Intellectual Property

About once a year or so, I have an academic integrity case in my class where a student, usually with the best of intentions, innocence and/or naïveté, will give/email his/her work to their partner. Usually, it is to ‘help them out,’ to check their work or the like. In most of these cases, I believe them, usually because when I talk with the partner, they admit they used the work inappropriately and apologize to the source partner.

The betrayal on their faces and in their responses is sad. However, collusion is explicitly forbidden in my syllabus, but they often don’t realize that is what they are doing. So we have a chat. I usually take points off, but not as many as from the thief.

What is Fair?

This spring term I had two nearly identical academic integrity cases. Two sets of partners turned in nearly identical lab reports, with attempts to hide it by changing fonts and other cosmetics. My default penalty for such situations is a zero for both parties. However, in each case, it turned out that one student had let their partner have access to their report with good intentions, and the partner stole the work, claiming it as their own.