Cheating Made Easy 506
jefu writes "This NY Times story talks about the kinds of papers that students might find (and buy) on the web. It also mentions turnitin.com a site that will scan papers and attempt to determine if it was copied. The article uses 'The Great Gatsby' as an example and notes that for the time it takes to read the book and write a paper, buying a paper seems a poor tradeoff. However, many books (or required papers) involve much more work on the part of the student, so the question becomes that much more difficult. If you have to do a report on 'Ulysses' it takes a bit more than a few hours just to read the book - let along understand enough to do a reasonable paper on it."
The teachers should... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The teachers should... (Score:4, Funny)
My cousin bought a research paper in high school and turned it in.
He got caught.
He didn't take into account that:
1) The teacher was his nearest neighbor. He lived about 1/4 mile down the road from my cousin.
2) The teacher was our school bus driver. We even talked about his buying the paper on the bus. I don't know if our conversation was overheard.
3) The teacher was his Sunday school teacher.
The teacher knew my cousin too well to know that my cousin wrote that paper.
Re:The teachers should... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The teachers should... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that part of a professors/teachers responsibility?
No, it isn't actually. As a student it is YOUR responsibility to act responsibly and in accordance with the academic principles of integrity and honsety. Most institutions have such policies in place, therefore it is assumed that you are abiding by this.You can have it the other way if you like: we will assume that every paper has been plagiarised, and you have to prove to us that it isn't. Ring any bells? How about guilty until proven innocent... That is in effect what your statement amounts to.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
not violate the copyrights on their students' work (Score:4, Interesting)
There is another aspect to that, of course. One of my professors, Scott Nicholson [scottnicholson.com], discussed the problem on CNN. I thought there was something about it on the website, but I couldn't find it in a quick look this morning. Anyway, he did a small piece discussing how little of a phrase one actually needed to find matches on the web. Four or five words is often enough.
He took a poll in one of my classes about turnitin.com [turnitin.com] and other sites. The students were overwhelmingly against it. Not because we're cheaters, but because we agree with the McGill student who fought the system [theglobeandmail.com]. Many of us, oddly enough, consider turning in papers to a service who will keep it on file a copyright violation.
Dr. Nicholson's solution, and that of many others in our school [syr.edu] is to use stepped assignments. If there is a large paper due at some point in the semester, we have to submit paper proposals by a given date. For some, we need to have outlines or a short presentation for the class at a later date. Most professors will allow students to submit papers for critique in advance of the due date. All of this is to not only make it more difficult for someone to buy or obtain a paper from somewhere, but also to help the students plan and work on the assignment over the semester rather than putting it off until the last minute.
And then, if necessary, there's always the Google trick.
Re:The teachers should... (Score:3, Interesting)
BUT, with 150+ students it is difficult, at best. You don't seem to understand the amount of time it takes just to have that that many students writing papers at the same time, the amount of time it takes just to run a simple Google search on suspicious phrases in papers, the amount of time it takes to document the source(s) of plagiarized papers, nor the amount of time it takes to then conference with parents.
Parents, in
Easy 90% fix. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just have the final exam include writing an impromptu essay about your class paper, and weight it enough that you'll fail the class if you don't understand your own paper.
Re:Easy 90% fix. (Score:5, Informative)
Yea, I have to agree with you. Talk about lazy students...how about pointing out the lazy teachers? I only had a few teachers up through high school and only ONE professor in college where these rip-off papers would have worked.
For one, my high school teachers quizzed us in two different ways. One, our ability to analyze a story, as in term papers, in-class essays, etc. Two, our ability to read a story. Usually this was simply a daily quiz on what we were supposed to have read the night before hitting several factual minor points that no summary would include. We were told this would be the case, and we were told ahead of time that we should read with a notebook open and take notes on anything we thought might be covered (we were free to use our notes on the quizzes). Some teachers that used this technique didn't want to waste class time so they'd give us the quizzes to take home. They still worked really well.
Some teachers didn't like this because they thought it overtly communicated mistrust to the students. Instead, they opted for the multiple draft process for term papers. No paper was simply written and handed in. It was drafted, corrected by the teacher with suggestions, handed back for rewrite. This process would usually go three or four times, and you'd be asked to analyze how your thesis applied to specific small events in the book, again, not covered by any summaries. By the time you were done writing the paper, if you had tried initially to avoid reading the book you eventually had to go into it pretty deeply. Using the custom-written papers on these rip-off sites would cost several thousand dollars, one custom paper per draft. (And how would you communicate with the paper writer what they were supposed to do? Would you fax in the first draft with all of the teacher's margin notes?)
Finally, there was a teacher who I did not personally have but taught in my high school that required students to compose one essay per reading that was more or less primarly composed of direct quotations strung together. This sounds silly, but it was a very good way of seeing if your thesis held water against the actual text of the book. At the beginning of his course, something like 90% of the theses handed in were rejected and rewritten because it would be painfully obvious that the student didn't have a clear idea of what the author was saying (after all, not a lot of interpretive wiggle room when it comes to using direct quotes).
Yet another technique, the in-class creative essay. The teacher would simply ask the students to write an essay that compared/contrasted some element of two specific readings. Try to do this based on cliff notes of both works and you'll see it doesn't really work that well...the success of this kind of essay requires a knowledge of the texts more intimate than summaries provide.
These are just the ways I've actually had teachers ensure that students read the material. I could probably think of a dozen more if say, oh I don't know...it was MY JOB. What exactly are we paying teachers for if they can't solve this fairly simple problem?
Having said that, I will say that I have used what I considered to be ethical techniques that my classmates did not consider ethical (though I doubt my professors would have had a problem with it). I found it works particularly well for philosophy courses for some reason, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work just as well in literature for most people. Before I read anything for a particular college level philosophy course, I'd go to the library and do some background research on the philosopher, what he thought, what he was trying to say, and then do the same kind of research on the particular work itself. This way, I'd know what all of the later philosophers, professors, and graduate students thought about various aspects of the work. I found this much research was often sufficient to gain a true understanding of the material without having to read the material itself, which was very useful when I was in a ti
Re:Easy 90% fix. (Score:3, Insightful)
But you're conflating two things here. I wouldn't argue against pre-reading some things (although that can bias your own reading) but I think you should in the end read the original as well. What's more, you say you never cracked the original book
Re:Easy 90% fix. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, of course the education industry isn't necessarily more or less moral than any other industry based on making money. I wasn't really addressing in my post the corruption (if you want to call it that...it seems a little strong though) in the system itself.
I've done some thinking about this because I the university I attended was a research institution that often rewarded professors for bringing in research funds and wouldn't punish them for being terrible professors. At first I expected nothing but
Re: Easy 90% fix. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Then all you have to do is read and understand the the paper you bought.
Don't ask them to regurgitate a summary of the paper; ask them to motivate something they purportedly said in their paper.
> Seems like this would be a lot easier than reading the entire book and doing an original paper.
Yeah, I qualified it as a 90% fix because I know it isn't perfect. But if you're clever you should be able to fine-tune it until cheating and still passing is almost as much work as not cheating is.
Meanwhile, you've tricked them into learning something about the subject matter in spite of there worst intentions...
Ulysses? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was just me, but then I ran accross this [dougshaw.com] guy who described reading Ulysses as "...like having a rib ripped out of my body, being beaten with it, raped with it, and then being forced to eat it," which about sums up my feelings for it.
In conclusion, if there are any schoolchildren out there, there is no course of academic plagarism whose punishment is worse than actually having to read Ulysses! For gods sake, don't let it kill again.
Re:Easy 90% fix. (Score:4, Insightful)
Back then, I read only books of interest to me (Ender's Game) not those that did not (The Scarlet Letter). English teacher's are well meaning but are fairly easy to fool. The first thing you do in writing a paper is say that the book epitomizes the prevailing thought of the time or represented "fill-in-the-blank" during a transitional period in "country-it-was-written-in"
I also found comparing any classic book to "The Great Gatsby" was effective.
Then throw in buzz phrases like "paradigm shift", "curious amalgam", etc. and you have got yourself an A paper.
We had to write a paper on a song by Bessie Smith. 2 hours later, I composed the entire paper without doing more than a google search worth of "research."
Not only did I get an A, the teacher suggested that I join the humanities because I "got it".
It shows that how you write is more important than what you write
Boo humanities, yay engineering!
--Joey
Re: Easy 90% fix. (Score:2)
> That's great in theory, but a little impractical. This system would require the teacher to re-read each student's previous paper (or maybe she has a really good memory), and then read the exam
Just write down an appropriate exam question for each student as you grade their papers.
> and then somehow maintain impartiality when grading.
That's tough no matter what you do.
> A better system would be to mandate severe penalties for cheating and make frequent examples of people. All too often I've
Re:Easy 90% fix. (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was at College we discovered a pretty simple system. Now the staff weren't the brightest --- in fact, most of the students in my year already had degrees, whereas some of the staff hadn't even finished High School. Great teachers, bad academics.
Anyway, we'd be given a book to read, prescribed by the syllabus. If the teacher was new on staff, chances were they hadn't read it. If they had been there longer and had read it, it would have been so long ago it didn't matter.
We came up with a guaranteed system to pass those book reviews.
The problem those of us with degrees had was that we simply couldn't do that. We were trained to go in boots and all, and none of those essays were hard. But funnily enough, the system worked better than hard work and thinking.
Great staff, though. In that situation, being around people with real life and trade experience was a worth a lot more than reading a book none of them clearly cared about.
That's what you get... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That's what you get... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's what you get... (Score:3)
The company you work for doesn't pay enough to get the good graduates.
You don't know how to work with people that are new to the workforce.
It doesn't matter. Skilled or inept, the company processes them all the same.
That's not the purpose... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's what you get... (Score:3, Insightful)
The era of small classes with the mentor leading the students through 'self-discovery' has been dead for centuries. Too bad, tuff.
Those who cheat now will fail and pay later. Again, too bad, tuff.
And getting good grades ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And getting good grades ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And that, dear friends, is how we get a recovering alcoholic, recovering cocaine addict, President.
When you say "back in the day" I am all but certain that you are a privileged, well-educated, white kid.
Sigh.
Let us not forget - UT Law rejected W (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's what you get... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I personally think it's a good chance to learn an extremely important skill (imho): forcing yourself to do something that you don't really want to do. After all, you're going to have to do at least a degree of that in almost any job you get.
Re:That's what you get... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. Those courses teach you one of the most important lessons in life: when someone forces you to do something you hate, how to avoid doing it anyway :).
Seriously, learning to cheat and slack off without getting caught is one of the most important skills in the working life. Given a chance, any company will simply work you to death - you are expendable labor to them, not worth the shit in your bowels. Once every last bit of juice has been crushed from your carcass, you're simply thrown aside to make room for fresh prey. To prevent this, learn how to give the absolute minimum effort required to stay on their payroll while seeming to work like crazy, to leech on them just like they are trying to leech on you. You owe them nothing, so give them nothing.
This is neither a joke or cynicism. It is simply the truth. You are likely to work for a company, and companies exist to make money, not to benefit their employees. Learn how to protect yourself from them, or prepare to be drained. And school is a place of learning, so...
Re:That's what you get... (Score:3, Insightful)
RonB
Re:That's what you get... (Score:5, Interesting)
So students should get to do only what they like? I suppose that's a point of view, but it doesn't greatly coincide with what I understand learning to involve.
The role of the pupil - and undergraduates are pupils - involves to a great extent submitting to the greater knowledge and understanding of the teacher. Maybe this comes as a surprise, but most teachers take their jobs seriously and don't assign tasks to pupils on a whim. If they want you to learn something, there is usually a reason for it. What you should do if you're a good pupil is buckle down and learn it.
Later on in graduate school or in employment when you're given some responsibility you can make decisions about what seems to make sense and what doesn't. By that time you'll have learnt enough to be trusted to make those decisions.
Gatsby vs Beardo (Score:5, Funny)
That way, when it's 1:06am and I'm up grading papers and slacking off reading
C'mon it's your only class! (Score:2, Insightful)
5 days?! (Score:2)
Papers be damned... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Papers be damned... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Papers be damned... (Score:5, Funny)
it's not really cheating (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:it's not really cheating (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:it's not really cheating (Score:3, Insightful)
Case in point: in college I wrote a paper for english class - which my professor liked so much that he circulated among the faculty. Several faculty members accused me of plagerism - because my work was very similar to another essay on the subject by a 'professional' author. I stuck to my guns and eventually they caved. I did not plagerize - but there was nothing I
Re:it's not really cheating (Score:3, Interesting)
He should read the book by himself, that's certain, but reading other people's analyses is OK, as long as he (the reader) does his own thinking and adds something of his own to the analysis (and does not steal other people's ideas). It should be, in my opinion, required at the university level to compare your opinions with those already published by the professional literature critics.
Re:it's not really cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
I read animal farm in high school and I thought it was a decent book. However, on my own I had *no* idea that it paralleled Russian history. Reading other people's analysis isn't cheating (according to me).
Re:it's not really cheating (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't cheating according to any reasonable definition of plagiarism, either -- if you give the sources. Include a complete "works referenced" list and you're not cheating, you're doing research. Of course, if your "other people" turn out just to be, say, your classmates, then your work will naturally suffer...
According to Tom Lehrer... (Score:3, Funny)
stealing from one person is plagerism
stealling from many is research
--once the rockets go up - who cares where they come down, that's not my department says Werner Von Brown
Best dupe ever (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Best dupe ever (Score:5, Funny)
This is not the worst kind. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is not the worst kind. (Score:4, Interesting)
I would bet that they don't really write individual papers. They possibly have a stash of papers ready to go, and just "individualise" them to some degree.
Remember...what they are offering to do is ethically questionable anyway.
Re:This is not the worst kind. (Score:3, Informative)
The pre-written one was apparently pretty badly written (arguably like your average high-school student would write it), and the custom one was written with such excellent language that it was very well done. However, as she points out, most students can't write nearly as well as this paper was written, so in fact using an indivi
Blatant plagiarism (Score:3, Interesting)
I never really trusted the guy, so I asked a couple of friends in his year to keep an eye out for the assignment (it had to be presented in class). Sure enough, after the pres
The half-cheating alternative (Score:5, Informative)
Rather than spending money on a paper, just run around the 'net picking up term papers on many and varied subjects. It's easy to do. Then trade with your friends and build up an immense collection. Finally, skim all the papers on your subject which you have collected, stitch together one term paper, edit it into your own personal style (even if this means it is less polished) and do minimal research to pad it out. You can do all of this research on the internet if you are careful, especially if your instructor does not demand that you provide citations for every last thing.
This will not work for a thesis, but if you don't understand your thesis, fuck you anyway.
This does take a lot longer than just buying a paper, but the risk with that is that you might be buying someone else's paper, and it might be detected. If you're willing to live with that risk, that's fine and dandy. Otherwise this should get you through it with a minimum of work expended, while producing a paper which will not show up as being copied, and even teaching you a little tiny bit about the subject matter.
I have never done this because I have never had a class which required a term paper which I found demanding. Then again I've mostly been taking applied arts classes recently, and they have had practical examinations.
Re:The half-cheating alternative (Score:5, Funny)
What the hell? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know all that droning on the professor did in class? All that stuff about "themes" and "tropes" and "methods of analysis?" Guess what. The professor has already given you the tools you need. Look at your notes, then look at the book. Then hit yourself in the head with either/both until you make the connection.
In the humanities, as long as your argument (you do have an argument, right? as in a thesis statement?) holds water and is even remotely logical and grounded in the book, you're golden. Oh, and at the end you'll actually understand the subject, more than "a tiny bit;" as in, you'll be able to apply the things you've learned elsewhere. I hear there are still some idealistic flower-people wandering about who think that's the whole point of college. Damn hippies.
Plagiarism is like cheating at solitaire. It's not even solitaire anymore. You might as well be throwing cards around randomly. Why the hell would you want to spend four years doing that?
Re:What the hell? (Score:2)
Cheating doesn't pay off in the long run, if you don't know what you're talking about, the chances are an employer will find out pretty fast.
finding cheats easy too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:finding cheats easy too (Score:3, Interesting)
I happened to notice that when the student printed it, she had left the URL on the bottom of the pages, she had just printed straight out of Internet Explorer.
I'm not sure which is worse:
1. The Plagerism
2. The fact that she was too lazy to see if the paper was complete
3. The fact that she didn't even try to cover
Re:finding cheats easy too (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:finding cheats easy too (Score:4, Funny)
Billy was to write a brief essay on some topic--I forget what. A few paragraphs. No big deal, right?
Billy didn't hand in the essay all term. Mrs. Smith allowed him repeated extensions, hoping to get Billy to turn at least something in. Billy performed poorly on tests, but survived some of the assignments, probably through the assistance of his fellow students.
Mrs. Smith fully expected Billy to wash out during the exam, but was willing to give him every opportunity to get his act together. Finally, on the last day of French class, Billy proudly presented his paper, then dashed off to his next lecture.
After the exam, Mrs. Smith sat down with Billy.
"Billy," said she, "I'm a little bit concerned about the paper you handed in."
"Really, Mrs. S? What...what seems to be the trouble?" Billy plays it cool.
"Well, I'm a bit worried that it might not be entirely your own work..."
"Why would you think that?"
"For one thing, the language seems awfully advanced in places. I'm wondering if you perhaps had some help for parts of it...?" Relief bloomed on Billy's face. He was saved. He had an out.
"Well, yes, Mrs. Smith. I did..um..have someone help me..put a few words down...but I pretty much wrote it."
"And then there's the second thing. The paper is in Spanish."
Better 95% fix (Score:5, Interesting)
Exams alone put too much weight on memorization and performance under pressure, rather than research and long-term thought.
Therefore, tell people ahead of time what the broad area is, though not the specific topic. Let them bring in a few pages of notes, but those notes have to be submitted with the exam.
Re:Better 95% fix (Score:2)
Re:Better 95% fix (Score:2)
I prefer to have assignments during the year to see for myself what I know and what I need to lear as well as pr
Re:Better 95% fix (Score:3, Interesting)
Doing programming exams on paper is pretty pointless, but that's a separate problem. Do them in a computer lab. Some examiners might want to cut off net access.
What could you do?
- here's a small problem. write a solution.
- here's a mid-size program. find the bug in it.
- here's a large program. add a new feature.
- here's a large problem. write a design document on how you'd solve it.
N
I bought this SlashDot post off a former poster (Score:5, Funny)
Write "Insightful" SlashDot posts for losers
...
Profit!
Turnitin.com (Score:2, Interesting)
Can someone tell me how a "green" to "red" rating can really tell a teacher whether or not you're che
You are BUYING them ? Really ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hordes of students are downloading them in huge amounts that allows the site owners to sell not papers themself, but advertisement only. How do they get it ? Easily. Students nowadays are writing they papers using computers, so it is not a problem to share their work. Also some sites provides more detailed information - the name of the college(s) and of the profess
It's regrettable... (Score:4, Insightful)
Word to the wise: this is how the real world works. No, it shouldn't be the way it goes, but it is. In upper division hard sciences and math, I pissed away more time googling for examples online that were like problems I was doing than really learning them sometimes. I paid for these times. Bide your time, do your work, but most importantly, carve out at least 5-10 hours a week for side projects you really enjoy. In an 18 credit semester where I was taking PChem, researching 20 hours a week, taking a 2 credit lab (read: 6 hours in lab, 4 hours writing lab reports, and I work quickly), I still had time to work on a software project, do sculpture, AND go out with my slacker buddies like it was my job. You. will. always. have. bullshit. work. Learn to live with it and quit bitching about the system; it's not some nebulous entity that's out to get you.
When I was in college... (Score:3, Interesting)
While this doesn't stop the people who pay to have one written for them, or the ones who do a fair amount of tailoring their "store-bought" essays, it at least helps eliminate the stupid cheaters.
I actually enjoy reading, so in my opinion, it's a waste of time and money to buy your reports when you learn so much more by doing it yourself. Not to mention the fact that you know you earned your grade honestly.
I actually feel sorry for the people who short themselves by not doing the work themselves.
It may very well be time to re-evaluate... (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, the glut of colleges in the US makes attending one the duty of anyone who wants a decent job. Students go to college out of a perceived need for the result, so small wonder that most of them want to do as little as possible in their time there.
In one sense it mimics the situation in east Asia where companies will hire any student who's gone through a good college; once you make it there, it behooves you to do just enough work to graduate, and spend the rest of the time unwinding (ok, partying) from the stress of having had to pass the entrance exams. Take the entrance exams out of the equation and you still pretty much have the same deal -- kids coming out of high school with more freedom but even less sense of purpose.
From my college experience, it's apparent that students in liberal arts majors (not sciences or engineering -- class by themselves there) really have to try to fail, in order to fail. That doesn't mean self-sabotage so much as willful negligence of requirements. It's my humble opinion that failure to attend class with semi-regularity, to turn in homework at all (not necessarily on time), and to be in class on exam days really requires a conscious effort. More than likely its conscious reallocation of time and resources to such noble pursuits as binge drinking or playing Everquest.
I think it could be time to nudge the bar of standards up, and get a handle on which students actually care enough to do the work. If there wasn't this giant push for everyone to complete college, the smaller number of college-educated people could actually make decent salaries. We've kind of lost the incentive -- now instead of going to college to get good jobs, we go to college to not get bad jobs. Hell, I'm going to grad school to get a good job. I often feel that I'm wasting my youth on it, but being as free of the machine as possible is a pretty strong motivator.
My case for bringing apprenticeship back and giving it some respect is still fairly strong. However, overcoming the five-year itch culture is an entirely different matter which would fill volumes.
cheating (Score:5, Interesting)
One case in particular comes to mind afew years back where we set them an on-line tutorial to go through and answer some questions at the end. The questions varied, so this particular group spent DAYS going through the exercise and screen dumping all possible answers to the question, so they could answer any question given as an assignment. If they had just done the task given, it would only have taken them a few hours! I see similar examples all the time of students spending more time trying to "beat" the system, rather than just "extracting the digit" and getting on with it.
Re:cheating (Score:5, Interesting)
- One girl got so carried away copying somebody else's problem sheet answers she copied the name off the top as well and handed it in with the other girl's name on it
- For another problem sheet, several of the questions had been changed from the previous year's version. About 25% of the year still copied verbatim the answers from papers they got from people in the year above us, without even checking the questions.
These people are probably running an oil refinery near you right now. Be afraid.
Re:cheating (Score:4, Informative)
It amazes me that people bother paying for such education in the first place! I mean, if you're not here to learn, why bother coming?
I also teach, and my solution to cheating is to allow students to bring in 1 sheet of notes to tests. Write anything you want on it. I've noticed that many students spend a lot of time preparing that sheet than actually studying---but while preparing the sheet, they tend to read through the material, etc., and during the exam, tend not to use that sheet ('cause I'd never ask questions that just require a simple right-out-of-the-book answer).
Why bother cheating? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe the answer... (Score:3, Interesting)
I did a degree in Computer Science, the only essays we had were on topics that were either relevant to that point in time, or were on lectures we had attended. Getting anything close online would have been next to impossible...
Thoughts anyone?
Just do what we do... (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem is however I once was looking up something on the Windows 2000 architecture and noticed a site had the same word for word definition of "kernel" as my book. So I googled the exact phrase.
Seems there were 100+ sites using the same exact definition. Well, by looking at the pages I noticed they all had the same author. Basically the page was on 100+ free hosts (and a few paid hosts).
Well, I wondered who copied it first. Was the book the original or the website? After further investigation I found out our books are made in India. Likely it was the same person writing the book and decided to make a web page out of his work. Then I stumbled across someone who claimed to work for the company writing the books and he said the deadline for the books is 20 days!
You must write a book on Cisco routers in 20 days too! Well, Sybex should sue the book writers because they not only stole text but diagrams right from their CCNA texts. Our Novell Netware book said that ARP was responsible for name-to-ip address resolution too!
Extra mod points to the person who can guess which crappy school I'm stuck at...
Hint: The text books are written by NIIT.
Copyright Infringement (Score:3, Insightful)
erosion of quality (Score:5, Interesting)
If you do choose to give students freedom in choosing paper topics, which I prefer, at least know your students and their work. Although it can be more problematic in large survey/lecture classes, somebody should know them and their abilities - you, TA, GSI, somebody. Again, the relevance of the paper to at least some of the ideas discussed in class is an obvious tip-off, as is a comparison to the students' interests exhibited in previously submitted work. It's not hard to spot a purchased paper, at all, if the professor/teacher is doing their job of teaching properly. 'Book reports' and cliffs' notes at the university level? Pah.
All of which brings me to the point of my rant - this kind of stuff only happens at institutions that employ crap teachers. Not necessarily lousy universities, but ones that permit shoddy, sub-standard teachers who should be teaching elementary-school english to pose and parade as 'professors'. Even with a 4/4 brutal teaching load at a large public institution, this kind of thing is simply a non-issue for teachers that actually work at it, rather than treating academia as if it were some sort of sinecure. It's an ivory tower only if you let it be, and if purchased essays are proliferating throughout academia, it reflects far worse on the professors who are too thick and lazy to preclude such submissions (or identify them, without google or a paid service, on the strength of their knowledge of the student and his/her work), and the institutions employing them, than students, of whom there will always be a few willing to try and cheat their way around substandard interest, intellect, or discipline. /rant.
Re:erosion of quality (Score:3, Insightful)
Learning has no cheats (Score:3, Insightful)
Drafts and Oral Examinations (Score:5, Interesting)
One professor had an even more radical method: he would only allow students to write about books that had just appeared, and the students had to structure their essays around specific questions that the professor posed. Impossible to get around this, unless you hire someone to write it to spec.
cheers, potor
Re:Drafts and Oral Examinations (Score:4, Funny)
Politicians do it all the time.
Max
Re:Drafts and Oral Examinations (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever sat an oral examination? The point is not to 'riff on a theme', but rather to be pushed to the point of your ignorance, which is basically how an oral grade is determined.
When a student is examined orally concerning a paper, the prof goes well beyond questions of content: the arguments are extended into new terrain, research methods are inquired into, me
Actually... (Score:3, Insightful)
turnitin.com: wholesale copyright infringement (Score:3, Funny)
All work submitted to Turnitin is checked against three databases of content:
[...]
3. Millions of student papers already submitted to Turnitin.
So the teachers commit copyright infringement by submitting their students' works to turnitin and turnitin commits grand scale copyright infringement by copying, preserving and capitalising on "millions of student papers" without the students' permission. Great business!
Re:turnitin.com: wholesale copyright infringement (Score:3, Interesting)
By submitting their papers to Turnitin, the students agree to allow Turnitin to use their papers in such a manner.
Furthermore, you can't view any papers submitted to Turnitin unless you are the author, you are the author's teacher, or you
Here is what I used to do (Score:3, Interesting)
So when the paper's due date had enough time to let me pull this little prank... it was normally never returned to me.
A few times the teacher exempt me from what was a terrible paper, simply because they never got it back from the librarian running the plagarism check.
Sometimes my name would be on top of the line copies, sometimes on the bottom, sometimes even in the HTML (when I wanted to really tick them off).
Other times I would break up my paper, and post a sentence on each page.
No rule against doing stuff like this. And it's a boatload of fun knowing your wasting someone's time!
my last english (Score:3, Funny)
College, on the other hand, was much more interesting. We read Fight Club and the Last American Man, watched Family Guy, etc and plotted their significance in society.
Really a fascinating class.
A funny story... (Score:3, Funny)
This one time he was helping some students with their code, and was impressed how they had done it.
That is, until he realized it was his code! Apparently someone had stolen his code from when he had taken it and kept it archived for later.
Cheating via g/f or b/f (Score:3, Funny)
Love makes people do strange (and unethical) things.
I once wrote all of the essays for a g/f in a college-level English class. I was proud of them. They were really good - too good. One time, her laziness saved her from being caught: she skipped a class after having turned in one of my best efforts, and, luckily, therefore missed having to read it aloud to the rest of the class. I'd put too many words in that she didn't know and couldn't pronounce properly. The close call told me I had to dumb my stuff down a bit.
How the teacher never caught on, I'll never know, though it may have had something to do with how hot she was. There are certainly many ways to catch this kind of thing (as the above discussions show). He gave her an A+ and a glowing recommendation that helped her to transfer to a better college. I felt bad about aiding and abetting. That g/f is long gone, but I believe her lack of a good foundation in English eventually caught up with her (I'm now married to someone who'd not have needed nor would have sought such help).
turnitin.com is illegal (Score:3, Interesting)
When a teacher submits a paper to turnitin.com the paper is archived indefinitely in their database for comparison to future paper submissions. In nearly all cases this is done without the student's knowledge or permission, which violates that student's copyrights. Remember, YOU own the rights to any school papers that you create, even if your only purpose in writing the paper is to fulfill a class assignment. There are certain instances in which a school will require a student to sign an intellectual property rights waver that gives up the copyrights on anything that they create to the school, but this happens almost exclusively with university graduate students - not the undergrads and highschoolers that turnitin.com is aimed at. Turnitin.com is using your copyrighted material for commercial purposes without your permission.
All copyright issues aside, use of turnitin.com also violates FERPA, which is a federal law prohibiting schools from sharing student's records, coursework, or pretty much anything else with anyone outside the school system (like, say, a for-profit corporation) without the student's explicit permission. The entire turnitin.com company is based around violating federal law.
Re:turnitin.com is illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
You might be right in some cases, but most schools don't do this. Turnitin.com actually encourages schools to not inform students. And in any case, it's very questionable whether or not a public school can compel students to sign a FERPA waver.
"And I know, first hand, that some are removing all identifying information except a unigue ID from the essays."
Sorry, but simply stripping off i
Re:Studying (Score:2, Interesting)
We could take languages as an example: Is it possible to claim to know a foreign language just because you know of several good and reliable dictionaries and grammars on the Internet? Or lo
Re:Studying (Score:3)
Too bad they don't have the general knowledge required to interpret the information they're searching for. Having some general knowledge will help you search faster, search more relevant and interpret the data you're getting back better.
Yes, I know it sucks to learn dates and such, but in the end, you'll be better off. If only because you learn to stuff data into your brain and retrieve it efficient
Re:Studying (Score:3, Insightful)
Also having a good amount of readily available knowledge *in your head* makes it easier for you to decide or do a lot of things instantaneously, etc.
Memorizng stuff will always have its value.
Re:Studying (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, studying as in "learn information", but not studying as in "understanding difficult concepts". And to decide what to trust and not is not in itself an easy subject. Even an encyc
Re:Studying (Score:5, Insightful)
There was an argument in a report I read recently that as the internet becomes more prevaliant that studying as a whole will become less important as information will be avialable at your finger tips. The skills that will become more useful are the ability to search effeciently and work out which sources you can trust. Of course studying helps develop these skills but why should I remeber PI to 8 decimial places when I can look it up quicker?
Oh, I don't know, maybe so you don't make an utter fool out of yourself when you write to your significant other? Or, failing that (this is Slashdot ;) ), so you can hold interesting conversations without having to go to Google every third sentence to find out what your friend is talking about?
Re:Studying (Score:3, Insightful)
The Internet is fine as a resource if all you need to perform your task is knowledge regurgitation (maybe just following Howto's or whatever) but if you need to do something even a little creative you need to know about what you're doing first. Seems fairly obvious to me.
Re:Studying (Score:2)
Re:Studying (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah because the derivative of a constant function is so hard to do in your head.
Re:why papers (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it strange that all the posts making this point are badly written and badly spelt? Just by making the post the question they pose is answered.
Just in case the poster doesn't get it: being made to read a book, think critically about it and then write a paper about it develops useful skills that you don't learn studying chemistry. It also helps to prevent "boring scientist" syndrome.
Re:I write term papers for people (Score:4, Interesting)
I submitted a paper I wrote to a site... (Score:3, Interesting)
Being the good student, I attacked this paper with vigor, and spent about a week on it, gathering statistics, charts and whatnot. I scored an 'A' since it was overkill for a Freshman/Sophomore course.
Well, I was a C.S. major and the web was just starting to hit full stride, and I heard this commentator talking about a web site called 'School Sucks' (www.schoolsucks.com) which gathered research papers for people to
Re:Don't forget historical signifigance (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah. That, you see, defines our differences pretty well. Where you se an "ancient usless professor", I see a human being with much more experience than I, who probably has a lot of knowledge and wisdom to impart - assuming, of course, I can get my ego out of the way and allow it to happen.
Here's a rule of thumb for you: assume that everybody else is smarter than you, an