Handling plagiarism as a TA

Question

To give some background, I am a TA at UCLA for a lab class. They submit their assignments to TurnItIn, which you may know highlights any text pulled from another place.

I made it clear that they are not to work together and that no text in their reports should be found "anywhere else in the universe."

After the first week I caught a group of two plagiarizing. I repeated the "your text should not be found anywhere else in the universe" talk. I gave a long speech about academic honesty and such. One of the plagiarizing students dropped the class herself. I didn't take action on the other, besides a stern talking-to.

This week, two more students blatantly copied chunks of the other's paper. Whole paragraphs. I couldn't believe it -- I had just explained to them the week prior how easy it was to spot plagiarism. I brought them outside class one at a time and asked them what happened. I showed them the highlighted TurnItIn gradereport and their reports side-by-side. They each said they worked together, but didn't copy (slim chance. And still against the rules.)

Now the issue:

The professor that oversees my class doesn't have time to talk to me; hence I am here. He has given me two options: do nothing, or report them to the Dean of Students. If I do the latter, the punishment will extend beyond their grade -- they will probably fail the class, or even be suspended.

I want to punish them. But I don't want to ruin their undergraduate lives. Is my professor right -- I only have two options? (I cannot find any school-specific information about this.)

Or is there a better, less obvious way to handle this?

Update:

I talked around. It turns out that this kind of violation is serious, but it's not going to destroy their life. The Dean of Students people tend to be pretty reasonable when it comes to sanctions from what I hear. So I'm reporting it to them.

Answer 1

This sounds like "I want to punish them but not really". Fact is that these students have cheated even after multiple warnings. You are not teaching little children. Responsibility and accountability are important and adult students should have both.

If you are sure they plagiarized the only correct course of action here is to report them. It is then up to whoever handles such issues to assess the severity and appropriate punishment.

The students knew the risks of plagiarizing and decided to do it anyway. Giving them a milder treatment now will encourage other students to behave similarly since the consequences become less severe.

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Note: are you sure the students copied from each other or is it possible that they are using the same source?

Answer 2

Report them. It is precisely the job of those working in the office of the Dean of Students to make judgment calls of the sort you describe. They, also, do not want to ruin students' undergraduate lives.

Answer 3

Firstly, I think it is not OK for professor to present you with options. He/she should have decided what to be done and it is actually funny that he gave an option that clearly conflicts with honor code.

If the cheating is provable, then you are paid to carry out the rules so you should report them. No person should be above the rules of the university, and I am sure the rules are clear. Your responsiblity is to grade homeworks and report them if they cheated. Anything else leads to corruption in any organisation, which is also misuse of power.

Answer 4

Just give them no credit at all for that assignment. Since even copied homework takes time, and it's very likely that they will be caught, it's not going to be worthwhile to copy and not get any credit.

If your professor asks, you can say that you chose to do nothing, but that of course they could not receive credit for that work, which you assumed was what he implied in his advice.

If the students complain that they want to be able to make up the credit or feel they should get a grade, tell them categorically no. If they insist, refer them to the professor. This puts the ball in their court - they are unlikely to want to make the effort to complain about you, when they will be drawing attention to their cheating, and probably end up in a position where they have to openly lie to a professor.

If this does happen (because the students are spiteful or lack all sense of proportion) don't worry about it. Students sometimes think that an incident like this can be made to reflect badly on a TA. Even if they do pursue a complaint, even if it is upheld, and even if it is shown that you did the wrong thing, it is not going to be held against you. It will be accepted by faculty and anyone else involved (all of whom probably realize what PITAs some of your students are) that it is a the very worst a minor misjudgement of the type that everyone makes in their first few teaching experiences.

Just make sure that you are consistent (so that you can't be accused of discrimination) and clear (so that no-one can say they didn't understand the rules). If you get bounced into making an exception, immediately make it clear what the rules of exceptions are ('Everyone gets one chance', 'one chance only on the first homework' or 'one person got one chance, but now you have all been warned' etc.)

Lastly, don't take it personally. It is disappointing to try and treat people like adults, and then find that they treat you like you are an idiot. Ultimately it is a reflection on their immaturity not your teaching skills.

Answer 5

I'm also at UCLA, and have worked for profs that weren't willing to escalate when cheaters were caught. Many of them just assume that cheaters will drop or eventually fail the final or whatever.

My only advice is to remember: you're primarily here to do research and get a degree; TAing just pays the bills. Cheaters are upsetting, but choose your battles wisely and without getting emotional. In the long run, it probably isn't worth pissing off your advisor by going over their head.

Answer 6

To add to everything else that's been said here, you SHOULD talk to your professor about this. If for no other reason than to make sure that all sections of the class are following the same rules. If there is no clear policy then you can't be expected to enforce the rules.

Also remember that a lot of students won't understand why it's cheating and you have to create that understanding. Putting something in the student's hands that explains the policy is key. Refer to the student handbook as appropriate. My handout usually says something like "This is your one and only 'warning.' After this if you plagiarize you will have crossed a line you cannot uncross." After I started handing that out and going over it very clearly on the first day of class I never again had a plagiarism problem.

Answer 7

If the rules of your institution are told to you by this professor, and you choose not to follow them, then where does that put you relative to how you think of the students' behaviour with respect to the clear rules on copying?

Either you have discretion to decide the punishment or you don't, and it sounds to me like you're being told that you don't. Your professor may be incorrect in this, but if you can't find it written down either way then the only way to determine that is to contact another authority in your institution for another opinion.

It's possible that by "do nothing" your prof actually meant do the thing you want to do -- fail the assignment and nothing else. If so then you're home free, and I think you could probably establish that by asking the prof, "If I do nothing how should I grade the substantially-copied assignments? Give them both 0?" This doesn't require a long conversation, anything that can be handled by a 1-minute email is probably good for the prof.

Otherwise you're in the position of a cop who has been told by the captain, "If you think they've broken the law this goes to the DA. If you think they haven't then forget about it and cut them loose". You're saying, "well can't I just issue them an on-the-spot fine or something?". No, you can't, not if the person in authority says you can't. You can acknowledge the offence and follow procedure, or you can knowingly overlook the offence because you think the procedure is unjustified. And, I might add, good luck with that as a long-term strategy...

That said, perhaps you could contact the Dean of Students (or their representative), and ask whether they are prepared to ratify failing the assignment but not the class. Of course if you do this you pretty much have to report them if the Dean says "no, they must be expelled, this is a zero-tolerance issue for us" or whatever. What you can't do is decide on behalf of your institution that copying just one assignment isn't sufficiently bad to justify failing the class. The Dean of Students has clearly impressed on you that their opinion is otherwise or you wouldn't be able to predict their response.

Speculating wildly, I would guess that the reason the Dean's response is so stern is that many TAs before you have been through the process you're currently in. The class is told the rules against copying. Someone copies. The class is told the rules against copying again. Someone copies. Now what? The Dean of Students can probably list more things than you can that have been observed not to work.

Answer 8

Academic honesty cases are very serious for two reasons. First, academic dishonesty strikes at the very foundation of what makes education work in the first place -- namely the idea of mutual trust. Second, academic honesty cases all too frequently degenerate into legal battles that cost the university time and money. For this reason of seriousness, it's paramount that the professor of record take responsibility for this situation and not leave it up to you as a TA.

Go find your university's academic dishonesty policy and read it very carefully. In all likelihood you will find two things that are relevant here: (1) only the professor of record has the authority to act on an academic dishonesty case in her/his class, and (2) more to the point, if academic dishonesty occurs, the professor is contractually obligated to report it. This is how most university's policies work. You might find yourself in a situation of having to remind the professor of this fact -- the prof might have freedom to handle punishments however s/he wishes, but the prof must make a report anyway, for the student's record. (If the student is a repeat offender, the student may be expelled.)

If the prof has this responsibility and still won't listen, go to the department chair with it. This sort of thing really can't be ignored. But I repeat -- this is probably not your responsibility. The thing to do at this point is to find the person who is responsible for investigating it and make sure they move on it.

Answer 9

I agree with the answers that suggest you should report them to the dean, and come what may. But I would like to raise a consideration in case you decide not to. It is very likely, per university regulations, that you personally do not have the right to punish students.

We had a situation like this in my department, when the chair wanted the students punished but without involving the disciplinary board (for irrelevant administrative reasons). We had to be extremely careful in letting the concerned students know that their project had been graded 0, not as a punishment, but simply because they hadn't followed the instructions which stated to work in 2-person teams.

In case you decide to "punish" them yourself without reporting them to the dean, you should study the applicable regulations to make sure what exactly your rights are. You wouldn't want to get into trouble to protect undeserving students.

Answer 10

Firstly it depends on the assignment; I had to do labs in my computer Sci degree with a partner, each person then had to produce a write up on our own. We created one document with all the results in that we shared, and then wrote up the rest ourselves. There was no point in both of us writing down the same numbers and then typing the same numbers into ms-word. So text like the headings on a results table would be the same between the two of us.

Maybe give the students the option of.

• Being reported with all the risks that takes
• Or withdrawing their assignment and getting no marks for it.
• Or putting in a formal complaint themselves, so reporting themselves.

Answer 11

Let me share what I used to do in these situations:

First, don't report anything further up unless you've decided you want to escalate the matter; reporting plagiarism happened and then not doing anything about it could be construed as misconduct or collaboration. For this reason I also don't like those TurnItIn-like systems; who knows who keeps track of that stuff? Nah-uh. Now, I know, your email could also be scanned and analyzed, but still, I'd recommend starting out with a lower profile.

When I would notice what looked like plagiarism (let's assume it's 2-way; n-way is also possible but the principle is the same) I would hold passing a grade for these two students, and would email them to come see me during reception hours. Note that this could happen for other reasons that are not plagiarism - unintelligible hand-writing; an issue whose clarification/resolution face-to-face could decide between a very low and a high grade (e.g. correcting a typo would make everything work); and so on.

When the students arrive (I would try arranging it so that it's at the same time and not the week after), I would call them both in. I'd tell them I think there's been plagiarism committed. I'd say that, between the two of them, they have just one submission, and would suggest that they leave the room for a few minutes to decide how they want to divide the grade or the responsibility.

If they wanted half-grade each - I would do that; if one of them cried bloody murder and said he was taken advantage of, and the second didn't deny it - I'd give 0 for the assignment to the plagiarizer and the grading result to the other one; if they amicably agreed on any other distribution - also ok. If they would claim it's not really plagiarism, I'd have them try and prove it to me - but that never actually happened, they always admitted it immediately or they never bothered to show up. If they indeed didn't bother to show up they both got zeros.

Only if something extreme, or morally repugnant beyond just copying somebody's HW assignment answer, had happened - then I would consider bringing them up on disciplinary charges. Otherwise I wouldn't.

As for my motivation for this approach: I don't like policing students. I'm providingn them a service, and if they don't bother to do their homework it's their loss. I taught courses which were homework-heavy and I would tell students at the beginning of the semester that in this class they will "learn through their hands" and listening in class just wouldn't get them to where they need to be, so, again, if they don't work ardently on their homework they're just wasting the course.