by Dr Davis on August 23, 2010
I was sent some case studies on plagiarism, at my request. Then, of course, I saw some other examples online at The Chronicle.
At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site’s frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.
At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.
And at the University of Maryland, a student reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia in a paper on the Great Depression said he thought its entries — unsigned and collectively written — did not need to be credited since they counted, essentially, as common knowledge.
These are the kinds of things we get all the time.
I’d be less likely to be upset about the last plagiarism case, except that the implication is that the student copied and pasted. That means they aren’t his words, at the very least.
The article itself is about how technology is “blurring the lines of plagiarism.” I think really the relaxation of a strong moral code is encouraging plagiarism. Sure, there were always cheaters. But not no one thinks anything about it as long as you don’t get caught.
That says more than something about the students. It says something about the society..
by Dr Davis on August 23, 2010
The Washington Post said:
Community colleges in the Washington region are doing brisk business this summer with students from four-year universities. The students are taking advantage of increasingly flexible transfer policies to load up on cheap, convenient credits that will help them graduate more quickly and at a lower expense.
This has always been true at my local CC. But it was students coming back to take “easier” versions of their required classes at the four-year colleges. The phenomenon has always made my Brit Lit I miniterm courses the highest averaged of my classes.
I think it is a good idea, but it can have it’s drawbacks.
My eldest son will graduate with a degree from University of Texas at Austin in 2012. He earned 74 credits (all his general ed requirements+) at a community college while he was still a high school student. He has a 3.85 on those credits. But on his UT majors courses, his average is a B-. And that hurts, because UT moved to a different scale and his GPA at UT only is 2.67. Ouch. Big difference there.
What does it mean? Does it mean the CC classes were too easy? I don’t think that is necessarily so. I know his English classes were difficult. But what it does mean is that he didn’t take any of the easier classes at UT so he won’t be able to have those in his UT GPA. It’s an issue.
I’m going to recommend he put his GPA in as either a weighted mix of the two groups or as a B, instead of as a 2.67. (Which, by the way, I think is atrocious. And an A+ gets the same weight as an A. Why should anyone work for excellence when it will not be rewarded?)
by Dr Davis on August 22, 2010
The Chronicle has a blog post that mentions that at least some of the legislature is considering starting Texas’ own University-of-Phoenix equivalent.
“If the University of Phoenix can be successful” providing online programs, “the question needs to be asked: Can the public sector do the same?” said Bernie Francis, a member of the committee of education and business leaders…
I guess they don’t realize that our community colleges are already getting online students. Some of them are taking half their credits needed for an associate’s online.
It doesn’t seem that we want to create an institution that competes with our own colleges.
by Dr Davis on August 22, 2010
According to A Record Number of HS Graduates Pass ACT College-Readiness Benchmarks, 24% of them are.
This might explain why so many students are failing to graduate in six years.
The report also found that racial achievement gaps on the ACT have widened since 2006. As the average composite score of whites and Asians increased by 0.3 points and 1.1 points respectively, the average score of African-Americans declined 0.2 points.
There is a large disparity between the average ACT scores of various ethnic groups. This year, the average score was 23.4 among Asians; 22.3 among whites; 19 among American Indians; 18.6 among Hispanics; and 16.9 among African-Americans.
Are you seeing a pattern here? Once more Asians, in the same schools-or even lesser ones, than whites are making better scores. Either it is CULTURE that is the largest predictor of success OR intelligence is related to race. You can’t have it both ways.
by Dr Davis on August 21, 2010
The Chronicle has a blog post about the Texas legislature thinking about requiring 10% of classes be taken online.
The proposal is one of several online-learning ideas in a new draft report prepared in response to Gov. Rick Perry’s call for higher-education cost-savings recommendations.
Okay, that makes some sense. Online courses don’t require the same level of overhead that physical facilities do.
BUT I’m wondering about those who are not conversant with technology. What is a student who does not own a computer going to do? Go to the library to take the course? Or, even more likely, go to the campus to take the course online at the computer lab?
That seems a little odd to me.
The article tells of other odd ideas perking in the legislaturists’ heads as well.
by Dr Davis on August 21, 2010
An article on Minding the Campus, Why Remediation Doesn’t Work, began with a point I have longed to make to President Obama. Exactly how are we going to force people to graduate from college? Should we give them diplomas when they are born, as the article says?
But then the article goes into a serious discussion on why students are not graduating from college in six years.
The crucial question is why remediation does not work. My hypothesis is that there are inadequate incentives for students who arrive without sufficient preparation to take seriously that that have deficiencies requiring remediation. Without incentives to put in the enormously difficult task of learning in a course or two how to read and write effectively, a task they should have learned gradually over many years, they simply go through the motions. The colleges go through the motions also. In egregious cases they make students repeat remedial courses once or twice. But what if students are so underprepared that they need five or six repetitions of remedial course work to show substantial results? No college would dare to require this, and no underprepared student would stand for it.
I have a couple of narrative points. (That is, I have individual stories that prove that what Jackson Toby says won’t happen can and does.)
1. Guy I dated in grad school… He was in college when he learned to read and write. And he managed to graduate within six years. The difference was, perhaps, that he wanted to learn how to do those things.
2. My college allows/requires students who are not making at least a C to continue on in their developmental classes by taking them again. They don’t allow Ds or Fs. If a student is still in class and still doing the work on the drop date (one month before school is out), then they receive an IP and are allowed into another version of the course the next semester without any cost. If a student is not in class and/or not doing the work on the drop date, they are withdrawn.
(Being withdrawn actually has serious consequences. 1. After six Ws, a student must pay full price for their education, not the taxpayer-funded discount. 2. After six Ws in one school, a student is not allowed to graduate from there.)
YMMV.
But it means it is doable.
Now we need to see how it can be done.
by Dr Davis on August 20, 2010
Monday and Tuesday I had orientation. Lots of paperwork to fill out. Mostly I didn’t have any problem with it. For a while I thought they were going to mess up my health benefits, but it doesn’t seem that this has happened.
Today was faculty welcome back. Break out sessions. First was interesting, though neuhaus.org is a bit expensive for what I am interested in. Second was… excrutiatingly useless. CE is not really for academic courses, but is clearly workforce prep.
Discipline meetings were good.
Faculty senate was… odd. I did figure out why I never went (in my last tt job). I wasn’t a senator. But … interesting information covered. My “old” chair (he was my chair for 2 wks, for 11 yrs for the dept) is now faculty senate president.
Now all I have to do is figure out how to do what they want me to do. I did find the police station to get my faculty sticker, but I don’t know how to hang it. It’s just a plastic bag.
I have tried multiple times to get in to put my CV up, but so far nothing.
Can’t find the place they told me to go to get my class rosters.
And I am the tech person in my department.
I guess it might just be the overwhelming newness of it all.
by Dr Davis on August 20, 2010
An interesting experiment is going on in Ghana.
WSJ Blogs has an article on the nonprofit Worldreader’s lastest plan.
In the developing world, where literacy remains a giant challenge, might digital books be able to leapfrog their print counterparts?
That’s what a non-profit called Worldreader is trying to figure out with a series of trials in Ghana that involve giving students Amazon.com Kindles to read in school and at home.
I think I would like to see what comes of this.
The picture is from toc.oreilly.com.
by Dr Davis on August 20, 2010
The Beloit College Mindset List reminds us that they are VERY different.
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
…
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
…
55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.
…
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
The list includes 75 ways that the students are different from the profs. Though not all the profs (meaning me) have a clue what all the notes mean.
For me, the most confusing was the list of people who have always been dead, before the list even started. Sure, I know who Sam Walton is. But some of the others? Not so much.
by Dr Davis on August 19, 2010
The CEA Forum Summer/Fall 2009, 38.2.
It was just put up this week. Enjoy.
The book is available for perusal on both Amazon and Google Books.
The thumbnail is from Google Books.
