This semester, my students were creating a website which features a to-do list. Anyone who registers on the site can create their own to-do items which they can retrieve later.   Unfortunately, some of the students hadn’t quite implemented authentication properly when their sites went live, and one of their classmates was a vandal with fellatio on their mind.

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Almost every semester I get one case of plagiarism.  Some are more blatant and idiotic than others.  I’m never sure whether I’m upset with them for cheating, or for thinking I was so stupid that I wouldn’t notice. 

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I’ve had a very busy time over the past two weeks with my students having a major website development assignment due.   Out of a class of 88, I’ve had around 12-15 students coming to see me nearly every day.

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One of the tasks my students have to do during their first assignment is to start a new thread on our discussion forum. There are no rules, they can post about anything.

Student 1 calls his thread ‘Sup noobs’. Here is the exchange that ensued:

Student 1: Assignment zero weow!
Student 2: lol t3h n00bz0r is j00
Student 2: wewt
Student 1: stfu

For the labtest, I gave my students a small programming task that involved creating a system that catalogued diamonds.

The top row are the Steinmetz Pink, the Millenium Star and the Allnatt.  On the bottom row are the Heart of Eternity, the Pumpkin, the Moussaieff Red and the Ocean Dream.  Collectively, these diamonds weigh in at over 400 carats, and are worth well over US$100 million.

The students had to implement a Diamond business object, which had a weight property.  Here is one student’s implementation:

I wonder if those are baby carrots or full grown?  Cooked or raw?
 

I thought my students were bad enough with their last minute assignment extensions, but I never would have predicted this.

Five days after the assignment was due, I receive this email:

Dear Mam,
I am sorry for late reply.
On 28/8/6 monday i was trying to submit my assignment on q: drive around 4 clock when my access was denied and I had emailed my assignment at your address but i got email from you which mentioned about webdropoff box.
If you can tell me how to access it I can submit my assignment again.
I would be thankfull if my assignment can be accepted.

With Regards

The reason why his "access was denied" was that he was trying to submit after the cutoff time.  He did email me that night, but of course, the exe caused it to get zapped by the uni email filter.  I replied telling him to immediately send it to be through the webdropoff box service (a large section of assignment 0 was devoted to getting them to understand how to use this).   If he’d sent it that night, I probably would have overlooked the late submission and marked it … but to wait five days?  Tough luck buddy.

If that wasn’t bad enough, two weeks after the assignment was due, a student came to see me with a medical certificate stating that she had a 5 day extension.  She confessed that she’d "maybe left it a little bit late" to come and see me.  Ya think?

A student came to see me today looking very serious.   He explained that he got zero for a certain part of the assignment and wanted to know why.   Then he said:

I implemented something different.  Do I actually have to make it do what the specification says?

Ummm, YES!  Hello?  Just what do you think is the point of this entire course?

*Sigh*, I really wish I could actually say that to students instead of just thinking it.

A student writes this on the discussion forum today:

I didnt attend Monday’s lecture due to a mid-term test <—my bad, just wonder what did we learn on Monday?

This course doesn’t have classes on Monday. 

It’s no wonder that this student’s very next post is titled: lost at the beginning

My students had an assignment due yesterday.   They have had this assignment for 5 weeks now, and I gave them a four day extension because the due date clashed with a semester test and assignment in a course most of them were taking.

The assignment was due at 4pm yesterday, and during the day I received three requests for an extension.  Posted for your enjoyment below are the student’s requests and what I wish I could reply.

First request

Can I ask you a big favourite?  Can I get a one day extension, because I really want to hand in my FINAL proper and smoothed performed program (which would be much easier for you to mark and test as well)?  I’m not very happy with my code at the moment, and trying to figure out the best way to make it work smoothly without those low-level bugs…   At 11:21am

Yes, OF COURSE you can have a favourite.  There’s no reason why you should be obliged to complete your assignment within the same timeframe as the rest of the class.  And given the five weeks you’ve already had, I can easily understand why you haven’t managed to do it already.

Second request

I’m in your class, and can I ask for a extention for assignement one?
I think there are some problem with my work file, everytime I tried to open it, the Visual studio going no responce, and I’m getting so frustrated, maybe I need to do it again…

Maybe I can finishe it by end of tomorrow.   At 2:48pm

I took pity on this guy, figuring maybe his project had been corrupted so I asked him to send it to me so I could fix it for him.  As it turns out, there was no issue with his work file except that he hadn’t done any bloody work in it yet.

Third request

Can I request for a few hours extension- I will [submit] late tonight.  I will be able to finish a reasonable chunk of my assignment in these few hours, which at the moment is very much out of shape.  At 3:39pm!

How perfectly sensible of you to wait until 21 minutes before the deadline and then ask for extra time.  Obviously 5 weeks weren’t enough but 5 weeks and a few hours will be plenty.

A couple of minor things I have asked my students to do are to read and write Word documents using office automation, and to make use of the Microsoft Agent control.  In one lab I combined these, by asking the students to read the contents of a Word document into their application, and then having the Microsoft agent read the file aloud.

I had this exchange on the Cecil discussion forums with a student.  I have paraphrased my replies to the student :

Student: What does it mean when I cant import microsoft.office.interop? It has that green error line under the code

Me: Uh, if you’d read the forum at all, I’ve answered this already.  It generally means you were too lazy/stupid to complete the very first step in the process – adding a reference to Word into Visual Studio. 

Student: Ive only got Microsoft Word 10.0 library and when i try to add that it says a reference to the libarry already exists. Whats this mean?

Me: It means that you’ve now figured out step 1.  Congratulations.  Now, perhaps you should read the error messages that you are getting, they may just give you a clue about what is going wrong.

Student: When I try to run the Lab 10 solution, this is what I get: [Copy paste dump of all 8 build errors]

Me: Ahh, now I get it.  You aren’t even trying the exercise for yourself but are just trying to run my solution.   You actually have to do a little work for yourself (I know, life’s a bitch).  You have to delete my references to new Office and add in the references to your own office version.  You know, like I mentioned in class?

Student: Ok most of it is fine now….  Theres no errors though wen i import microsoft.office.core

Student: Actually the code doesnt work, crashes when i click the read button

Me: It crashes.  Crashes.  You’re 12 weeks into your second programming course, and the most useful diagnostic information you can give is to say that it crashes?  What kind of exception was thrown by what line of code and what was the error message?  Bloody hell, have you come to class at all this semester?

Student: Oh yep. Well the error was Filenotfoundexception was unhandled and this was the highlighted code: AgentControl.Characters.Load("Peedy", "Peedy.acs")

Me: Riiight.  And that’s related to Microsoft Office automation how, exactly?   Hmm, looks to me like the problem is that it couldn’t find the microsoft agent character file.  That’s probably why it says it’s a file not found exception.  Strange that.   So, maybe you didn’t bother with the first step of the Microsoft Agent thing either – you actually have to install it before you can use it.  You need to install both the agent engine (msagent.exe) and the peedy character (peedy.exe).

Student: Oh ok how do i go about doing that

Me: What the FUCK?  I spent the entire first 10 minutes of the lecture discussion what files to install in what order.  It’s the very first slide!  And I just told you in the previous post!  Perhaps if you tried, oh, I dunno, coming to class?  Or reading the lecture notes?   OK, I’m nice, so I’ll make it nice and simple.  You…copy…the…files…I…gave…you.  You…take…them…home.  You…double…click…them.  They…install.  OK?

Student: Alrighty, thanks for the help