Comments on The New Student Excuse?

• I haven't seen a corrupt file in a very long time
• Posted by Ben Reynolds , Sr Program Manager, CTYOnline at Johns Hopkins on June 5, 2009 at 7:00am EDT

• As the head of an online program with 2500 enrollments a year, the nearest thing to a corrupt file I've seen since about 2001 is a .docx renamed to .doc I wouldn't accept the corrupt file alibi. And, you've now made me doubly suspicious of the next one that shows up. Which will be about the next time General Motors makes a profit.

• Countermeasures
• Posted by Stanislav on June 5, 2009 at 7:00am EDT

• This isn't hard to defeat if you use a <a href="http://highered.blogspot.com/2009/06/dropbox-idea.html">dropbox</a> (using email for homework submissions is a bad idea anyway). Just require the student to open the file once uploaded and verify that it works.

• Corrupted Files emphasize the need for caution in Bologna
• Posted by Jerry Pattengale , Ass't Provost at Indiana Wesleyan on June 5, 2009 at 7:15am EDT

• Scott, While raising my keyboard to salute the developer's creativity, I also salute General Eduction committees for endorsing ethics classes and/or outcomes. My assumption is that Black Board and other course management systems will develop filters for this, like the Safe Assignment options. In the meantime, like many on traditional campuses have been doing for years, we can use the syllabus to ward off most of these by inserting simple statements that put the responsibility for transmission of submissions with the students. On traditional campuses, like in the research capstone I teach, the student is responsible to submit a hard copy by the deadline if the file does not transfer cleanly. By sending papers to other students for review, and posting one on Blackboard and with our library resources, it helps to expedite the detection process. One of my concerns with C. Adelman's early statements about the U.S. endorsement or consideration of the Bologna approach (though I highly admire his work, took issue with him on this matter) is the stripping of the liberal arts component in higher ed to compare U.S. majors/degrees with those of the BP, or for international comparisons. This ethical situation with corrupt files runs deeper than a course assignment, it touches the core of the human condition and much of what education is about. Citizenship components may be assessed effectively on spreadsheets but difficult to teach in such a manner. Thanks for this article. JP

• corrupt files no excuse
• Posted by Dan Dutkofski , Dean at Valencia Community College on June 5, 2009 at 7:15am EDT

• IN all of my online courses, I require students to submit a practice posting in the first week. If there are any problems with the document, I let the student know and we make sure that they can post a good file. I then have in my syllabus that any work that cannot be opened for any reason will be considered not turned in; the later submission is late and subject to a lower score (even if the dog ate the disc!).

• Paste it as .txt
• Posted by Brad on June 5, 2009 at 9:30am EDT

• As one who loves hijinx, this seems like a pretty benign way to get some extra time. Still, I find it absolutely shocking that any professor would buy this. College students today are so tech savy. Anyone from a middle to high income background under 30 years old had computers in their elementary school classrooms (a generalization to be sure, please don't turn this into an access and equity argument). If I were a professor I would have the student copy and paste the text into an email and submit the formatted version seperately.

  In this day and age, I think the "dog ate my paper" is due for a renaissance since it is much more plausible than "my computer ate it."

• It's clearly an example of academic dishonesty
• Posted by Midwest1 on June 5, 2009 at 11:45am EDT

• Our extensive Academic Honesty Statement includes efforts to gain extra time to complete a project as an act of academic dishonesty. Whether that's dead grandmothers, a flat tire, a corrupt file, or any other deliberate falsification intended to gain time not given to other students, it's still cheating. If caught, some faculty here will give a zero for the assignment. My syllabus says they fail the course.

• Bank Shots
• Posted by Jonathan Dresner on June 5, 2009 at 12:30pm EDT

• I had a case of cheating once: two papers came in, very similar (on a topic with a wide range of possible theses); one had clearly been copied from the other. I couldn't definitively identify which without a confession, but one of them cited their sources correctly and the other had decoy sources (those cute attempts to make it look like you cited a source, but since they didn't actually read what they were citing they didn't realize that it wasn't germane), so I cited the second one for plagiarism.

  The first corrupted file may just be an accident. But I'm going to save them from now on, and compare them. The second one gets cited for plagiarism.

• Posted on June 5, 2009 at 1:15pm EDT

• This is easy to fix - either only accept papers in hard copy or, if e-mail must be used, require the text of the paper be pasted into the document. Or require students submitting via e-mail to submit a day early.

• Why Be Duped?
• Posted by Stephen Ewen on June 5, 2009 at 1:30pm EDT

• Of course, the tech savvy prof can tell if he or she has been slighted like this, because more than likely all these people are doing is offering fake files made by this program: http://archive.winmxworld.com/RingLord/File%20Ghoster/. Also, you can just use Turnitin. It displays the text of a Word doc if it uploaded correctly, and viewing that is the student's responsibility.

• Not very creative!
• Posted by Ethan on June 5, 2009 at 9:00pm EDT

• Perhaps it's just my engineering background, but I would expect any prof or TA to open a "corrupted document" in a hex editor (or strings!) and see what's inside. Not because they were suspicious of mendacity on the student's part, but only because they were curious what how the document was corrupted (msb stripped? cut off? this just doesn't happen with email so much anymore) and if the contents were still visible. I'm assuming these contain text from some paper the site founder created, and thus it'd be obvious that it wasn't relevant to the class. A much better trick for buying extra time (which I might've used at some point in my college career, I can't remember for sure anymore) is to "mistakenly" submit last week's assignment. The grader usually won't notice for at least a day or so, and when they contact you, it's easy to apologize, claim you must've "dragged the wrong file into the email", and send the correct one. You can even mess with your computer's date stamp before saving it, to ensure that the internal "Last modified/printed/created(if you're really bad)" tags predate the due date. At worst they might assess a penalty for being late (which you would've gotten anyway), but I'd expect they'd have sympathy, assume it was an "honest mistake", and let it go.

• Why not just ask for extra time?
• Posted by Rita Sakitt , Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Suffolk County Community College on June 5, 2009 at 9:00pm EDT

• Using the corrupted-file ploy simply to gain an extra day or two seems rather overkill. When a student asks me for a little extra time, I almost always give it, and actually make the period slightly longer than the student requested. There aren't that many students who submit late work so it doesn't make that much more work. At the end of the semester, when I have a deadline for submitting final grades, I try to make sure students understand my contraints, and that those become their constraints. I would rather they ask for the time than feel they have to go through such unethical shenanigans. And in my course outline I specify that it is the student's responsibility to assure that I receive a readable copy of his or her work.

• Oh dear...
• Posted by Stewart on June 5, 2009 at 10:15pm EDT

• I just got a corrupted file from one of my A students. I have to give her the benefit of the doubt as thanks to Microsoft, files do get corrupted and its happened to me on many occasions. I just emailed her to resend the file, it bought her a few hours but if she did do this intensionally, she now has plenty of time to finish the paper and I can't say a thing as it does happen. I tip my hat to the person who thought up of this excuse, I fear what things he/she will think up of next.

• Email vs hard copy
• Posted by Jennifer Olmsted , Assoc prof and chair at Drew University on June 6, 2009 at 6:30am EDT

• While some are advocating turning in a hard copy as the solution to this problem, I don't find that answer satisfactory. I started requiring electronic copies of papers because it makes plagiarism easier to catch and now I grade directly on my Tablet, thus saving trees. Having said that, like Rita Sakitt, I don't get what the big deal is with providing extensions, which I do all the time.

• Already seen multiple attempts at this
• Posted by Rachel on June 6, 2009 at 6:30am EDT

• At my large state university, I have come across this ploy at least three times in the past academic year alone.  It typically accompanies a lame(r) excuse about printers not working, or being sick to explain why the paper was emailed in the first place.  One student actually tried this on all three paper assignments, thinking that somehow I would not suspect anything.  That student failed the course. 

  Our students are notorious for not doing things on time.  Regardless of the standards in the syllabus, or the individual professor's policies, not turning in assignments on time has been a serious issue, especially in gen-ed courses.  Despite my having a strict policy regarding late work, and an explicit statement that electronically-submitted work that cannot be opened is considered not submitted, at least 40% of my students this year turned work in late, or tried to grovel for more time at least once in the semester.  

• Posted by Philosophy Prof on June 6, 2009 at 6:30am EDT

• This seems easy enough to circumvent. If an assignment is being submitted by e-mail, the students are required to paste the body of the paper into the message, and check to see that it's not scrambled, and if they do not they receive a penalty (maybe a third of a grade every twelve hours that they don't send it). As long as this is emphasized in class and on the syllabus, there is no problem. If the assignments are being submitted to a drop box, the students would be required also to submit them via e-mail. If there is a time-organization problem in the case of the use of drop-boxes, faculty could opt to file all of the e-mails into a folder, and just check the ones that end up having corrupted files attached.

• Posted by Frank Helium on June 6, 2009 at 10:00pm EDT

• To be perfectly honest, I thought of this not long ago, and I never knew someone else considered it as well. I never actually planned on using this excuse, but I thought it was a pretty smart way of dodging due dates.

  At the same time, things like this piss me off, because I am the kind of student who works extremely hard, and when professors have to change the rules because of lazy or unethical students, the rule changes affect all of us. Professors tend to apply strict or extreme rules as a result of bad apples (I didn't say the bad apples are in the minority). It negatively impacts the "good" students.

  I don't remember ever turning in something in late with the help of a bogus excuse.

• Professional Preparation
• Posted by Victoria , Health Sciences on June 7, 2009 at 2:30pm EDT

• Amazed eternally that students think rules are set for some time criteria simple for some sort of tradition. Professors are trying to prepare these people for a successful future. Part of their learning to is to be responsible and meet deadlines. That is part of their professional development. If we say, "Oh it is ok, just turn it in later" then we have trained them that late is ok. NOT. When they actually are given the opportunity of the job they have hoped for and the boss says have it ready for the 9am meeting, it they show up with a "bad file" or late how do you think their boss with take it? But that is what my college professor taught me....? The good students deserve to not be subjected to this type of unprofessional environment. Or better, turn in you resume after the deadline, see how that works for you....

• Use Google Docs
• Posted by Steve Taffee , Technology at Castilleja School on June 8, 2009 at 5:30am EDT

• The professors can require students to submit early drafts of work (or perhaps even the final version) via Google Docs, shared between the student as owner and their teacher. Doing the entire process online allows for great collaboration and takes MS Office and its ilk out of the equation.

• Not cheating!?
• Posted by Shane Hockin , Instructor in History on June 8, 2009 at 4:30pm EDT

• I love how this guy tries to spin this as not being cheating. Horse manure. It is a lie to get more time to write a paper when no one else had extra time. That is cheating and a half. If I found out a student did this, I would fail them. Period. Furthermore, it is the student's responsibility to check the condition of their papers beforehand, and they should have backups they can access. If their file is corrupted, it is their own fault. So even if I did not know it was from the website, their paper would be considered late, which is an automatic mark down. Frankly, I can't see why this is such a big success. Any intelligent professor would see right through it.

• Expectations--Ethan's Comment
• Posted by Richard Grant , Director of First-Year Composition/English at Columbia Union College on June 8, 2009 at 8:00pm EDT

• Ethan, Your remarks were certainly candid, but I find your cavalier attitude towards dishonesty disturbing. Maybe it's just my humanities background, but I would expect any TA or Professor to encourage honesty and ethics as part of course content. I hope that ultimately you would not be content being an unethical engineer. Our time as professors and students is better spent practicing civility and acts of grace than thinking up new ways to cheat.

• other virtual highway hijacking
• Posted by Jerry Krase , professor emeritus sociology at brooklyn college, city university of new york on June 9, 2009 at 10:00am EDT

• "lost in the e-mail" is not uncommon as are the "server down" excuses. the web provides many opportunities to enterprising students not the least of which is to anonymously trash professors with whom they have a problem of one sort or another. i am still suffering from a group of bright students who decided not only to give me the worst stduent evaluation they could in the normal way.... college sponsored evaluations that at least can be contrasted to those of other students in the same class and with other records, but most troublesome on sites such as rate your professor. here again it is not an issue of freedom to evaluate or even trash but that the screeds are not vetted in any way and remain for other students to find when your name is on a course offering. not a problem for full-time faculty but for adjuncts (even emeritus ones) with whom students have no familiarity or track record. i should note that the students in questions all received the "a" grades they earned despite their being chastised by me for being among other things rude to fellow students and to me. the obviousloy found the web as a potent resource and i wonder whether other academics have sought, unsuccessfully, to redress such problems. maybe we should create a www.rateyourstudents.com and make anonymous citations, he said jokingly. in general i would say that we in the field have seldom carefully considered the consequences of the technological revoluation we have signed on to.

• lying = cheating
• Posted by Stacey , Grad student on June 9, 2009 at 4:45pm EDT

• As a grad student I have to say that this tactic of getting extra time for assignments is terrible. It makes us all look bad, and makes every circumstance of needing extra time "suspicious." I guess this touches on a nerve for me because during a course this Spring I had to ask a professor for extra time to turn in an assignment, because in fact, my grandmother did pass away (as several mentioned in previous comments as a common excuse). My professor was very understanding and granted an extension. I worked my tail off and was able to finish the assignment and get it in on time without having to use the extension. I just hate to think that the sorry excuses of a few students make the rest of us "suspects" when unfortunate things really do sometimes happen in our lives.

• It is Cheating
• Posted by Sharon , Instructor/ Developmental Education at Hudson County Community College on June 10, 2009 at 6:00am EDT

• Now I have one more excuse for not accepting assignments via email.

• Posted by James , Marketing on June 10, 2009 at 5:45pm EDT

• OMG did you all see the FAQ page? It's hilarious!!!
  My Fav!

  Q: Who is behind Corrupted Files?
  A: Umpa Lumpas, tons of them. Pauly Shore is here too!

  This is clearly a joke and I think we are all part of it. I bet it's a marketing person who's behind this!

  Who is this guy? I can't stop laughing!!!

• Unethical
• Posted by Colleen , HS English Teacher at Public High School on June 17, 2009 at 2:15pm EDT

• I can't believe anyone is arguing if this is ethical or not. The guy behind this site states that he provides "better excuses." But a lie is a lie, and handing in a paper later than everyone else is unfair and undermines the rules of the classroom.

  If you hand in a paper late, deal with the consequences. Anyone willing to cheat up front is more likely to cheat when it comes to handing in the paper. We need a zero tolerance policy or everyone will do it.

• corrupted file
• Posted by mj , associate professor at UALR on June 18, 2009 at 5:30pm EDT

• This would not work with me. I stress the importance of saving the work in multiple locations at multiple stages of completion including using email servers. I tell students that submitting work at the last minute is the risk that they take. Those that submit hours or days early receive a notice from me stating that the file has been received and opened well before the deadline. It is their responsiblity to check for that message. If they send at the last minute, they have a short window to resend if there is a problem. A few options with a window that is usually less than 3 hours: copy and paste into email message, save as another file (.rtf), bring paper copy to me and resend email later. So far, all computer excuses from students who didn't actually do the work have resulted in the student dropping the class. When the work was actually done, I have received the paper in minutes.

• Posted by Dr Dave on June 26, 2009 at 5:15am EDT

• Having just had a student, who obviously thinks I am as stupid as he is, come to me with his third dead grandmother in as many years, I have come to accept that sad excuses are simply a way of life in teaching, one of those little things we all have to put up with. Even though we know we are being lied to, how can it be proved? All I can say is that I have always been alarmed at the degree to with disaster, death and disease stalk the corridors around submission time. A good argument for never becoming a grandparent.

  The solution to the problem of the corrupt files problem is, of course, to go back to the good old hard copy. Make your students hand in both a hard copy and an electronic copy and make them hand in the electronic copy via Turnitin or Blackboard etc., refusing to even accept emailed assignments, that way you have both bases covered. I have been doing this for several years in my courses and it is amazing the way computer problems, as well as plagiarism and outrageous word counts, just fade away.

• just make a clear policy
• Posted by jim on July 8, 2009 at 7:30am EDT

• I know one lecturer here who marked paper submissions as late when students said the printers in the library had problems (which they actually did). he said they should have not left things to the last moment, and they should learn to build more time to allow for these possiblities.

  the same could be applied here, if students submit via blackboard and don't double check that that submission has been uploaded successfully then it's their fault, and they get marked accordingly. as long as you make this clear to student, it will help them to time manage more effectively

• Justification
• Posted by David Bodary , Communication at Sinclair Community College on July 12, 2009 at 9:15am EDT

• I find the creator's justification for developing the "corrupt file" excuse quite interesting. Because he was an entrepreneur and didn't have a much time he figured out this way of buying extra time.

  So somehow being an entrepreneur or having a job makes deception acceptable. I wonder how his clients would feel about that.

  Interesting to read how a person justifies cheating. I see this as equivalent to forging a medical excuse, or fabricating any other type of lie. Creative for sure and might fly under the radar, until now.
  

• Not so sure about this one...
• Posted by Paul on July 14, 2009 at 8:45am EDT

• Here is my take...while I am not condoning laziness or cheating in any way, I have to blame PROFESSORS (or teachers) primarily for this. That is right, I am blaming the innocent professors and teachers more than the dishonest students. Why? Because a good portion of teachers/professors have taken it upon themselves to be lazy and exploit their authority to the point that they are actually breaching academic integrity in their own way. Given that the universally accepted purpose of giving students assignments is for them to gain ACADEMIC experience, and the main point of grading this work is to evaluate its ACADEMIC quality, why is it that many teachers and professors decide to give students a ZERO for an assignment that is a few minutes, hours, or even days late?? Do they think it is better for the student to not do the assignment at all and learn nothing?? Even worse, if such professors or teachers had to specify their grading criteria for an assignment that received a zero because it was late, the criteria would be:

  100% of grade- Based on whether deadline was met
  0% of grade - Based on academic quality of work

  To me, that is almost a JOKE, but I think it is SAD more than anything else.

  I fully understand, and even encourage a deduction of 5, 10, or maybe 20 points for an assignment that is one or two days late. On the other hand, I feel it is ridiculous to say that a zero, or even a 50, is an ACCURATE grade for a paper that is a day or two late. What if that paper was of 'A' quality...should it receive a lower grade than a junky piece of crap that was turned in before the precious deadline?? I'm willing to bet that very few professors/teachers even believe that this is fair grade...they just see it as a very convenient way to reduce the amount of grading they have to do, or in rare cases, a way to satisfy their authoritarian egos. All this talk about "teaching responsibility" is BS!

• Not so sure about this one either
• Posted by A1 Philosopher , Philosophy Instructor at University of Guelph on July 25, 2009 at 8:00pm EDT

• As a teacher I'm with Paul on this. I can see no good reason to punish late work by reducing a grade or deducting marks. There are other alternatives, such as don't provide any feedback except the grade or don't return the paper until the last allowable date. But according to my university's calendar the grade is supposed to represent the quality of the work so to have recorded on a student's transcript a grade that does not accurately reflect their academic performance seems way way out of line because the student submitted a paper late. It seems to me to be a misuse of professorial power. Late papers may be inconvenient and a pain in the ass to deal with, but in the interests of academic integrity that's just what profs have to do. Besides which, don't you just enjoy hearing some of the creative reasons students provide for their tardiness in producing papers?

• Electronic nonsense
• Posted by Phil DeCarlo , Director Off Campus Services at Felician College on August 17, 2009 at 2:15pm EDT

• If this is what students will do to avoid strict time management, what will they think of in the world of work? After 40 years in commercial banking and consulting my question would be, "How do you spell "F"?" When you miss deadlines in the "real world" people and businesses get hurt. They should learn now or they will get remedial training in the unemployment line and deserve it. Why should we as academics be forced to adapt our standards to the students' deliberate tactics to avoid responsibility and accountability? We make the rules - they follow or get out!

• Inconsistency is the problem
• Posted by KP , Grad Student at Liberty University on September 6, 2009 at 2:45pm EDT

• Many have noted that the academic experience should prepare students for the real world that they are preparing to enter. When professors do not hand down consequences that reflect how the real world works, supposedly students are ill-prepared to deal when the leave school. As a grad student I say, give us more credit than that. Frankly, most of us know what we can get away with and where and when. We know that the tricks we pull in college won't fly when we are finally in the workplace; at least I believe most of us do. If the majority of our professors consistently applied the same standards, then many students would not attempt things like this. We would know that we weren't going to get away with and therefore we would do our work.

• Those without sin cast the first stone.
• Posted by John on December 11, 2009 at 6:30am EST

• I love how everyone here condemns this like it's something new. Sure it's a form of cheating... cheating the system. But how many of you high-and-mighty folks has NEVER cheated at something. I'm not just talking academically here. We've all done it in one form or another in life. We all know that it is bad and isn't exactly a good thing to condone, but guess what, IT HAPPENS IN THE "REAL WORLD" too. Think about it... Ivy leaguers, the "best and brightest" among us are his biggest customers. Who are we to question and vilify the most successful of us. As humans we are constantly trying to outsmart and bend the boundaries our world has placed in front of us. A few of the commenters above me have made great points about this issue. Take some time and listen in, crawl down from our high horses.

• Posted by pedestrianme on December 15, 2009 at 5:30pm EST

• How would a corrupted file occur in honest circumstances? I have never received a corrupted file, except recently by a student under a deadline. Presumably this would need to be a common occurrence in order for the delay tactic to work as an excuse. But in decades of exchanging email attachments, no one has ever sent me a corrupted file except for this one student.

• Use PDF
• Posted by Batriq on February 6, 2010 at 7:45am EST

• A solution is to ask students to submit their homeworks as PDF files. On the Mac it's standard (any Print dialog has a PDF option by default), and on a PC you can install CutePDF which acts as a printer but prints to a PDF file instead.

• Posted by Rich on February 6, 2010 at 7:45am EST

• You can also use Google Docs. They upload the file and share it with you. You can then make your own copy and even see all the versions if you want.