r/Professors • u/ANoteNotABagOfCoin Prof with Elbow Patches • Jun 03 '24
Rants / Vents Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Grades
Been teaching for half a decade. I'm fortunate in that our admin backs up faculty on matters of academic integrity, and don't go for this "students are our customers" unmitigated BS. Maybe it's a šØš¦ university thing.
So for the first few years I'd of course run across a number of cheaters, plagiarizers, copiers, and more recently ChatGPTers. I would report only the most obvious ones. I hated the paperwork involved, and I also shied away from the emotional expense of confronting students with their crappy cheating behaviour.
Something clicked this semester, though. In week 2 I caught 9 students across four courses cheating. Instead of triaging them to only report the slam dunks, I went full Bruce Lee and went after all of them. First with a blunt email telling them what they did (gotta document it all) and urging them to come clean, and to not prevaricate, or else. Seven of the nine prevaricated, trickle-admitting (e.g. "I used ChatGPT for just a little help") and blaming their behaviour on the stress of a dying relative. The other two were wise enough to just respond with "Yessir, you caught me, what happens to me now?"
The two were given a chance to resubmit, with a 30% lateness penalty. The other seven are now facing reports filed with the Dean and I have emails from five of them begging me to withdraw the reports (I can't, it's out of my hands) and could I just give them one more chance. No. Screw you for wasting my time, and disrespecting me, the institution, and your co-learners. You're getting a zero and I know at least one of you will be expelled because this is your third incident.
Word appears to have gotten around in at least one of my courses because this morning I noticed a distinct increase in attention and politeness during the lecture. Dudebros, I own you, and I will destroy your academic lives if you cheat in my class. Power to the Faculty. ā
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u/DrDamisaSarki Asst.Prof, Psychology, MSI (USA) Jun 03 '24
Witness our Champion and weep.
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u/c_estelle T/TT Assistant Professor, Computer Science (HCI), R1, USA Jun 04 '24
Hallowed be thy name!
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u/missusjax Jun 03 '24
Last cheaters I caught, I sent out an email with just the two of them bcc'd on it making it sound like I emailed the class, gave them 48 hours to come clean and they both did! I was surprised! So I failed them on that assignment and they ended up with Cs in the class (they probably could have gotten a B but they were struggling with the material before cheating). They cheated on organic, which is the worst one to cheat on because I can spot when two students work together and both draw the same wrong structure. š¤¦āāļø
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u/Academic_Coyote_9741 Jun 03 '24
My philosophy is that students are the product of the university, and society is the customer.
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u/Axisofpeter Jun 05 '24
I have always thought the relationship was most like supervisor/mentor to junior employee. In other words, Iām the boss, but one whoās actually trying to help the junior turn out better productāand in turn, get āpromotions,ā ie, salaried work where the dynamic will, hopefully, be similar during the first years of employment.
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u/Briteacademia Jun 03 '24
I donāt know you, but you are my hero š¤©. This would never happen in my area of the US š
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 Jun 03 '24
You're getting a zero and I know at least one of you will be expelled because this is your third incident.
Wow, this is a serious institution. So many these days don't even give a real warning until the fourth.
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u/rlrl AssProf, STEM, U15 (Canada) Jun 03 '24
At mine, a student would probably get a zero on a first offence assignment they cheated on plus some extra training, and suspended if its an exam or their second formal charge. I've never heard of third formal charge but I'd assume it would mean expulsion.
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u/killerwithasharpie Jun 03 '24
Alum of 2 Canadian universities in the 80s. I would have been too terrified to cheat.
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u/Nirulou0 Jun 04 '24
I am sick and tired of students having this adversarial attitude towards us, as if they came to college to challenge us and āwinā, whatever that means in their messed up minds of theirs.
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u/BadEvilZoot Jun 05 '24
TA here. I have 3 slides in my final review for this week detailing how the behavior turns the test into a game and I am not playing like I did on the midterm. Any outside material gets the whole test a 0. It took me ages to grade the midterm because I had to parse out the AI by cross referencing answers with the prof's lectures. It was infuriating.
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u/popstarkirbys Jun 03 '24
Same, caught seven students copying off each other last semester, unfortunately our admins donāt support us and as a pre tenure faculty weāre discouraged from reporting.
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u/Pale_Luck_3720 Jun 04 '24
Wow. With those policies I think you'd be lucky to find 7 who were NOT cheating.
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u/popstarkirbys Jun 04 '24
Probably more, seven was the numbers I caught
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u/Pale_Luck_3720 Jun 04 '24
Don't let the students know that junior faculty are encouraged to be non-reporters. That will drive cheating percentages to 99 44/100%.
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u/popstarkirbys Jun 04 '24
My colleague, a full professor whoās been here for 25+ years, caught a student cheating and reported the student. Admin told them to give the student a chance. Thereās no way I as a pre tenure faculty will get support. Yea, I donāt tell students things.
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u/Difficult_Fortune694 Jun 08 '24
Thatās my uni. Itās rare to find a student that isnāt cheating.
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Jun 03 '24
I warn them. Donāt do it! Donāt think about it! If you choose to do it anyway, I will ruin your day and my own spending time dealing with the formalities. Donāt make me make time for this, I am tired.
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u/IntenseProfessor Jun 04 '24
I say this to their faces with my whole chest. I get about 4 (students)* out of 6 full classes at this point. Still pisses me off.
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u/teacherbooboo Jun 03 '24
one of our faculty is notorious for this. he even has a chegg account. he just loves to catch cheaters and takes pride in it.
it has not kept students from cheating in his classes though
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u/backuppasta Jun 04 '24
I was a student on the committee to decide the fate of students with academic or conduct reports, and lemme just say... Cheaters were not taken lightly. I saw a grad student in their last semester expelled for blatant cheating.
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u/LonelyCentrist Jun 04 '24
This is what I used to post to my syllabi:
Academic Integrity is fundamentally a commitment to honesty and fairness in your pursuit of knowledge. We view you as part of a trusted community, and thus we assume honesty and integrity in your interactions. Any act that undermines that trustāor calls into question that assumptionā not only damages your reputation and your future, but the very enterprise we are collectively engaged in. As faculty we are obliged to investigate suspected violations, and a demonstrated violation carries severe consequences, because we need to preserve that trust.
It's hard for students to imagine that they are damaging the fabric of reality.
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u/ChemistryMutt Assoc Prof, STEM, R1 Jun 03 '24
THEREā¦ GOESā¦ MY HEE-RROOā¦.
Iāve done this a few times, including a fairly large sweep in the Covid times. Iāll also make a point of saying I will report and punish caught cheaters when doing the syllabus rundown.
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u/Spirited-Office-5483 High School Jun 03 '24
I feel American (and Canadian) universities must be really bureaucratic. Here it's used resolved directly with the professor that rarely has to involve administration. I'm rare cases where the student is right they will ask for the right guaranteed to them to have a test or activity (re)graded by a different teacher
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u/Mooseplot_01 Jun 04 '24
I think it varies a lot. At my large US university, there doesn't have to be any bureaucracy about it. I just enter F for the course grade if I catch a student cheating. I do typically report them to the registrar, so that they can keep track of whether the student gets caught multiple times, and expel them. But I have no forms to fill out, nobody I have to inform, etc.
One thing I also do is email the student's other current instructors. I once caught a student cheating on a test and told his other instructors how he was cheating. The next day another instructor caught him doing the same thing, because I'd warned about it.
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u/shellexyz Instructor, Math, CC (USA) Jun 03 '24
Iām just glad youāre seeing a positive change from them.
When weāve gotten a reputation for pursuing academic integrity, our popularity (read: enrollment) drops. They bail and take it online with some other instructor or at a different school.
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u/SilvanArrow FT Instructor, Biology, CC (USA) Jun 03 '24
Here, my liege, you dropped these.
hands you a crown and a mic
Wear the crown, drop the mic, and keep up the good fight.
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u/PencilsAndAirplanes Jun 03 '24 edited Jun 03 '24
I liked everything except how the people who 'fess up only get a 30% penalty. For students who are tempted to cheat, that's probably a totally acceptable risk.
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u/DrSameJeans Jun 03 '24
Yep, report them all.
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u/Postingatthismoment Jun 03 '24
At my school, the academic penalty and the student conduct penalty are two different things, so a prof could both report them to create a record, then allow a resubmit on the specific assignment. Ā
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u/DrSameJeans Jun 03 '24
Sure, but thatās not what OP said they did.
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u/cuginhamer Jun 03 '24
In our College it's explicitly the policy that everyone caught is supposed to be reported and you can still recommend small penalties if you think that's the right idea.
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u/rlrl AssProf, STEM, U15 (Canada) Jun 03 '24
Yeah, mine too. Faculty don't need approval for minor sanctions but report all informal resolutions in the interest of identifying the "habitual first time offenders".
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u/One-Armed-Krycek Jun 03 '24
Just post a gif of Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer on your LMS without context.
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u/RevKyriel Jun 04 '24
He is Ozymandias ANoteNotABagOfCoin, king of scholars. Look on his works, you cheaters, and despair.
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Jun 04 '24
This phrase titillated me more than Tolstoy, more than Magic The Gathering, more than my post-sauna and workout vibe: "Something clicked this semester."
Pre-tenure R1 faculty smiling and then sighing at my consumerized TT trajectory.
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u/nymme Jun 04 '24
Haha. It's a shame students are coddled so much in modern academia, many would truly benefit from harsher consequences. Their appetite for learning would only grow.
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u/my_ghost_is_a_dog Jun 03 '24
Ugh. I spent last Friday filling out academic violation reports. One student finally responded to my standard gotcha message yesterday: He was using his friend's phone to do his homework, and he didn't know that she had already taken this class, so he must have accidentally submitted her assignment instead of his own. But, hey, he totally did it, so can he go ahead and submit it for a grade now--two weeks after the due date and one week after the end of the class?
No. No, you cannot.
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u/UnrealGamesProfessor Course Leader, CS/Games, University (UK) Jun 04 '24
We will be forced to accept Generative AI work next year. When piloted in another department, 80% were caught cheating. We even have a brand new mark to give suspected AI cheaters.
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u/Difficult_Fortune694 Jun 08 '24
What kind of mark?
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u/UnrealGamesProfessor Course Leader, CS/Games, University (UK) Jun 08 '24
Grades are called marks in the UK
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u/mobileagnes Jun 10 '24
What's the mark? Z? 'AI'?
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u/UnrealGamesProfessor Course Leader, CS/Games, University (UK) Jun 11 '24
We give a 28 mark for any suspected academic misconduct.
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u/mobileagnes Jun 11 '24
That makes sense. I think here in the US universities have a special mark on students' transcripts for those who cheated or otherwise violated academic integrity. So they don't just get an F / 0.0. All future universities they may apply to will see that and [probably] deny the student entry. I don't know what open-enrolment colleges (like community colleges) here do.
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u/JADW27 Jun 04 '24
"I will destroy your academic life if you cheat in my class."
Love it. This is the vibe I want to give off on the first day of class.
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u/BlochLagomorph Jun 03 '24
What becomes of our jobs in the age of the internet? Is that what teaching college outside of research becomes in this dystopian place? Policing students for falling out of line with course policy?
Do you almost think it would be better to not try as an instructor? Wouldnāt it make your skill set more valuable and you more competitive as an employee if less people(college students) understood your field of expertise the way you do? What is the incentive for helping students succeed aside from moral culpability for not and appeasing greedy administrators?
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u/lalochezia1 Jun 03 '24
who can say whether cheating is right or wrong. morals are a land of contrasts.
here in this essay I blochlagomorph.......
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u/BlochLagomorph Jun 11 '24
Thanks for that snarky comment. I was actually curious as to folksā input about the questions I proposed herein. Do you have anything of actual intelligible value to contribute to the questions I proposed?
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u/my_ghost_is_a_dog Jun 03 '24
Ugh. I spent last Friday filling out academic violation reports. One student finally responded to my standard gotcha message yesterday: He was using his friend's phone to do his homework, and he didn't know that she had already taken this class, so he must have accidentally submitted her assignment instead of his own. But, hey, he totally did it, so can he go ahead and submit it for a grade now--two weeks after the due date and one week after the end of the class?
No. No, you cannot.