They Lie to Your Face.

Out of the mercy of my naive heart, instead of completely flunking two students who obviously collaborated on the take-home exam (even when they had the option of working in a group, so long as they told me who they worked with and followed a group-evaluation grading scheme) I simply assigned zero credit to that question. The other two question answers were quite different and therefore they received what little credit was due to them on the few parts they got right. Not a 0%, but still two Fs.

And yet, less than thirty minutes ago here they are in my office in tears, accusing me of being unfair. They demanded proof that they had collaborated. When I showed them the equations (which were identical in errors and form) and the sentences which were nearly identical (God bless SafeAssign) their excuse was, "Well that's what comes up in a Google search!" I told them that I will regrade if they bring me proof of the source.

When/if they bring the source into me, I'm going to flunk them for not following directions on correct citation, and inform them that if they want to appeal to the Department for a grade change that I will then charge the two of them with Academic Misconduct and plagiarism.

One of these particular students was in my office before, in tears, begging to get to the exam early because she was going to be out of town this week (the week after Spring Break), and whining about how she had to spend her Spring Break at home. I gave her the data set early, she had 3 more days than all other students were given. I also overlooked that she turned the exam in 12 hours late from the due date we both agreed on. Now, not 30 minutes ago, she came into my office she then accused me of being the one forcing her to stay home from Spring Break. This is how a responsible adult behaves.

Out of 20 other students who took the exam, not a single one of them procured identical equations, with identical subscripts, and identical errors. And they all cited their resources correctly.

The particularly angry-Spring-Breaker had the look of "I'm going to talk to some one!" in her eyes. Bring it on. I'm especially happy to deal with students who lie to my face.