1. Dealing with Difficult Students Types of Difficult Students Difficult students may manifest themselves as such in various ways. These include: The Angry, Arguer, or Grade Grubber The Excuse Making Student The Needy Student The Cheating, Plagiarizing Student

2. Angry and Aggressive Angry and aggressive students may fall into many categories including those who: Violate rules Manipulate instructors and/or other students Post abusive or inflammatory remarks in discussions Make unwarranted critical or abusive remarks to professors or other students

3. Excuse Making Excuse making students can often be very creative, supplying instructors with detailed excuses for not submitting their assignments (the cat died, the computer is down, mother had surgery, etc.).

4. Needy Students Needy Students are those who require an unusually high amount of feedback and interaction with the professor. If given the opportunity, they will dominate the professor’s time, flooding the instructor with e- mails, pressuring for immediate feedback. This type of student should be attended to, but not allowed to dominate the instructor’s time. A word of caution: the instructor should keep an eye on this type of student, because he/she has the potential to turn into the angry, hostile student.

5. Cheating, Plagiarizing Student The Cheating, Plagiarizing Student While some students purposely engage in cheating, other students may unknowingly violate plagiarism rules by incorrectly citing material or paraphrasing another’s work without properly giving credit.

6. Preventing Difficult Students Although there is no fool proof way of inhibiting difficult behavior online, there are some things that can be very effective in preventing students from turning into difficult students. Preventing Cheating & Plagiarism Preventing the Angry or Excuse Making Student

7. Preventing Plagiarism Here are some suggestions for preventing problems with cheating and plagiarism: Post University’s Academic Code Provide Definitions and Examples Consider Creating an Academic Honesty Contract Create Varying Assessment Formats

8. Provide Definitions & Examples Provide clear definitions and examples of different forms of plagiarism. For example, show students examples of acceptable citations and paraphrasing, compared to unacceptable examples of each. DefinitionsExamples Avoiding Plagiarism in an Online Environment

9. Example: Definitions of Plagiarism (Crawford,2002) Ghostwriting: when a person takes credit for work that someone else is writing. Patchwriting: when parts of a paper are taken from another source without giving credit. Inappropriate citation and reference: when a reference is overused or other authors' names were added to the reference list to make the paper look much better than it is. Inappropriate quotation: when a person fails to put qutation marks around verbatim remarks from the text of another author, but cites that author correctly, or when a person uses too many quoted materials in a paper. Contextual Fraud: the deliberate changing of words quoted from another author with the intent of changing the meaning of the passage.

10. Examples of Plagiarism One excellent strategy in preventing plagiarism is to provide students with examples. Princeton University provides some excellent online examples of textual plagiarism. examples

11. Varying Assessment Formats Another excellent strategy in preventing plagiarism among students is to break assignments into sections. For example, for a writing assignment, students may be required to first submit a title or subject, then a general outline, followed by a bibliography, and last, the entire paper.

12. Varying Assignments (cont’d) By incorporating varying assessment formats into the course, instructors are able to get a better sense of each student’s understanding of the subject matter and way of communicating. Get to know your students’ skill levels Create assignments based around personal experiences (eg., journal writing) Provide opportunities for students to resubmit work Break assignments into sections

13. Academic Honesty Contract Consider having students sign a contract that advises students of the consequences of plagiarizing, their responsibilities regarding this matter, and agreeing to the consequences, should they intentionally plagiarize. Sample Contract

14. Preventing Angry Students Excuse making and angry students are placed together in this section because the excuse making student can easily turn into an angry student without proper preventive measures.There are some important steps instructors can take to prevent encountering excuse making or angry students. Provide Clear Expectations Make Yourself Available Practice Good Communication Promote Internal Locus of Control

15. Provide Clear Expectations Provide clear expectations for your students. This is best accomplished through the use of learning objectives and specific directions/instructions for required activities. Other important things to consider are: Provide clear deadlines for assignments Provide a policy on late work Build a series of graded penalties, based upon how late a paper is. Maintain a file of all communication with students.

16. Make Yourself Available Post office hours and times that you will be available to correspond with students through instant messenger, e- mail, or telephone.

17. Communication Styles in Feedback Communication is a key factor in preventing angry or excuse making students. Some vital communication techniques are: Listen carefully & respect students’ opinions. Respond to students’ work in a positive manner. Promote communication & social skills among students. Let students know ahead of time if you will be out of town.

18. Responding to Students’ Work Avoid potential eruptions by responding to students’ work in a positive manner and without discouraging your students. Avoid using accusatory remarks, such as “You did not follow the directions of the assignment correctly.” Instead, say something like, “Please go back and review the directions for this assignment.”

19. Communication Among Students One way to promote communication and social skills among students is to incorporate a cooperative group activity. By laying down clear guidelines for social interaction you can encourage respect for other peoples’ beliefs.

20. Notify Students if Leaving Town Most students expect instructors to respond to their e- mails and assignments within a certain amount of time.If you plan on going out of town and anticipate sketchy Internet connectivity, let your students know. It is better to tell them up front to prevent student frustration.

21. Promote an Internal Locus of Control Locus of control refers to the types of attributions we make for our successes and/or failures in academic tasks. A student’s locus of control can have a profound impact on academic achievement (Anderman and Midgley, 1997). If a student, in turn, does well, he/she is less likely to become a problem student. Internal Locus of Control External Locus of Control How to promote an internal locus of control

22. Internal Locus of Control If someone believes that his/ her successes and failures are due to factors within his/her own control, such as ability or effort, then that person is said to have an internal locus of control. Persons with an internal locus of control attribute poor performance to a lack of important skills or to poor study habits, and are more likely to persist in the future (Anderman and Midgley, 1997).

23. External Locus of Control If someone believes that his or her successes and failures are due to factors outside of his/her own control, such as fate or luck, then that person is said to have an external locus of control. This person may feel that working hard is futile because his/her efforts have only brought disappointment (Anderman and Midgley, 1997).

24. Promoting an Internal Locus of Control One way to promote an internal locus of control is to incorporate a Mastery Learning (Guskey, 1997) approach. This allows students to learn material in increments, by breaking down material into subskills. Students are not allowed to proceed to the next level of material until they have mastered the pre-requisite knowledge.Mastery Learning Another approach is to promote learning goal orientation among students rather than performance goal orientation. In other words, promote a desire to learn and master the material rather than to perform at a certain level. This can be accomplished by designing multidimensional learning spaces (Dweck, 1988;Self-Brown and Mathews, 2003).multidimensional learning spaces

25. Multidimensional Virtual Classrooms Multidimensional classrooms tend to incorporate the following components into the virtual classroom structure (Lotan, 1997): More varied materials and methods of assessments Assessment methods where students are not openly compared to one another. Higher degree of student autonomy Collaborative learning activities Active participation Contingency contracts

26. Handling Difficult Students Even in well-planned courses, where goals, instructional objectives, and criteria for assessment are clearly identified, there exists the potential for misunderstandings or interpersonal conflicts to arise. What do you do when this happens? You can often de-escalate a heated situation if something like this happens in your course, if you show support, encouragement, respect and empathy towards your student.

27. Handling Angry Students Proper communication is essential in handling the angry student. Communicating with Angry Students

28. Communicating with Angry Students Communicate with student in a private setting. Rephrase what is being said in an attempt to identify the issue(s) at the heart of the situation. Acknowledge student’s opinion and be positive about his/her input. Remain calm and nonjudgmental, no matter how agitated the student becomes. Stay open minded-the student may have a point. Be careful about your language.

29. Angry Students (2) Use evidence when disagreeing with a student. Avoid beginning critical statements with “I.” Ask the student to clarify using the class material, rather than dismissing an idea immediately. Avoid making an issue out of a small incident. Maintain your professionalism by not responding as if you feel personally attacked. Do not continue trying to reason with a student who is highly agitated.

30. Angry Students (3) Consider your response carefully and seek other opinions before submitting if you are concerned. Copy and save all communications with students. Notify your administrator if you have a student who is abusive, threatening, or uses foul language. In the event that you meet face to face with your student, look for warning signs that the person is about to explode (changes in physical demeanor such as visible tensing of the body, assuming an aggressive stance, etc).

31. Detecting Plagiarism Google SearchesTurnit.com, etc. When paragraphs don’t flow well, or student’s writing techniques seem markedly different than previously submitted work, it is always a good idea to check for plagiarism. Two popular ways of doing this are through search engines (such as Google) or anti-plagiarism tools, such as “turnitin.com.”

32. Google Searches First, select a sentence or phrase such as the topic sentence, or one with several unique words in it. Next, enter this phrase into one of the search engines (Google, AltaVista, etc.) Make sure to enclose the suspect phrase in quotation marks. Try entering the phrase into several different search engines for the best results.

33. Anti-Plagiarism Tools Some universities subscribe to anti-plagiarism tools such as “turnitin.com” or “MyDropBox.com.” These services maintain a database of papers collected from sources such as term paper mills and academic works available online. In order to use this service, the instructor uploads the electronic file of the student’s paper. The paper is then checked against billions of pages from papers submitted to term paper mills, the Internet, commercial databases of journal articles and periodicals, and papers previously submitted.turnitin.comMyDropBox.com

34. References To view a printable outline of this presentation, along with a list of all references, please click here.click here