Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Cheating and collaboration: see them care less

Just when I thought the semester was over, the other tutor came to me to ask me to cross-mark a paper for her. The reason for this is that the student has complained about her mark. The reason that the student has complained about her mark is that this student claims that she worked together with a friend on this paper, that they submitted identical papers, but her friend (who is in my class) got a better mark than she did. And obviously this is unfair.

And instead of throwing the book at her (or at least the bit of the book that says you may not discuss your assignments with other students and your answers must be all your own work), the other tutor wants me to mark this student's paper so that the mark ends up being in line with what the other student got.

Naturally I was slacked off about this. Very slacked off, even. But the other tutor says that her student refuses to give us the name of the person from my class who was involved, and the mistakes in this paper I am supposed to be cross-marking are so generic that I can't recognise similarities with any one other student's paper in particular. Plus, I have returned all my students' papers and classes are over for the semester, so I can't search through them all again to find the culprit.

And the other tutor doesn't want to penalise her student for cheating, no matter what arguments I use to try and convince her she should.

I am completely at a loss. And I am not cross-marking this paper. (Although I am tempted to go through and take more marks off where possible.)

4 Comments:

Lucy said...

wow. Can you hand the student over to scarylecturer to intimidate? Or is he off on holidays already? How can the other tutor not want to fail the student? (Then hopefully, their twisted sense of justice would at least induce them to dob on the student in your class)

(also, I have trouble imagining you annoyed at this student when you use the phrase "slacked off"; I just get a mental image of you being too lazy to care :) )

StyleyGeek said...

Is "slacked off" only used in NZ? It's like "pissed off" only maybe not quite as strong.

Following your suggestions, I did dob the student in to ScaryLecturer this afternoon. I had been not doing so because it felt a bit like dobbing in the other tutor for not doing her job. But you know? Fuck it. She wasn't doing her job.

ScaryLecturer said, "Oh yes, I know about that. That student is a manipulative little bitch. Better just not to get involved."

So manipulative little bitches get to cheat and get away with it?

Gah!

Unknown said...

oh super. But at least you don't have the responsibility any longer.

This along with your post above sound so super fricking annoying. I'm really sorry.

Unknown said...
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