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GGG · 02-03-2009, 08:05 PM

I worked as a student advocate while at the U of S and dealt with issues between Profs and Students. Many of these included cheating. An interesting policy and the university was that a prof has no right to give a student a zero on an assignment. It is against univerisity policy for a professer to do it. Now that profs would still do it and a lot of times people would come to me complaining about it.

The proper procedure was to hold a hearing where both sides get to present evidence and a tribunal of a professor from the college, a professer within the college and a student from the college would decide the penalty based on the evidence.

The results of these hearings were quite interesting if the tribuanl found the student guilty it was always the students on the comittee who recomended the stiffest punishment. The severity of the punishment was always more then a zero on an assignment or exam and at a minimum included an additional 10% penalty on the final mark in the class to a 0 in the class or a Withdrawal Fail (30%) in the class.

The logic behind the more severe punishment is that if they didn't cheat you assume they would have failed so giving them a zero isn't really punishment. So then there is only upside to cheating. And it isn't fair to students who failed the exam without trying to cheat so an additional penalty needs to be applied.

The most interesting case I dealt with involved 3 engineering students who did all of their research together when preparing a geography paper. the resulting papers were very similar as each had the same sources and basically the same thesis. The students ended up winning because they were able to prove a) the prof never stated they couldn't work together on the research and since all did the research together they all owned the work. Origninally the prof had tried to give them each 1/3rd of the grade arguing that it was a research paper and working alone should be common sense. It really illustrates the different way engineeing students in general approach assignments compared to other students.

If the expectations are established early I say throw the full power of the university at them. Letting them off with a zero only penalizes the people who are failing honestly.

02-03-2009, 08:05 PM	#59
GGG Franchise Player Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: California Exp:	I worked as a student advocate while at the U of S and dealt with issues between Profs and Students. Many of these included cheating. An interesting policy and the university was that a prof has no right to give a student a zero on an assignment. It is against univerisity policy for a professer to do it. Now that profs would still do it and a lot of times people would come to me complaining about it. The proper procedure was to hold a hearing where both sides get to present evidence and a tribunal of a professor from the college, a professer within the college and a student from the college would decide the penalty based on the evidence. The results of these hearings were quite interesting if the tribuanl found the student guilty it was always the students on the comittee who recomended the stiffest punishment. The severity of the punishment was always more then a zero on an assignment or exam and at a minimum included an additional 10% penalty on the final mark in the class to a 0 in the class or a Withdrawal Fail (30%) in the class. The logic behind the more severe punishment is that if they didn't cheat you assume they would have failed so giving them a zero isn't really punishment. So then there is only upside to cheating. And it isn't fair to students who failed the exam without trying to cheat so an additional penalty needs to be applied. The most interesting case I dealt with involved 3 engineering students who did all of their research together when preparing a geography paper. the resulting papers were very similar as each had the same sources and basically the same thesis. The students ended up winning because they were able to prove a) the prof never stated they couldn't work together on the research and since all did the research together they all owned the work. Origninally the prof had tried to give them each 1/3rd of the grade arguing that it was a research paper and working alone should be common sense. It really illustrates the different way engineeing students in general approach assignments compared to other students. If the expectations are established early I say throw the full power of the university at them. Letting them off with a zero only penalizes the people who are failing honestly.