Monday, January 16, 2017

Plagiarism: Two Unsuccessful Examples

In a recent discussion of plagiarism with some editors, I was reminded of an example from my own teaching experience that I now relate here for your amusement.

As a new prof I had the singular experience of an undergraduate handing in a paper to the course I was teaching on the sociology of education that, as it turned out, I had written when I had taken the same course a decade or so before. Unbeknownst to me, the paper must have been photocopied by a classmate of mine years before and entered into the frat files. The original title page must have long since been discarded by the frat boys as who knows how many times the paper had been recycled, so my student merrily retrieved it from the files, typed up a new cover page with his name, and handed it in to it's author. It took me a minute to recognize after all those years, but there was something about it that was strangely familiar. And as it occurred to me that it was in fact, my paper, I recognized that the typing had the cracked line through the 'e' that I had had on my typewriter that year. I actually went through the effort of digging through the garage to find the original paper, and yup, it was identical. So that was an 'F' for the student, and an anecdote for me.

The other example that I recall from roughly the same period was a colleague of mine telling of the case of a seminary student in his PhD defense. The originally scheduled external examiner had called in sick, so the supervisor had located a replacement. "You're in luck," he had told the student, "Dr X from the University of Y in Germany is in Calgary for a conference and has agreed to fly up to sit in as your external. It's a great honor because he is apparently quite an expert on your topic." But of course, turns out he really was an expert because when he opened the student's dissertation, he discovered at once it was his dissertation translated from the German. Since one does not get a PhD in theology for translating someone else's doctoral thesis, that was another FAIL. But I have to say, great example of the direct intervention of God against someone unworthy of the doctor of theology, because how else to explain the coincidence? The poor bastard must have thought himself completely safe from discover (this being decades before the internet).

Moral of the story: don't plagiarize or god will get you. .

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Index to Runté Student Assessment Blog

(As of January, 2017)

Assessment Design / Test Construction: General Principles
Defining Learning Objectives for Assessment
Test Blueprints
Assessing Values
Punctuality
Assessment is about Learning
Appropriate Failure Rate
Directions in Test Questions
Bias 1
Bias 2
Scheduling Exams
Question Order on an Examination
Grading Deadlines
Rote Memorization
Item Writing 1
Item Writing 2
Item Writing 3
Wrong answers
Examples of Poor Test Questions

Cheating
Cheating
Detecting Plagiarism
Plagiarism: Two Unsuccessful Examples

Class Assignments
Late Penalties (for assignments)
Grading Deadlines
Bias
Homework 2
Homework 1
Peer Evaluation
"Passing Back" to Grade
Silly Questions (How to Answer)

Essays Tests and Written Assignments
Setting Writing Assignments
ESL Test Answer

Feedback to Students
Meaningful Feedback (on Written Assignments)
Displaying Student Work
Posting Student Work
Addressing Student Misconceptions of the Grading Process

Group Work
Group Work

Internet Memes (Revisited)
These are cartoons or photos you may have seen circulated for humorous effect, but which raise valid points about assessment practices.
My Assessment Pinterest Board (Memes and Cartoons)
Rote Memorization
Bias
Test Anxiety
Homework
Posting Student Work
Group Work
Assessing Values
Scheduling Exams
Test Blueprints
Question Order on an Examination
Grading Deadlines
Write Better Instructions
Item Writing
Three Minutes with Scott MacLeod
Bias
Punctuality
Item Writing
Setting Writing Assignments
Item Analysis
ESL Test Answer
ESL Students and Tests

Multiple Choice Tests
Test Blueprints
Item Writing
Question Order on an Examination
How many alternatives should a multiple-choice question have?
Where is the best spot for the correct answer?
Write Better Instructions
Scheduling Exams

Oral Questions
Taking Student Questions

School Reform
Three Minutes with Scott MacLeod
Large Scale Standardized Testing
Is Teaching a Profession?

Taking Tests
Studying for Tests
Taking Multiple-Choice Tests
Testwiseness Part I
Testwiseness Part II: Why Teach Students to be Testwise
Testwiseness Part III: Do Testwise Techniques Work?
Taking Essay Tests

Test Anxiety
Test Anxiety 1
Test Anxiety 2
Test Anxiety 3

Test Results and Analysis
The Bell Curve (JohnMighton)
Item Analysis
Teaching Reading and Writing
Teaching and Evaluating Writing: Part I
Runté GoH speech on Future of Writing Instruction and Publishing (Audio)
Teaching Reading