Winter semester if finished
Classes for the winter semester is finished. About time. I was getting rather weary grading all the homework and quizzes. The grading policy for my class is 50% homework and 50% quizzes; no final exam (always hated them when I was a student). I gave 6 homework assignments and 6 quizzes that were strongly associated with the homework. Meaning that if you did the homework, the quiz is a piece-of-cake.
Homework is not typical for university level course work here (Japan), probably because we don't get much help grading them. We do get a teaching assistant, but they don't get paid enough to do all my grading, but that is another story.
Anyways, this year we had some "irregularities" in the homework, some students had the guts to submit perfect copies (i.e., photocopies) of their classmates work. But there is something incredulous about all of this. Some of the printers at the university are setup to print the student's id number at the bottom of every page. Yet a few geniuses submitted exact copies without removing these ids. In other words, the name and id of the submitter did not match the id that was printed at the bottom of the reports.
Considering the peer pressure that the students are under, I gave the student that provided copies to be up front and honest about it. Those that admitted to providing copies would have their grade reduced by one full grade, but if they didn't, they would be treated the same way as the copiers. Well, just one student had the guts to admit their wrong. I guess the others don't need the credits, or don't understand the consequences.
Good grief.
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