I caught a student cheating today. This class where we paint these material cubes has been around for years and it's a prerequisite for a lot of other classes so lots of students in the past have taken it. These students, proud of the work they've done then proceed to post these cubes online which is great, yaaaay.
But...
When new students are taking the class and they look online for reference they tend to see lots of other past student examples. Now that's not immediately an issue, but a part of what I'm trying to teach is the thinking process behind being able to look at an object and break it down to it's essential parts. ie this class is not about "copying", it's about analyizing. So if a student just copies another students work that misses the point a bit. But that's not cheating.
No this student literally turned in the exact image from the internet, flipped it horizontally and turned it in as their own work. Ughhh. Now I can typically tell if a student is cheating just by looking at the finished result, and I knew right away, so a 2 minute google search later I had the original, so now what to do.
The school where I work has a zero tolerance policy on plagiarism, being an art school, that's taken EXTREMELY seriously. Spoiler alert, I did not turn them in. As a human, who has done stupid things in my life(not this thing, but other dumb things) I figured I'd talk to them tell them I know they're a dirty cheater, and give a warning and a verbal spanking. It made me feel old, lol.
Anyway, here's proof I didn't steal these cubes off the internet!
What do you guys think? Would you have turned them in? I waited until everyone else had left to talk to them, so I also didn't publicly shame them. How would you have handled it? I know my art friends are pretty ruthless about plagiarizers hahaha.
Thanks for looking peeps!