how would you answer?

With the aid of turnitin.com, I caught a number of students in my large class who plagiarized an ungraded book comment assignment.  They were given a zero on the assignment and a formal letter of discipline describing specifically what they did and were and told that a copy of the discipline letter would be forwarded to the dean.  University policy is that if there is no other academic dishonesty on their record, no further action is taken and these letters are not part of the student’s permanent record, no notation is made on the transcript, and the records are generally covered by the confidentiality laws.

One student whose dishonesty was particularly egregious — involving re-submitting a paper that had been submitted by another student in a previous semester (an act I consider to indicate a strong likelihood of other undetected offenses) — was most concerned about whether this would affect her applications to a medical professional program.   I told her at the time that I personally would not want a medical professional treating me who had a habit of cheating her way through school, but clearly and honestly explained the confidentiality policy to her, repeatedly.

Now I get a note from her.  She has to decide whether to check yes or no to a question about whether she has ever engaged in misconduct.  She says “I would never lie” on the application “so if this is info they will have access to I will check yes” but fears that being honest about her dishonesty (if you get my drift) will hurt her application chances (as perhaps it ought to).   As far as I know “they” will not have access to the information, but it is also true that she has been formally disciplined for misconduct.

What would you say to her?  I’m thinking of saying: “Isn’t the honest answer to the question yes?”   But I sort of feel like saying: So you think dishonesty only counts if people know about it?

In her defense (and that of the other students who cheated), the assignment was ungraded, you just had to do it, which led them to console themselves that it did not matter much.  But back on the first hand, the syllabus clearly stated that cheating on the ungraded assignments would be prosecuted as plagiarism.

rite of passage

I spent the weekend at my son’s college graduation.  My last child is now more or less launched.  The graduation ceremony was very well done.  The best part: The graduates processed across the campus to the arena in their regalia led by a bagpipe ensemble (about 20 pipers).  The bagpipes were way cool.  The faculty lined up along the parade route, so the graduates were marching past their professors and being greeted and congratulated as they marched.  My son and his girlfriend both said this was the best part of the graduation.  What a wonderful rite!  Graduations at small colleges are much more meaningful affairs.  I have been at Big State University for nearly 30 years and have never once attended an undergraduate graduation, nor even been asked to attend.   Our graduation is a huge impersonal cattle call.  I love rituals and think we ought to all line up and march around the campus once a year in our regalia, but I can’t get anyone to agree with me.

not blogged

Things I’ve been doing that did not seem bloggable:

1. Writing official letters of discipline for plagiarism cases. I could write a blog about this, but we all know about the problem and it just depresses us.

2. Reading graduate papers. Work, not unpleasant, not bloggable as not anonymous. Could be combined with my own writing trauma into some sort of essay about writing, but at this point I think others are doing it better.

3. Pulling up garlic mustard. This might be bloggable, as I have to figure out what to do with 5 bags of plants that cannot be sent to the land fill and are dangerous to just leave lying around in your yard. Why 5 bags? Because I just this spring learned that a big patch of my back yard has been taken over by it. But do any of the rest of you care about garlic mustard? Is this really a topic for a sociology blog?

4. Misc family things: consulting with my son who is graduating and moving into his first apartment, talking to my housebound mother for 30-60 minutes on the phone everyday, and also less often to my father who is also having health issues, preparing for relatives’ visit to said son’s graduation, attending graduation parties for other young people.

5. Sunday school teaching. Very funny incident that is only funny to liberal Christians: conservative Christians would be appalled that it happened at all, and non-Christians would find the whole thing just weird. Only sociology if it turns into a reflection on the sociology of different kinds of religion.

6. (Edit).  I forgot getting up at 5:30 (I’m not a morning person) to do a public radio interview.  Do you suppose this is what Michael Burawoy had in mind?

teaching question #2

Is there a way I can see something different on my laptop screen than what is projected onto the lecture screen? I use “bad” PowerPoint slides with too many words because I don’t have the personal organizational capacity to keep track of lecture notes separately from slides, so my slides double as my notes. If I could project something different than what I’m looking at on the laptop, I’d be set. Windows XP can handle two monitors, is there a way to make that work for this purpose? What I’d really like is to be able to project the slide show on one screen and look at the notes for each slide on the other. Also, is there some other slide show software that would work better like this (assuming I could solve the monitor problem) than PPT?

teaching question #1

How do you ask questions that guide a student discussion? I realize I’m a little old to be asking this question, but I’ve realized this is a teaching skill I don’t have. I know how to lecture and tell students what I want them to know. I know how to respond to student questions in interesting ways. I know how to run a class so students are comfortable talking and asking questions. I know how to facilitate and organize a discussion pulling together questions/comments initiated by students. I know how to ask good questions of someone who has just presented a paper in process. But I don’t know how to think about planning discussions in advance for a class session. I don’t know how to prepare to ask questions that elicit somewhat predictable answers that will help students “discover” the point you want them to learn or lead them to talk their way into a point you want them to get to, or that will encourage them to dig more deeply into a topic. I get the impression that some teachers do this. Is that right? I don’t think I learned this by watching when I was young because I did not go to that kind of schools. Can you recommend “how to teach” resources for this particular skill? Do you have tips or techniques?

getting credit

This is about giving academic credit on an independent study basis for doing service or work for a community or political organization, where the faculty member is doing this as an optional overload.  It is not about official service-learning courses, nor about official internships that are part of a coherent program.  A number of organizations set up programs where students get academic credit for working for them through the mechanism of an independent study.  Recent requests have raised ethical issues for me, and I thought this might be a good topic for more general discussion and reflection.  The ethical issues such arrangements raise are both academic and political.  Here’s my thinking:

disadvantage

I’ve been working with an undergraduate, a senior. She is African American, from a poor family. None of her elders went to college, although a few cousins are doing it. She graduated at the top of her class in an inner-city high school, where she says she never had to do any work to make As. Her writing is markedly deficient compared to the predominantly-affluent predominantly-privileged students here, and she struggles academically.