Charu's Reading Notes #6

This week’s readings were extremely helpful for me mainly because I am still in the process of learning American academic norms. After I came to NDSU I was told that international students are required to attend seven days long orientation where we will be particularly informed about the university’s policies on plagiarism, cheating, their consequences etc. Prior coming to United States, I admit that I was totally unfamiliar about such policies and the orientation really helped me to get familiar with it.

I particularly like Davis discussion about assigning papers and written work (p.351). I like Davis idea of breaking the assignment into parts (p.352) this reminded me of one of my favorite teacher who incorporated this method for our final project. I think giving this sort of opportunity to students helps them in attaining teacher’s expectations. For the class discussion, I would like to hear which method other people think has worked effectively and how they have incorporated it in assigning papers and written work.

                                                              

Both of the authors have discussed cheating and academic honesty with providing some of the ways and methods that would prevent it from happening. Lang gave some of the statistics quoting McCabe’s research: “70% of students admit to some cheating”. Lang also mentions that how Internet plagiarism is a growing concern on all campuses (p.198). I think this made me realize more that how important it is to take time to discuss academic honesty policies in class. Lang and Davis discussed how to deal with the cheating. Lang (p.209) mentions to “give students the benefit of the doubt until you believe your evidence is inconvertible”. I found this information to be really helpful. To deepen my understanding about how to deal with cheating, if possible, I would like to hear other people comments/experiences dealing with this type of situation.

I would also like to listen to other people comments/experiences regarding grading on curve and how to deal with students who are angry or upset about their grade. Davis gave lots of tips on minimizing students’ complaints about grades (p.410). So I would like having discussion on how others have dealt with this type of situation. I myself have dealt with the situation where student complained about his grade and somehow I felt guilty of giving him low points. Do others feel same way?