The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. Does that last sentence sound a little too good be be a "Chris Young original?" Would you believe that it was written by a freshmen oral English student? I wouldn't either... and so our moral dilemma begins.
The semester has come to an end, and I gave my freshmen students what I thought would be an easy final examination. They had a week to write an original speech (they could pick 1 of 5 topics) that was 1:00 - 1:30 long, with the only stipulation being that if they cheated or copied their speech from the internet they would get a zero. The final exam is worth 70% of their course grade, so if they get a zero, they will fail the course.
Meet Penny. She is a bright student, frequently participates in class, and often comes to office hours. Sadly, Penny copied about 50% of her speech from the internet. According to the rules of the assignment, Penny should get a zero for her final exam, and thus fail the course. But, it turns out that Penny comes from a very poor family. If she fails my class (it would be the only class she would fail) she will not be eligible to get the scholarship that is helping her to be able to afford school. So what would you do? Fail her as the assignment stipulates and cost her the scholarship? Or bend the rules based on her circumstances? I'll give you guys a few days to answer in the "comments" section, then I post what I decided to do. Good luck!
I would allow her to redo the speech, but it would have to be five to seven minutes long. I would choose the topic (honesty? cheating? second chances?), and the maximum score she could earn would be much lower than 100%. The consequences have to be enough to (1) not punish those who followed the rules and (2) not encourage others to do the same next semester. Yet the thought of one mistake, consciously made or not, completely derailing this young woman's life - wow. Good luck, friend!
ReplyDeleteA similar thing happened to me when I was teaching, ironically, in Africa. I brought the student in for a one on one discussion about how to paraphrase appropriately and gave him an additional assignment of writing a paper about plagiarism and also redoing the original assignment in the correct way. I am surprised that even students in the US cannot grasp the concept of original research / writing. So many think that if they cite the source they can copy large amounts of text. Personally, I think this could be a good learning experience for your student and the consequences you describe are too severe for a first time offense.... Myke
ReplyDeleteLet her make it up with an even longer speech. Best grade she could acheive would be less than 80%
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