Semester's end looking frustrating and grim

[FaithManor]

.

 

 

This happens in high school too.  As the others have mentioned, I write No Ans in red ink across any left blank - even multiple choice.

 

I had to do this too the last time I taught music theory. GRRRR....so it is now my usual method when teaching a class.

[Dmmetler]

My DD's bio mentor is teaching DD that she needs to quote everything except for her final conclusions and her own research data, even in areas where DD has read extensively and knows a lot for exactly this reason-ultimately, you can't be a primary source for yourself.  It's hard for kids who have a lot of prior knowledge.

 

 

 

 

[hillfarm]

Am I the only one who finds this insulting? My dd has had a different type of primary and secondary education that enabled her to develop expertise and knowledge in some areas that are unusual when compared to others of her age. (Or maybe to others, period) It irks me that she must slog through the process of documenting everything, just as if she had no knowledge of the subject at all.

 

It does not take a rocket scientist to be able to verbally interview a student and determine whether their claimed knowledge is true or not. Do they understand the vocabulary and use it correctly? Are they able to discuss various examples and explain current research in significant detail? Are they able to evaluate current thought or discoveries? If the instructor assigning the paper is unable to evaluate these things, surely they could call on a colleague in a related field to help verify the student's knowledge.

 

At what level does this stop? Graduate school? When are students presumed worthy of having an intelligent thought of their very own?

 

Interestingly enough, dd has mentioned that the English instructor in question seems to be fine with any topic that he thinks he knows more than the student about. However, twice she has had conflict with him and both times it was regarding a topic where she knew more than he did. The first time was back at the beginning of the semester when she wanted to write something about the influence of the Baby Boomer generation and he gave her grief, based on his incorrect understanding of the official birth years that made up that generation. She had written a lengthy history paper on the topic the previous semester and wanted to go into more detail regarding impacts on her own generation from the Baby Boom. He would not admit that there were any and was way off on the end date of the Boom. Then this end of semester thing about wildlife in captivity. Which dd knows fairly well and the instructor does not. Again, he gave her a lot of trouble. Other students mentioned this same type of response from this professor to dd later in the finals week, and commented that if he didn't know much about a topic he "freaked out and wouldn't let them write about it." Whatever happened to college as a place of learning and innovation.

[hornblower]

Hm, it's a bit weirder in English classes, esp if, as it appears, these are geared to writing expository essays rather than literary analysis... Is this a composition class?

Dd just spent the entire term writing numerous papers for her physical anthropology class & I'd be surprised if she wrote more than 10 sentences that did not have an inline citation.  Pretty much every sentence was cited.  The only essay she didn't have a slew of inline citations was the one where they had to present the evidence for evolution (lots of citations) AND their opinion (no citations needed but if you stuck them in in support of your opinions, it strengthened the essay).

In my PoliSci/IR classes I cited pretty much every sentence as well, except in the political philosophy where you might veer off a bit into interpretation. In literature classes, most sentences would refer to either a page of the original text or someone else's analysis, though in some classes, if you were presenting a unique interpretation, those wouldn't have citations. But then usually you'd be contrasting with someone else's analysis & you'd cite that.

It's partly a way of demonstrating that you're familiar with this topic *because* you know who's been researching & writing about it, & hat tipping to them. You're saying 'I'm part of this great conversation about this subject.'

Another way of looking at citations is not only that you're saying "hey, these are not original ideas that I came up with" but also pointing the reader to where they can read more about them. 

[regentrude]

Am I the only one who finds this insulting? My dd has had a different type of primary and secondary education that enabled her to develop expertise and knowledge in some areas that are unusual when compared to others of her age. (Or maybe to others, period) It irks me that she must slog through the process of documenting everything, just as if she had no knowledge of the subject at all.

 

It does not take a rocket scientist to be able to verbally interview a student and determine whether their claimed knowledge is true or not. Do they understand the vocabulary and use it correctly? Are they able to discuss various examples and explain current research in significant detail? Are they able to evaluate current thought or discoveries? If the instructor assigning the paper is unable to evaluate these things, surely they could call on a colleague in a related field to help verify the student's knowledge.

 

At what level does this stop? Graduate school? When are students presumed worthy of having an intelligent thought of their very own?

 

I am not sure why it would be insulting. It is common practice in academic work to cite everything except your own original research (and even that you would cite if it was published somewhere.)

So, if it is about animals in captivity, her own field research can go uncited (but should be cited if she published any of it), but anybody else's research and observations and anything she read about somebody else's work must be cited because it is not her own original work.

 

You can have intelligent thoughts of your own and are free to give your own interpretations, but every fact or thought that did not originate from you must be cited. I do not see what is insulting about this -the convention of academia is that stating anything uncited means you take credit for the discovery.

 

ETA: The exception to this rule are statements that can reasonably be assumed to be common knowledge of the audience. So, a physics researcher writing in a physics journal does not have to go back to cite things from introductory physics 1, because it can reasonably be assumed that everybody in the community has this knowledge and it can not possibly be misconstrued as claiming authorship of discovery/original idea. Likewise, a writer can reasonably assume that even a laypeople's audience knows that zebras are mammals or that moon orbits Earth, so this is stuff that does not have to be cited.

But you mention specific expertise and knowledge that goes beyond common knowledge of the audience- so this needs to be cited.

[kiana]

Right. If you've read something somewhere and you know it but you don't remember where you read it, use google.

[Dmmetler]

It never stops. At least not in herpetology. Even people like Harry Greene, Akira Mori, and Whitfield Gibbons are citing practically every sentence in the section of their published papers that review past work-and half of what they're citing either is work they did themselves, or work that came out of their labs.

 

 

[Bootsie]

Am I the only one who finds this insulting? My dd has had a different type of primary and secondary education that enabled her to develop expertise and knowledge in some areas that are unusual when compared to others of her age. (Or maybe to others, period) It irks me that she must slog through the process of documenting everything, just as if she had no knowledge of the subject at all.

 

It does not take a rocket scientist to be able to verbally interview a student and determine whether their claimed knowledge is true or not. Do they understand the vocabulary and use it correctly? Are they able to discuss various examples and explain current research in significant detail? Are they able to evaluate current thought or discoveries? If the instructor assigning the paper is unable to evaluate these things, surely they could call on a colleague in a related field to help verify the student's knowledge.

 

At what level does this stop? Graduate school? When are students presumed worthy of having an intelligent thought of their very own?

 

 

Much would depend upon the assignment.  Was this an assignment where the student is supposed to write to demonstrate her knowledge of the subject?  Or, is the assignment supposed to be to research and learn what you write about the subject through your research?  If it is the latter, a student who only writes about what she knows has not done the assignment. 

 

There is a difference in having an intelligent though of my own and having knowledge of someone else's intelligent thought.  The purpose of documenting is not based upon whether I have knowledge of something--it is based upon whether the ideas/information belong to someone else.  Documentation is also provided so that a reader can learn more if he or she wants to look at the original source. 

[Michelle_NC]

DD had the exact same situation this semester - she's 16 and doing DE classes at the community college.  Her English Composition teacher *just* gave them their first grade over Thanksgiving break and classes end this week.

 

[MarkT]

 

 

Interestingly enough, dd has mentioned that the English instructor in question seems to be fine with any topic that he thinks he knows more than the student about. However, twice she has had conflict with him and both times it was regarding a topic where she knew more than he did. The first time was back at the beginning of the semester when she wanted to write something about the influence of the Baby Boomer generation and he gave her grief, based on his incorrect understanding of the official birth years that made up that generation. She had written a lengthy history paper on the topic the previous semester and wanted to go into more detail regarding impacts on her own generation from the Baby Boom. He would not admit that there were any and was way off on the end date of the Boom. Then this end of semester thing about wildlife in captivity. Which dd knows fairly well and the instructor does not. Again, he gave her a lot of trouble. Other students mentioned this same type of response from this professor to dd later in the finals week, and commented that if he didn't know much about a topic he "freaked out and wouldn't let them write about it." Whatever happened to college as a place of learning and innovation.

 

This seems like a matter of ego that your student will just have to deal with.  It will probably happen at work later on in life so maybe early exposure is a good thing.

 

a real Babyboomer 

 

[In The Great White North]

 

 

At what level does this stop? Graduate school? When are students presumed worthy of having an intelligent thought of their very own?

 

It never ends.  Professors published articles are so full of quotations the end result is hard to read. We were taught (in the dark ages) that quotations supported your writing. Now, they ARE the writing. If you removed all the quotations from these articles, there would be no paper left.  Browse through any professional journal and they are all like that.

 

My theory is that the plethora of plagiarism checkers has made everyone hyper-sensitive about it.  If EVERY sentence in your paper has a citation, you can't be accused of plagiarism. It's a CYA measure.

[elegantlion]

It never ends.  Professors published articles are so full of quotations the end result is hard to read. We were taught (in the dark ages) that quotations supported your writing. Now, they ARE the writing. If you removed all the quotations from these articles, there would be no paper left.  Browse through any professional journal and they are all like that.

 

My theory is that the plethora of plagiarism checkers has made everyone hyper-sensitive about it.  If EVERY sentence in your paper has a citation, you can't be accused of plagiarism. It's a CYA measure.

 

My literature paper looked horrible because every other sentence had a cite. But, I knew what I wanted to say, so I looked for published resources that said exactly what I wanted to convey or could be assembled together to make my point. We had received a long lecture about unintentional plagiarism. I worry about that as an older student with a lot of life experience.

 

The basic recommendation I've received is to cite everything that isn't common knowledge. The upside is that if they know a subject finding research to back up that knowledge should be a lot easier.  So while the average student may use the first page of articles that come in an academic search, your dd can research the experts she knows or has heard mentioned. 

[hillfarm]

I guess that is what irritates me so much. I am a professional writer and it kills me to see every.single.sentence have to have a citation. However, I guess since plagiarism is such a big thing now, instructors think this keeps students from claiming others' work as their own.

 

Seems like the English teacher settled back down, though. After all the excitement, dd threw in another dozen or so cites and got a 96.5% on her paper and finished the class with an A also.

 

Still no word on her final grades in the business classes. She said she would call today to see when to expect final grades to be posted. The instructor promised they would be up Wednesday and Friday of last week. Right. We're still waiting.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I guess that is what irritates me so much. I am a professional writer and it kills me to see every.single.sentence have to have a citation. However, I guess since plagiarism is such a big thing now, instructors think this keeps students from claiming others' work as their own.

 

Seems like the English teacher settled back down, though. After all the excitement, dd threw in another dozen or so cites and got a 96.5% on her paper and finished the class with an A also.

 

Still no word on her final grades in the business classes. She said she would call today to see when to expect final grades to be posted. The instructor promised they would be up Wednesday and Friday of last week. Right. We're still waiting.

Out of curiosity are these in class conversations or emails. There are some exchanges I try to have via email because there is a documentation trail.