[quote name='zewone']What happens to someone who gets caught plagiarizing in your class?[/quote]
[quote name='Mojimbo']How did you catch him, BigCornyBard?[/quote]
[quote name='munch']What are you going to do? I had someone plagiarize before, but it was in a Freshman class and I'm not sure if she knew what she was doing. They were asked to write a 4-5 page review of Melvyn Leffler's Specter of Communism, and she quoted directly from it without citing Leffler. I just gave her a stern talking to rather than taking it to the Dean.
On the other hand, I found out later that if you google 'specter of communism review,' or something like that, it comes up with a review from epinions. I'd say half the papers at least stole the quotes and format of that review--which was a horrible review and missed the point of the book entirely. I wish I know of that article beforehand.[/quote]
Well, after a page of lots of red ink, it suddenly became pretty good... Too good. I typed a sentence into Google and found two pages (out of just over three) of his essay on a website.
Last semester when I caught a student I marked the essay a zero and told the student to decide whether to ride out the class or drop it. But, in that instance, the student was an otherwise hard-working and dedicated student, so it was completely out of character.
This time, it's an athlete who hasn't put forth the best effort. With a zero on the essay, and the rest of the grades where they are, it's pretty much a certain failure of the class.
It just makes me feel awful. It completely ruins my day. I like trusting my students, and to have this happen two semesters in a row just kills it.