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I don't think being pissed at 28/108 students is a valid excuse for acting pissed at everyone. That is a major professional flaw and a post on how you plan to c

I don't think being pissed at 28/108 students is a valid excuse for acting pissed at everyone. That is a major professional flaw and a post on how you plan to control your emotion may be appreciated by future students. I have had professors that had me write huge essays and then proceeded to just put a huge ass check and never really read past the first paragraph. If I plagiarized and cited my frustration with all those other professors just glossing over hours and hours of my work, would you accept that excuse? I guess what I am tryin to say is that your 80 students who did not cheat have as much right to be pissed at you as your right to be pissed at the 28 students that did cheat. As for the evals, I always found them to be kind of a joke and would agree that the better grades you assigned, better your ratings would be. As for me, I was too lazy to bubble in stuff.

jackpirate 15y ago
>> That is a major professional flaw and a post on how you plan to control your emotion may be appreciated by future students. I think he is readily admitting this is a major flaw, and he plans on controlling his emotions in the future by not obsessing about cheating. This is probably not the ideal response, but it is very human, and you have to give him props for admitting his weaknesses.
- tripzilch 15y ago
  > you have to give him props for admitting his weaknesses. Um, no. No props for simply admitting his weaknesses. Props are for succeeding in controlling them, and for having shown that one actually does more than just going "look at these weaknesses in me these students are triggering in me with their terrible behaviours". Props for just admitting weaknesses has a good chance of making people go complacent and "look, I'm just not good at XYZ and therefore I have to be an asshole", instead of working to improve.
  - intended 15y ago
    Judging someone on their strengths and weakness are probably done best after we've walked a mile in their shoes. This would be appropriate to anyone and everyone who is using a judgement here.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  What this, and indeed the whole monologue, emphasises for me is that the teachers should probably not be involved in the process of disciplining students. It's wasting their time and decreasing their effectiveness. Create a position (or probably department) for quality control. Automatically send "you plagiarised, warning" letters to the student and the person who paid for the course if the submitted work receives a score above X threshold for plagiarism (this threshold to be chosen by an inter-university body and preferably standardised across universities). Obviously a student would be able to appeal and have proper analysis done by a department member. A second warning without appeal would get a student a P grade for "admitted plagiarism". This way the teacher just teaches, just marks the work submitted and the administrative duty of notifying students that their plagiarism has been spotted is separated and codified.
  - Lewisham 15y ago
    Yes, this is probably the correct thing to do. Unfortunately, most universities are too cash-strapped for such a thing.
    - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
      They're paying uni professors/lecturers to do admin work that they could pay a fraction of the same amount to have done. I know that in practice it's more complex than this - for example here it only works because the lecturer is not actually being paid by the hour; they're still under-utilising their lecturers.
Panos 15y ago
I see your point. But consider the following: these numbers are for the students that admitted cheating. There was a significant number of other assignments for which I suspected cheating but I did not have enough evidence. So, I erred on the side of having false negatives in the accusations, rather than false positives. Now, if you are teaching a class where you have some suspicion that half of the students have cheated, one way or another, the attitude changes. I wish I could be a cold, rational, emotionless professional, and ignore this feeling altogether. Unfortunately, I am a human. And I felt that I am teaching a class full of kids that come just for the grade, and not for learning. And I am kind of disappointed that nyustern still demonstrates this grade-seeking attitude: He learned in the class, he appreciated my attitude in the lectures but his main complaint was that I was not approachable outside the class, and outside office hours? And that, out of all things, did not return his smiles? Hint: at 5pm, after 11 hours of work, 3 hours of lecturing, I am tired, mentally exhausted and I want to go and get some rest.
- badclient 15y ago
  Fair nuff. Though each time you point out your former student's grade seeking tendencies, you are just highlighting the disconnect between you and your students. Many of us would love the utopian dream of going to class to learn without worrying about grades, but at the end of the day, grades matter. May be a lot, even. It is why you care about folks plagiarizing. It is why your former student cares about his grades. Again, I don't think you would take kindly to a student who plagiarized complain that you are still stuck up about that one incident when the student has demonstrated he's learned a buncha stuff from your class that is as reflective of him as the plagiarizing.
- holdenc 15y ago
  It's good that you've found a career that will tolerate your unapologetic selfishness, whining and indifference. All of these things will surely limit your success outside academia.
  - donmanguno 15y ago
    This guy's a cheater
btilly 15y ago
I don't think being pissed at 28/108 students is a valid excuse for acting pissed at everyone. That is a major professional flaw and a post on how you plan to control your emotion may be appreciated by future students. FYI professionals are humans first and professionals second. If think that professionals can easily turn off how they are feeling and always act properly, then I conclude that you have little understanding of humans and little experience of how professionals act. Rather than see this as a flaw, I see this self-awareness as something to compliment the professor on. OF COURSE spending so much time dealing with unpleasantness towards students is going to affect any human's mood towards the class. That's human nature. But now that the professor is armed with an awareness of this fact, it will be easier to address the underlying cause. I know that you do not agree with me. But hopefully after you have a few decades of experience in a professional environment, and possibly experience as a spouse and parent as well, you'll learn the truth of what I say.
- badclient 15y ago
  It goes both ways. Are you willing to listen to the many excuses for why each student may have plagiarized and potentially extend the same they-are-human-too sympathies?
  - btilly 15y ago
    I understand why the students cheat. However it is possible to be in their positions and not cheat. I don't want to have co-workers who cheat. I therefore would like to see the book thrown at them so that they learn not to cheat. If they truly had no choice about cheating, then I'd show more sympathy. But they do. By contrast we truly don't get to choose how we as humans are emotionally wired.
    - detst 15y ago
      > By contrast we truly don't get to choose how we as humans are emotionally wired. What a lame excuse. He still had as much of a choice in being a dick as the students had in cheating. Even under his own account of the office-hours incident, he was very inconsiderate and doesn't seem to understand it. If you have office hours, know there will be many students showing up on this particular day, and yet you aren't prepared with food, compound that by not bothering to explain that you need to eat now, that's a dick move, without excuse and explains the evaluations. His fault, not the students.
sliverstorm 15y ago
Imagine yourself living in a small colony of 109 individuals, 108 plus yourself. At least 25%, or one in four, want to kill you, and you don't know who they are. Would you act friendly, trusting, kind and natural around everyone because up to 75% of them do not deserve your fear and suspicion? It is perhaps a bit of an extreme thought experiment, but I think it illustrates handily how the human mind reacts in this kind of situation.
- Groxx 15y ago
  In non-life-or-death situations, people endure quite a large amount of discomfort to achieve other goals. But a high-enough level of discomfort kills people. Does this mean the ones enduring small amounts are irrational? Reducto-ad-absurdum is a proof only when it takes into account everything in the argument. In life-or-death examples, other normally-included portions are dropped, making the argument something else entirely. It's just a straw-man attempt, not a valid point.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    It's not a straw-man. I have attempted to refute nothing. I was merely asking my parent to consider how he might behave in such a situation. I used a different situation, it is true, but only because I have found being on the instructional end of cheating feels very different than you might imagine, so I guessed my parent was not familiar with it.
    - Groxx 15y ago
      You attempted to refute the claim that people should control themselves better in such situations. And you did so very clearly, by inferring that spreading the mood to the 75% was perfectly logical. As a student who has not cheated, but has had to sit through countless lectures about cheating, and a few where large portions of the class did, I ask you and (other?) teachers this question: to whom are you teaching? The ones who are learning, or the ones who are cheating? I understand that you're stuck with both, but either find motivation in the successes or consider another line of work - it's part of the job. Otherwise you're screwing the ones who did the right thing.
pmb 15y ago
Have you ever talked to a group in which more than a quarter were actively hostile and disinterested? It poisons the room. It's not "logical" that it should do that, but it is an empirical fact that it does.
yters 15y ago
The cheaters to non cheaters ration should be 0/108. If 80 of the students are allowing 28 other students to cheat, I'd be definitely pissed off at them.

jackpirate 15y ago

>> That is a major professional flaw and a post on how you plan to control your emotion may be appreciated by future students. I think he is readily admitting this is a major flaw, and he plans on controlling his emotions in the future by not obsessing about cheating. This is probably not the ideal response, but it is very human, and you have to give him props for admitting his weaknesses.

tripzilch 15y ago
> you have to give him props for admitting his weaknesses. Um, no. No props for simply admitting his weaknesses. Props are for succeeding in controlling them, and for having shown that one actually does more than just going "look at these weaknesses in me these students are triggering in me with their terrible behaviours". Props for just admitting weaknesses has a good chance of making people go complacent and "look, I'm just not good at XYZ and therefore I have to be an asshole", instead of working to improve.
- intended 15y ago
  Judging someone on their strengths and weakness are probably done best after we've walked a mile in their shoes. This would be appropriate to anyone and everyone who is using a judgement here.
pbhjpbhj 15y ago
What this, and indeed the whole monologue, emphasises for me is that the teachers should probably not be involved in the process of disciplining students. It's wasting their time and decreasing their effectiveness. Create a position (or probably department) for quality control. Automatically send "you plagiarised, warning" letters to the student and the person who paid for the course if the submitted work receives a score above X threshold for plagiarism (this threshold to be chosen by an inter-university body and preferably standardised across universities). Obviously a student would be able to appeal and have proper analysis done by a department member. A second warning without appeal would get a student a P grade for "admitted plagiarism". This way the teacher just teaches, just marks the work submitted and the administrative duty of notifying students that their plagiarism has been spotted is separated and codified.
- Lewisham 15y ago
  Yes, this is probably the correct thing to do. Unfortunately, most universities are too cash-strapped for such a thing.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    They're paying uni professors/lecturers to do admin work that they could pay a fraction of the same amount to have done. I know that in practice it's more complex than this - for example here it only works because the lecturer is not actually being paid by the hour; they're still under-utilising their lecturers.

Panos 15y ago

I see your point. But consider the following: these numbers are for the students that admitted cheating. There was a significant number of other assignments for which I suspected cheating but I did not have enough evidence. So, I erred on the side of having false negatives in the accusations, rather than false positives. Now, if you are teaching a class where you have some suspicion that half of the students have cheated, one way or another, the attitude changes. I wish I could be a cold, rational, emotionless professional, and ignore this feeling altogether. Unfortunately, I am a human. And I felt that I am teaching a class full of kids that come just for the grade, and not for learning. And I am kind of disappointed that nyustern still demonstrates this grade-seeking attitude: He learned in the class, he appreciated my attitude in the lectures but his main complaint was that I was not approachable outside the class, and outside office hours? And that, out of all things, did not return his smiles? Hint: at 5pm, after 11 hours of work, 3 hours of lecturing, I am tired, mentally exhausted and I want to go and get some rest.

badclient 15y ago
Fair nuff. Though each time you point out your former student's grade seeking tendencies, you are just highlighting the disconnect between you and your students. Many of us would love the utopian dream of going to class to learn without worrying about grades, but at the end of the day, grades matter. May be a lot, even. It is why you care about folks plagiarizing. It is why your former student cares about his grades. Again, I don't think you would take kindly to a student who plagiarized complain that you are still stuck up about that one incident when the student has demonstrated he's learned a buncha stuff from your class that is as reflective of him as the plagiarizing.
holdenc 15y ago
It's good that you've found a career that will tolerate your unapologetic selfishness, whining and indifference. All of these things will surely limit your success outside academia.
- donmanguno 15y ago
  This guy's a cheater

btilly 15y ago

I don't think being pissed at 28/108 students is a valid excuse for acting pissed at everyone. That is a major professional flaw and a post on how you plan to control your emotion may be appreciated by future students. FYI professionals are humans first and professionals second. If think that professionals can easily turn off how they are feeling and always act properly, then I conclude that you have little understanding of humans and little experience of how professionals act. Rather than see this as a flaw, I see this self-awareness as something to compliment the professor on. OF COURSE spending so much time dealing with unpleasantness towards students is going to affect any human's mood towards the class. That's human nature. But now that the professor is armed with an awareness of this fact, it will be easier to address the underlying cause. I know that you do not agree with me. But hopefully after you have a few decades of experience in a professional environment, and possibly experience as a spouse and parent as well, you'll learn the truth of what I say.

badclient 15y ago
It goes both ways. Are you willing to listen to the many excuses for why each student may have plagiarized and potentially extend the same they-are-human-too sympathies?
- btilly 15y ago
  I understand why the students cheat. However it is possible to be in their positions and not cheat. I don't want to have co-workers who cheat. I therefore would like to see the book thrown at them so that they learn not to cheat. If they truly had no choice about cheating, then I'd show more sympathy. But they do. By contrast we truly don't get to choose how we as humans are emotionally wired.
  - detst 15y ago
    > By contrast we truly don't get to choose how we as humans are emotionally wired. What a lame excuse. He still had as much of a choice in being a dick as the students had in cheating. Even under his own account of the office-hours incident, he was very inconsiderate and doesn't seem to understand it. If you have office hours, know there will be many students showing up on this particular day, and yet you aren't prepared with food, compound that by not bothering to explain that you need to eat now, that's a dick move, without excuse and explains the evaluations. His fault, not the students.

sliverstorm 15y ago

Imagine yourself living in a small colony of 109 individuals, 108 plus yourself. At least 25%, or one in four, want to kill you, and you don't know who they are. Would you act friendly, trusting, kind and natural around everyone because up to 75% of them do not deserve your fear and suspicion? It is perhaps a bit of an extreme thought experiment, but I think it illustrates handily how the human mind reacts in this kind of situation.

Groxx 15y ago
In non-life-or-death situations, people endure quite a large amount of discomfort to achieve other goals. But a high-enough level of discomfort kills people. Does this mean the ones enduring small amounts are irrational? Reducto-ad-absurdum is a proof only when it takes into account everything in the argument. In life-or-death examples, other normally-included portions are dropped, making the argument something else entirely. It's just a straw-man attempt, not a valid point.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  It's not a straw-man. I have attempted to refute nothing. I was merely asking my parent to consider how he might behave in such a situation. I used a different situation, it is true, but only because I have found being on the instructional end of cheating feels very different than you might imagine, so I guessed my parent was not familiar with it.
  - Groxx 15y ago
    You attempted to refute the claim that people should control themselves better in such situations. And you did so very clearly, by inferring that spreading the mood to the 75% was perfectly logical. As a student who has not cheated, but has had to sit through countless lectures about cheating, and a few where large portions of the class did, I ask you and (other?) teachers this question: to whom are you teaching? The ones who are learning, or the ones who are cheating? I understand that you're stuck with both, but either find motivation in the successes or consider another line of work - it's part of the job. Otherwise you're screwing the ones who did the right thing.

pmb 15y ago

Have you ever talked to a group in which more than a quarter were actively hostile and disinterested? It poisons the room. It's not "logical" that it should do that, but it is an empirical fact that it does.

yters 15y ago

The cheaters to non cheaters ration should be 0/108. If 80 of the students are allowing 28 other students to cheat, I'd be definitely pissed off at them.