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CM. What action did you take at that point? PM. So that’s the point when you normally turn to either involving the department or the administration, and each department’s different, they’re going to have different policies for how to deal with that kind of a subject. Some departments will handle it internally, others pass it off to somewhere else in the school, normally that takes it out of your hands directly for anything beyond the grade, but departments tend to engage with the faculty member in such a way that they’ll reach a resolution to the case, which either involves assigning whatever the prescribed grade happens to be for plagiarism, or do you take it before an academic review, an intellectual policy organization that the university itself has set up. CM. It sounds like once you trigger that official process, which we can presume it’s going to be a little different for every host institution. For people who are listening, your department’s specific policies would vary and you can discover them, but it does sound like there could be instances where there’s a bit of a moral choice for you as the instructor to make. Depending on the severity of the problem, once you trigger that process it’s out of your hands, and it also sounds like it requires a lot of time and energy on your part to engage with the process. Do you think there’s ever a justifiable circumstance where you might handle it yourself? PM. Rule of thumb, if it’s a major case of cheating, a major case of plagiarism, that’s when I would take that step of going through the department procedures. You know, I lay this out on my syllabus, this is another good technique, and some departments even require this, to state in advance at the beginning of the class, “This is the department policy on plagiarism, if you violate it, these are the consequences” so that it’s clear in everyone’s mind. In certain circumstances, if it’s a very minor instance, or if it’s something, you know, it’s questionable if they had a slipup or maybe they forgot to cite a force, and it’s not the thrust of the paper. If they’re turning in a tenpage paper and there’s a single quotation, I’d handle that differently than if five of the ten pages were copied off of the internet. It’s really just using discretion on a case-by-case basis, and on that smaller instance, that may be the appropriate time to approach the student directly, see if there’s a plausible explanation, use common sense. CM. I think that’s a good point, that you don’t necessarily want to drop the hammer on every individual situation that occurs. I had a challenging problem that I encountered in economics class. I don’t know, Phil, if you’ll have a suggestion for me here or for our listeners, but a student, actually two students, Chinese-exchange students folks, so English was not there first language and they had some particular challenge with the technical vocabulary. They asked me on an exam if they could use a Chinese-English dictionary, a small hand-held electronic device. They asked me the day of the exam, and I sort of in the moment said, “Well, let me check it to make sure there are no equations stored in here.” Now, of course it was in Chinese, so I was completely unable to verify this, and later I thought, “You know, I probably didn’t handle that optimally. Perhaps what I should have done is advanced a policy about that in advance.” Have you ever had any similar situations with dictionaries, cellphones?
PM. Not so much straight up with dictionaries, sometimes laptops even just in the general course of the class. It’s becoming in vogue to have a laptop sitting there in their class. Some will be surfing Facebook, others will be legitimately taking notes and there is no real way, other than walking around the back of the classroom to know exactly what they’re doing, but you have to wonder if you’re giving, you’re holding a discussion in class, and a lot of classes have participation components in them that are graded, is someone looking up the answer to a particular question on the internet right then and there, is that giving them an unfair crutch? My way of addressing it is allowing students to use their laptop as a valuable tool, but stating up front that quite aware of the downside, to the negative side of this tool might abuse it, and if you become, if it becomes very visible that you are googling the answer to every single question that’s asked, then I may step in and ask you to set the laptop aside. CM. And as long as there’s a credible threat of you doing that, you don’t have to do that often, you just have to do it enough to make it obvious. PM. I actually had one professor that I studied under, and he had this technique that if he noticed a student was using his or her laptop too much in class, he would intentionally walk down the aisle and unplug it as a result (laughter). CM. That’s an interesting strategy. As long as you don’t knock the computer onto the floor. PM. He was very deft at doing this, and it was always a good laugh when it happened. CM. It’s too bad we don’t have a laser beam to disable it, a small EMP device. Maybe we can transfer to issues of what I’m calling rules-bending requests, where the student comes to you and they give you the tale of woe, and the tale of woe, might involve health or other classes, but it doesn’t quite rise to the level of a health emergency, which I think most instructors have a policy. How much do you accommodate requests like that, for more time on a problem set, for more time to finish a paper, what’s the best approach there? PM. At the very beginning of the class, I state upfront, “If there are extenuating circumstances that mean you may not be able to get a paper in on time, as long as you let me know in advance, prior to the day of the deadline, I will do what I can to reasonably accommodate you.” Normally that may mean a couple days extension, depending on the circumstance, but I’ll evaluate on a case-by-case basis. The real problem for me, is when a student comes up on the actual due date of the paper and is coming up with excuses, or asking for extensions, I’m less lenient in that situation. CM. Because clearly they could have anticipated it. PM. Right, so as just a personal courtesy, if students are willing to let me know in advance, I am normally willing to give something in return.
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Chris Martin. Welcome to this Kosmos Online podcast. I'm Chris ...

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