academic dishonesty

[cly]

If you were wrongly accused - by a professor - of cheating (academic dishonesty, plagerism, whatever you call it), how would you handle the situation?

This has just happened to me today, and I'm not throwing a hissy fit, but I would like some advice.

 

[soma]

I would talk to the professor after class and explain what you were writing and that you didn't copy the versus. That puts the burden of proof on him or her to prove you wrong instead of accusing.

 

[zay]

I agree with Soma. I was in a situation once where the teacher liked what I had written, but questioned its integrity. What I did was explain what I wrote to her, how I came up with the design and formation of what I wrote, and explained the ins and outs of the information, demonstrating that I knew what I was talking about.

Depending on the nature of the assignment, show the teacher your sources of information, and describe how and why you put your information in the format that you did.

This creates credence multiple ways. It demonstrates that you know the information, you can describe how you formed and linked everything together in writing the paper, and why you decided to present the information in the matter in which you did. By that point, the matter was resolved and the teacher accepted that this was indeed my work. It should be in your case as well.

But before you go up to the teacher, say a silent prayer to yourself and try to stay clear-headed. Come into it with the mindset of wanting to clear yourself, but also realize that the teacher is just doing their job. They're supposed to question and protect integrity. Not saying that you're not, or won't. But it makes the whole process a lot easier if you meet with them calm and relaxed; and adds to your overall effectiveness and demonstrates your professionalism. And of course, it also makes it easier to present and accept your side of the story. Again, I'm not saying that you won't or haven't considered that. But just wanted to add it in since it helped me.

I'm sure it'll work out in your favor. You wrote the paper, and you did nothing wrong. And of course God's there in the midst, working on your behalf. This situation is just a future testimony! Hopefully this helps.

 

[cly]

Thank you for your replies. I'll keep them in mind.

God bless!

 

[Sothenes]

Sometimes people accuse other people to see if they have fear.

In high school there were people cheating off of my quiz and tests. In Junior High, the teacher thought one of us was cheating so I would once in a while make the answers wrong until the last minute and hand in the quiz.

I tended to hang around with people who were always older than me and listen to more mature commentators on the radio. Sometimes giving an answer that is from an older audience can make it seem unbelievable to a teacher because they expect a student to be immature.

I learned Pascal, Basic, Machine Code, Assembly, and other computer languages so when I got to college, they were teaching "Basic". One teacher didn't believe I knew what I knew and in another class I would play cards on the computer and when it came time to take the test, I would get an "A" so the teacher said I didn't have to take the final so I went to the library at school and studied for another subject instead.

Some of the students I went to college with didn't leave it up to the teacher to teach us everything. We would go to the library and research different topics.

 

[Fobian]

If it happened to me, I would find some time that the teacher has by his/her self and talk with her about the situation.

 

[MikeD]

Is the teacher taking it further than an accusation? I mean are they giving you an F on the assignment or anything like that? Because if that happens you can usually appeal and a committee will hear the accusation, listen to both of your sides and make a judgment. If there's no real evidence the judgment will definitely be in your favor.

If the teacher's just throwing the accusation out there then I know how frustrating that can be. One of my teacher's at the beginning of the year was handing back our paper's and he said something like:
"There were some of these that I didn't think sounded like the were written by students, they seemed like some of you copied them from the Internet or somewhere, but I don't really care too much about that for this assignment."
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