching was minimal in large lecture classes.

It's essentially a math class (finance, but for most of these kids it's close enough) that's mandatory for all business majors, including the marketing and management students who might hate numbers and see it as one of the bitter pills of their academic schedule.

Regarding this class specifically, the numbers just didn't match up to me. This was a 21-question exam. Last semester, it was 20 questions, so I added one question here. Additionally, I changed 3 of the original 20 (in my opinion, I made those 3 only slightly harder). So I changed 3 questions to make them (arguably) a tiny bit harder and added one extra question. The other 17 questions were identical to last semester, where the class average was 75%. In exchange for making the exam very slightly harder and one question longer, I allowed them open book, open notes, open internet (obviously, they still needed to do things on their own).

Leading up to this first online exam, this was the strongest class I had taught based on their earlier averages, so I was looking for reasons as to why their average would be so much lower than last semester, because the open resources struck me as more than adequate compensation for me barely ratcheting the difficulty.

Unless the class collectively stopped caring because of COVID, I think I found my answer: their time management was poor. It makes sense - if you have all your notes there, it's easy to get lost in them and wonder where your last ten minutes went. On an exam like this, you should be maintaining a pace of ~3 minutes per question, so even losing five minutes rummaging through your notes would put you behind schedule. Looking at exam logs, this is what seems to have happened with many students.

I'll stress the issue that time management is critical for the final (I mentioned it to them, though clearly not enough).

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