Alright, this is a bit of a tale, so sit back and prepare to get angry (at least I hope you do).
My fiance is just now finishing the Intro to Computing class at Valencia Community College here in Orlando. Should be an easy class, of course, especially at community college. Subject matter was indeed basically very easy, lots of busy work but nothing difficult. The problems arose with one of her final assignments.
For the final paper (about a month ago now), the teacher sent out a list of prompts to choose from, and the one my fiance selected was listed as "How Safe is a Network?" Not seeing any instructions that specified that the title must match exactly, she titled the paper Network Security, since that was the terminology used in the book (which doesn't mention network safety or safety in relation to a network at all), and proceeded to agonize over the paper for several days, wanting to write it well, considering the teacher had already shown some quirks in grading and was obviously not very knowledgeable. Basically, she thought she was writing a fool-proof paper that couldn't fail to be clear.
When the grading came back at first, she had been given a grade of 50%. The reasoning? She was accused of plagiarism. The proof? A Google search results page, with the search query being her entire first sentence. Note: this was not an actual website, but merely the page that comes up with the results of your search. None of the pages linked from that page contained the phrase she had used, nor any form of it beyond what would be considered common knowledge and thus unnecessary citations. Since that did not constitute proof, my fiance emailed the teacher about it, and was essentially told that there were many other things (unproven) that were plagiarized, and that she deserved a 0 but the teacher was being nice by giving her a 50 because she believed that the summary was at least her own work. After attempting to email her again and receiving no response for a week, my fiance talked to the Dean. The Dean agreed with her that the paper was not plagiarized and told my fiance that she would talk to the teacher and that the paper would be regraded properly.
After not seeing any changes in the grading for another week, my fiance once again emailed the teacher to find out whether she was even intending to comply with the Dean's instructions, upon which she received an email stating that, as a "courtesy", the teacher had regraded her paper, and was now giving her a 70 because she had mistitled her paper "Network Security" instead of "How Safe is a Network". Again, remember that not only did the instructions not state that the title must be the same as the prompt, but the two subjects are synonymous. Of course still not satisfied (since that would drag her overall grade from a well-deserved A to a B), my fiance emailed her back to find out if the mistitled paper was truly deserving of 30 points off (remember, the "plagiarized" version was 50 points off, so apparently the title was a bigger penalty than copying the paper). She never received a response (sound familiar?) so once again emailed the Dean, who also emailed the teacher asking for detailed grading criteria and notes, which were provided finally by the teacher within a few days.
The essence of the notes, which took up a full page and a half about the three page paper, were that the paper should have been about "How Safe is a Network", which the teacher claimed should have been focused on topics such as internet predators, identity theft, and online shopping, instead of Network Security, which my fiance had obviously written primarily about protecting wired and wireless networks from intrusion and protecting data on a networked computer from unauthorized access. Apparently the teacher thinks she was being very gracious to give her 30 points for good grammar and structure, and 40 points for thoroughly covering the subject matter, since it was about "the wrong topic". Now, my fiance is currently in the process of emailing both the Dean and the teacher about this incredibly stupid "regrading" of her paper.
Are there any other options to help my fiance get the grade she deserves on this paper and in the class? If it didn't affect her overall grade by a full letter grade, she probably would have given up, but that's a pretty big deal when she's in the right and the teacher is obviously in the wrong.
Also, is there any reason why such an incompetent teacher would end up teaching an online class about computers, and why she should continue to teach that class to future groups of students? Is there anything we can do that will assist in removing this teacher from her position? (We wrote a long letter in place of the teacher assessment for another class before, which we can only hope was read by someone who matters.)
Thanks for reading, I guess this was mostly a rant, but I had to get it out.
jW
My fiance is just now finishing the Intro to Computing class at Valencia Community College here in Orlando. Should be an easy class, of course, especially at community college. Subject matter was indeed basically very easy, lots of busy work but nothing difficult. The problems arose with one of her final assignments.
For the final paper (about a month ago now), the teacher sent out a list of prompts to choose from, and the one my fiance selected was listed as "How Safe is a Network?" Not seeing any instructions that specified that the title must match exactly, she titled the paper Network Security, since that was the terminology used in the book (which doesn't mention network safety or safety in relation to a network at all), and proceeded to agonize over the paper for several days, wanting to write it well, considering the teacher had already shown some quirks in grading and was obviously not very knowledgeable. Basically, she thought she was writing a fool-proof paper that couldn't fail to be clear.
When the grading came back at first, she had been given a grade of 50%. The reasoning? She was accused of plagiarism. The proof? A Google search results page, with the search query being her entire first sentence. Note: this was not an actual website, but merely the page that comes up with the results of your search. None of the pages linked from that page contained the phrase she had used, nor any form of it beyond what would be considered common knowledge and thus unnecessary citations. Since that did not constitute proof, my fiance emailed the teacher about it, and was essentially told that there were many other things (unproven) that were plagiarized, and that she deserved a 0 but the teacher was being nice by giving her a 50 because she believed that the summary was at least her own work. After attempting to email her again and receiving no response for a week, my fiance talked to the Dean. The Dean agreed with her that the paper was not plagiarized and told my fiance that she would talk to the teacher and that the paper would be regraded properly.
After not seeing any changes in the grading for another week, my fiance once again emailed the teacher to find out whether she was even intending to comply with the Dean's instructions, upon which she received an email stating that, as a "courtesy", the teacher had regraded her paper, and was now giving her a 70 because she had mistitled her paper "Network Security" instead of "How Safe is a Network". Again, remember that not only did the instructions not state that the title must be the same as the prompt, but the two subjects are synonymous. Of course still not satisfied (since that would drag her overall grade from a well-deserved A to a B), my fiance emailed her back to find out if the mistitled paper was truly deserving of 30 points off (remember, the "plagiarized" version was 50 points off, so apparently the title was a bigger penalty than copying the paper). She never received a response (sound familiar?) so once again emailed the Dean, who also emailed the teacher asking for detailed grading criteria and notes, which were provided finally by the teacher within a few days.
The essence of the notes, which took up a full page and a half about the three page paper, were that the paper should have been about "How Safe is a Network", which the teacher claimed should have been focused on topics such as internet predators, identity theft, and online shopping, instead of Network Security, which my fiance had obviously written primarily about protecting wired and wireless networks from intrusion and protecting data on a networked computer from unauthorized access. Apparently the teacher thinks she was being very gracious to give her 30 points for good grammar and structure, and 40 points for thoroughly covering the subject matter, since it was about "the wrong topic". Now, my fiance is currently in the process of emailing both the Dean and the teacher about this incredibly stupid "regrading" of her paper.
Are there any other options to help my fiance get the grade she deserves on this paper and in the class? If it didn't affect her overall grade by a full letter grade, she probably would have given up, but that's a pretty big deal when she's in the right and the teacher is obviously in the wrong.
Also, is there any reason why such an incompetent teacher would end up teaching an online class about computers, and why she should continue to teach that class to future groups of students? Is there anything we can do that will assist in removing this teacher from her position? (We wrote a long letter in place of the teacher assessment for another class before, which we can only hope was read by someone who matters.)
Thanks for reading, I guess this was mostly a rant, but I had to get it out.
jW
