Summertime is here again...

Spring 2012 ended with the predictable, although nonetheless depressing, rash of students who thought plagiarism would help them finish their work. Oh, how so very very wrong they were! Several English 120 students failed major course assignments because they copied and pasted material from websites. One failed the course because she copied and pasted in both her last essay, and her research paper. She plagiarized from essay mills, by the way, and everything she copied had terrible grammar errors and made little to no sense. Two World Literature students attempted to cheat on their final exam and earned big, fat zeroes for their efforts. One World Literature student copied and pasted the vast majority of her essay on Hamlet. I noticed. She earned a zero for the paper. Summer sessions means I am only teaching one course, Monday through Thursday, from 3:20-5:20pm. During Summer I, I am teaching English 120, and English 201 (Research and Applied Writing--which I teach as a gender studies course) in Summer II. One student already approached me to tell me that this is her fourth time taking ENG 120... I am still not lecturing, but I also need to request a classroom change, as my class is currently in a VC (video conference) room, and does not have a big white board. For all my technology use, I still need to be able to write on the board! The summer will continue my efforts to engage and teach without "lectures." I've instructed my students to stop me from talking if I've been teaching, uninterrupted, for more than 8 minutes. We are using more discussion, small group and partner work, Socratic method, and interactive media this semester to keep the "lecture" out of the classroom...more to follow soon.