Hypothetical question

[exirabit]

Hi All,

This question came up in a graduate group and I was curious how you all would respond.

Lets supose you were a TA for a class and you had a student who you did not have scores for multiple assignments over the course who could not produce copies of the work but insisted they turned them in what would you do?

Comments

[fountaingirl]

Ideally you would have put in a clause in the syllabus instructing students to keep copies of all of their work, in the event that there was a discrepancy. I usually add this caveat with the statement that it protects both them and me.

If this wasn't done, you need to be ready either to capitulate or to fight. I had this happen once, I did in-class assignments and one student was missing four of ten. She tried to tell me that she turned them all in and I must have lost them. I did not lose them, I took the assignments directly from class up to my office and entered points. I tried to explain to this student that the statistical odds of me losing assignments, and only four assignments during the course of a semester -- and of all of these belonging to one student -- was so improbable as to be ludicrous but she took the "prove me wrong" stance. I held firm, but took it hard on my evals that semester. She also posted nastiness about how I lose student work (I don't btw) on ratemyprofessors.com

[perpetua_redux]

Much, much better to preempt this issue in the syllabus. If you have the disclaimer in the syllabus, it acts like a policy and you just point and say, Wow, sucks to be you. Exactly.

Since the question came up in a graduate group, you can all learn--this is what you should do, always.

[skirmishgirl]

FYI. If you have legitimate reasons (or even if you don't), you can email ratemyprofessor.com and ask them to remove ratings from your page, and they'll do so, very willingly. I think they're a little concerned about libel, in the long run.

Not that the website really matters, but it can be really shitty knowing there's something like that on the cyberweb about you, especially when it's not true.

[adrinna]

It's VERY unlikely that this would happen more than once (unless you're really disorganized and it's happening with multiple students). I always have one 'dropped' score per class for each type of graded work (assignments, quizzes, but not exams {usually}) to anticipate some sort of freak accident, but that's pretty much it.

[elricmelnibone]

Tell the student that he is failing the course for not turning in any work. If he wishes to contest this, he can approach the chair of the department.

[max_ambiguity]

That's what I'd do. Very few students would have the balls to take their lies all the way to the chair. If it was one assignment I might compromise by averaging the remaining work or something (depending on how plausible the student's claim was - but I make careful notations in my grade book where once all assignments have been graded I note who has not turned them in), but there's just no way I would accidentally lose multiple assignments. Inform the chair of the situation now and fail the jerk.

[elricmelnibone]

This happened to me when I was TAing for a 125-student lecture course. The student went to the chair and charged that I had singled him out because I didn't like him. I honestly had no idea who the student was. I did the grading, but had never met the student. I only found out who he was when he decided - after his "case" was dismissed - to introduce himself to me and ask me why I was out to get him. I told him I had no idea how he was. He was not happy. Nor did I ever learn what happened to the work he claimed to turn in.

If I were the chair, I would ask the student why he waited so long to approach anyone about the fact that he was not getting any grades, or work returned to him, despite the fact that all his classmates were.

[melsmarsh]

In one case my email had not delivered 8 of 10 to one of my profs. I went to my email and printed out the copies and delivered them to her office and she gave me my As for all of them.

If they can't produce something, too bad.

[melsmarsh]

The strangest thing is that I checked the history and it DID say they were delivered and when they were delivered. Learnlink was not the most stable system, but it was the one we were required to use.

[griffen]

My policy about this will be in big bold letters at the top of the syllabus: MAKE SURE YOU KEEP ALL YOUR WORK (HOMEWORK, QUIZZES, PAPERS AND EXAMS) WHEN HANDED BACK; IF YOUR SCORE IS MISSING AND YOU CANNOT PRODUCE THE ACTUAL ASSIGNMENT, THERE WILL BE NO MAKEUPS.

I also intend to put a clause on the first day's sign-in sheet stating that by signing it, they acknowledge receipt of the syllabus.

(Yes, I'm going to be a total hardass about it, too. Irresponsibility is one of my big pet peeves.)

[fountaingirl]

I am stealing your second idea there. Receipt of the syllabus? That is pure win.

[dracsmith]

I have to say, I've never had a student claim ignorance of the syllabus as a defense.

And it made my relationship with the class adversarial from the beginning and this is bad--especially for discussion based classes. And it made me seem insecure to them and that is also bad as it undermines their respect for you.

*nods* One of the profs in my department circulated some language a year or so ago to be added to syllabi (at our discretion) enforcing rules of civility. I thought about it, but decided not to, for the reasons you cite. It didn't help that the phrasing was defensive.

Slightly OT: One of my Latin students asked me today, in reference to another class, whether, if an exam is not given on the day specified in the syllabus, it can't be given at all? When I got done laughing, I said of course not, and she said that was what she thought too - this was a point raised by an obnoxious classmate.

But that is why my syllabus always says "tentative schedule" rather than "schedule."