When should a professor doc grades?

[Flying Pig]

My high school was lax, too. My English teacher was all about "poetry interpretation" and although we did write essays, we didn't have to reference anything.

Nobody does that at 'school' even post-16 - it's a University thing, because it's only really essential when your work is being exposed to an audience - your school essays are being shown to your teachers and maybe your classmates if they're really good, but your university thesis is published and becomes part of the body of academic work, so more rigour is essential. That said, the school at which I used to work did offer the option of a qualification which was essentially a mini-dissertation so that those students who were going on to University had some idea of how it worked.

 

[say1988]

Of course references are less important for younger students for the reasons you state.

However they should be taught from a young age. Right now, a lot of people get through high school without even doing an actual Works Cited, let alone notes, and find that a month into their first year at university they are required to write an essay with full notes and works cited in the proper format or face administrative penalties.
This should not happen, schools should start with references as soon as they start students doing any research and expand upon it so that they know what to do when they reach university.

 

[Flying Pig]

I think you're forgetting that many students don't go on to University (when I was at school, 10% did, the vast majority from public schools; it's now about 40% and about fifty-fifty) and that the school has the role of teaching all of them useful skills, not just the 40% who will go on to study further. I think the policy of having it as an extra thing for those wishing to go on to University is the best approach, but would not advocate teaching such specialist skills to everyone - you may as well teach them all how to work a cash register, since a sizeable minority of them will have to do so at some point in their careers.

 

[Traitorfish]

(I honestly found referencing easier to get the hang of than the cash register.)

 

[say1988]

I think you're forgetting that many students don't go on to University (when I was at school, 10% did, the vast majority from public schools; it's now about 40% and about fifty-fifty) and that the school has the role of teaching all of them useful skills, not just the 40% who will go on to study further. I think the policy of having it as an extra thing for those wishing to go on to University is the best approach, but would not advocate teaching such specialist skills to everyone - you may as well teach them all how to work a cash register, since a sizeable minority of them will have to do so at some point in their careers.

In our school system, there are separate levels of courses for people intending to go to University, College, or neither and the requirements and expectations are different in each. I had one teacher want notes on an essay and most didn't even expect a works cited, and these courses were supposedly preparing me for university.
Though I do think they should teach everyone basic citations. You may not enforce it as much, have lower expectations (such as not worrying if they properly follow a style), and have less harsh of penalties for lower tiers, but it should be there.

 

[Farm Boy]

Books are frequently a racket for professors. A professor that writes their own book then requires royalty payments for their own class is on shaky ethical grounds.

Plagiarism and cheating? Students should be removed from the university when caught for either. An automatic failure for the course being taken should be the minimum.

 

[sophie]

How do you unknowingly plagiarize?

In my experience it actually happens quite a bit, at least in the history major. The biggest problem comes in the form of paraphrasing, where, as contre said, people will read a book, and end up parroting the phrasing of the author without realizing they are doing it. The professor google searches the phrase, it shows up immediately, and the kid is slapped with an auto-fail. There's also not being completely familiar with the citation process and neglecting to cite things which need to be cited. Sometimes things just kind of slip your mind, no matter how many times you go through and reread your paper you quoted or paraphrased something and absolutely did not catch that you miss a citation. In the history department it always happens to at least one or two students per class, even at the senior seminar level.

 

[say1988]

And taht is why auto-fail should not happen. You should have an opportunity to defend yourself. But every case of academic misconduct should be taken seriously. But zero-tolerance or 3-strikes rules and their like are just terrible.

 

[Zelig]

In my experience it actually happens quite a bit, at least in the history major. The biggest problem comes in the form of paraphrasing, where, as contre said, people will read a book, and end up parroting the phrasing of the author without realizing they are doing it. The professor google searches the phrase, it shows up immediately, and the kid is slapped with an auto-fail.

Yeah, I don't really have a problem with this. Particularly for a major like history, people need to realize they're not going to have original ideas, so everything they write needs supporting sources.

I wouldn't auto-fail an entire course, but I can't in good conscience award any value to a specific assignment where plagiarism has occurred because of a lack of due diligence or rigor in citing sources.

 

[Flying Pig]

Yeah, I don't really have a problem with this. Particularly for a major like history, people need to realize they're not going to have original ideas, so everything they write needs supporting sources.

Indeed. I was taught that if it's a fact, and you wouldn't expect a teenager to know it, you reference it. I was told that your judgements can be left un-referenced, unless someone else has done the logical work in more detail and you're skipping out the long argument to cut to the chase.

 

[sophie]

I wouldn't auto-fail an entire course, but I can't in good conscience award any value to a specific assignment where plagiarism has occurred because of a lack of due diligence or rigor in citing sources.

Meh, I wouldn't be so harsh. Citing sources properly is a habit which every good historian needs to develop. And like all good habits it requires constant repetition and vigilance. It's a concept which is very hard to get used to for a budding undergraduate, who, prior to experiencing the rigors of Academic life was usually able to get away with quoting massive bodies of text with nary a word from the teacher. Sometimes mistakes are made, and I think Universities are often much to quick to judge careless errors to harshly. Yes I think students who knowingly and maliciously plagiarize material are a problem, and I don't think they deserve anything less than a fail or worse, but I think those kinds of actions are easier to spot than the simple mis-cite or bad paraphrase (and let's be honest, what undergrad actually proof reads his/her paper?). I find it rather unfair that the good seeds who slip up get placed in the same basket as the bad eggs. I think the simple errors should be treated the same as a grammatical slip-up or factual error.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, there would obviously be some wriggle room. A non-cited source in the middle of a paper that was otherwise cited, or merely a badly cited paper with the attempt made probably is crappy writing and not academic misconduct. You still need some form of stick to enforce the development of proper citation habits. These are adults now, and academic rigor sort of is their job for now.

Cheating or intentional plagiarism would be what I was voicing an opinion on earlier.

 

[civ_king]

In my experience it actually happens quite a bit, at least in the history major. The biggest problem comes in the form of paraphrasing, where, as contre said, people will read a book, and end up parroting the phrasing of the author without realizing they are doing it. The professor google searches the phrase, it shows up immediately, and the kid is slapped with an auto-fail. There's also not being completely familiar with the citation process and neglecting to cite things which need to be cited. Sometimes things just kind of slip your mind, no matter how many times you go through and reread your paper you quoted or paraphrased something and absolutely did not catch that you miss a citation. In the history department it always happens to at least one or two students per class, even at the senior seminar level.

If my professors knew where I was cribbing some of my ideas from they'd probably be amazed. Who jacks ideas from incunabula? Hell, what young person has read one in person?

Okay, I haven't actually plagiarised them, but I have found ideas creep in.

 

[kramerfan86]

Only non-academic reason i think should allow a grade punishment beyond the obvious one of cheating, is when your behavior disrupts other's ability to learn, especially at the college level where the other students have paid hundreds of dollars to participate in this class.

The system this professor uses though already exists in some classes. I had a physics class where I was required to participate in the book provided online homework. No code, no access to the homework, no access to the homework no homework grades. What this guy is suggesting already exists.

 

[Bootstoots]

I think there's a large difference between honest errors in citation and wholesale copying of a paper (with or without minor changes) or a portion thereof. The occasional missing or incorrect citation may deserve some grade penalty on the assignment; an actual attempt to pass off others' work as one's own deserves far more severe penalties.

Of course, a large proportion of our legal and political establishment has simply learned how to present information dishonestly in such a way that nobody catches on. So they may interpret this as simply a way to separate the people who are bad at academic dishonesty from the ones who are good at it. So academic dishonesty rules serve two purposes, I guess.

 

[civ_king]

What if someone is using a pre-print book, how would one cite that?

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Only non-academic reason i think should allow a grade punishment beyond the obvious one of cheating, is when your behavior disrupts other's ability to learn, especially at the college level where the other students have paid hundreds of dollars to participate in this class.

The system this professor uses though already exists in some classes. I had a physics class where I was required to participate in the book provided online homework. No code, no access to the homework, no access to the homework no homework grades. What this guy is suggesting already exists.

I had that too. I bought the code seperately for like 15 bucks.

 

[wolfigor]

Nobody does that at 'school' even post-16 - it's a University thing, because it's only really essential when your work is being exposed to an audience

Long time ago when I was in high school (in the paleolithic) my professor for literature routinely required correct citations in our works.
I found it quite useless at the time, until I understood its importance later on at university (even if I was in computer science).
The "funny" part was that she was too busy (or lazy) to actually check every citation: it was possible for you to invent your own quotes and authors.
Now with internet and very capable search engines at the service of such professor, it would be much harder to pull off such a prank.

Books are frequently a racket for professors. A professor that writes their own book then requires royalty payments for their own class is on shaky ethical grounds.

That happened in my university in Italy.
The professors for some courses where writing their own books and pretended that people bought a copy each.
One professor was really extreme.
At the beginning of the course he would sign your freshly bought copy of his course book.
At the final exam he would check each student book: it you didn't have this year signature it was an automatic fail at the exam.

Shaky ethical grounds?
I would say such professors should be banned from the teaching.

Plagiarism and cheating? Students should be removed from the university when caught for either. An automatic failure for the course being taken should be the minimum.

Maybe not at the first offense.
Not all students coming out of high-school perfectly understand the importance and severity of such offense.
I would say, fail the test at the first offense and more serious disciplinary actions for repeating offenses.

 

[warpus]

Nobody does that at 'school' even post-16 - it's a University thing, because it's only really essential when your work is being exposed to an audience - your school essays are being shown to your teachers and maybe your classmates if they're really good, but your university thesis is published and becomes part of the body of academic work, so more rigour is essential. That said, the school at which I used to work did offer the option of a qualification which was essentially a mini-dissertation so that those students who were going on to University had some idea of how it worked.

What, proper references?

I've had to properly cite my sources since grade 10.

 

[Flying Pig]

What if someone is using a pre-print book, how would one cite that?

Are they using the original - in which case I think 'author, date, title, edition (which would be recorded in some scholarly manner' - or a copy?