Advising Daughter about Professor Issue

<p>If OP’s kid hit submit few minutes past 6pm and missed the deadline then I would say too bad.</p>

<p>I’m in an online Master’s program. Each of my professors has different procedures to follow if something goes awry while in the middle of an exam and they each handle the situation differently. Some have graded only the questions answered. Some let the student retake the same quiz (which really isn’t fair because you have all those questions and time to look up the answers). Some give the student a new quiz. I’ve never had one say “Too bad”. </p>

<p>These are also usually timed though. Is she sure that she didn’t hit the time limit for the quiz? </p>

<p>All that said, I always take quizzes or post assignments at least 24 hours before the due date just in case something does go awry. Things can go awry on my end or theirs and I don’t like to take chances with it.</p>

<p>Just for kicks and giggles, I would like to know when did the OP’s daughter receive notice that there was going to be an on-line quiz?</p>

<p>When was the quiz accessible to the students? If the quiz became available at 5 and students had until 7 to complete it, I see where this could be problematic as everyone is on line at the same time trying to complete the quiz. However, if Op’s daughter had a full day or a couple of days lead time, to get the quiz done, I am in the camp of a lack of planning on your part, does not constitute an emergency on my part. Sounds like your daughter learned a hard lesson.</p>

<p>My daughter told me that after her 1L year that she can schedule most of her finals. They are given a deadline by which they can complete an exam. I always tell her, don’t wait until the last minute in case if something goes wrong, you still have a cushion to get things in on time.</p>

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<p>It happens every year. Take a walk over to the college admission thread on December 31/January 1. I guarantee that you will see a post from a panicked senior about the CA server going down. Knowing that 1/1 is a holiday an no one is around to resolve the issue, why would anyone in their right mind wait until 12/31 to submit their application.</p>

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<p>That type of reasoning wouldn’t have persuaded several HS teachers I had…especially my homeroom teacher with whom I also ended up having for US government/history at 8:40 am in the morning. </p>

<p>If you’re even a second late beyond the start of the class, she will lock the classroom door on the late students and mark them absent for the period. Only exception to the rule is if there was a systemwide announcement of public transportation issues to the school. A big deal considering the majority of us had commutes ranging from 30 minutes - 2+ hours each way on public transport. Knew some classmates whose grades ended up dropping one whole letter grade or more as a result. </p>

<p>If online tests of this type existed back in the early-'90s, I can clearly hear her saying “If you waited to the last minute and something comes up to mess it up, it’s your problem and you should take it as a good lesson to plan ahead.” </p>

<p>Turned out to be very true as I’ve had supervisors who chewed out or even terminated colleagues whose work ended up not being finished on time because they waited to the last minute. All of them allocated enough time that if all went well, they would have had no problems. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, Murphy’s law always seems to get in the way somehow…especially right before the deadline and those types of supervisors tend to be just as/more unsympathetic to “wait to the last minute” types as my homeroom/US government/history teacher.</p>

<p>I agree with mathmom and oldfort. Even if hee daughter had a full day or two, that doesn’t mean that she didn’t have other things to do. She could have had work, she could have had other assignments, she should have had to finish reading for the quiz. She blocked out time to do it before the deadline and emailed IT and this professor before the deadline to let them know that she was having issues. It sounds like this also really effects her grade if it would take it from an to a B. Technology is not perfect and the professor should be prepared for it to occasionally fail.</p>

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<p>The problem with this situation is that it is against NYC DOE policy for the teacher to do this (my principal would have placed a letter in the teachers file if they did this in my school). The DOE has a specific classroom removal policy that must be adhered to if a teacher needs to remove a kid. I know when a student comes to my office and tells me that a teacher would not let them in for being late, I walk the kid to class, tell the teacher that the student is late and they can come see me later if there is a problem and they need to discuss it.</p>

<p>The teacher can ding the kid for being late. The teacher can ding the kid for class participation because s/he was not there. However, the DOE policy also states that a teacher cannot fail a student on excessive absence or lateness. They can fail a student for missing homework, classwork, class participation and test as a result of the student not being in class, but they cannot fail the kid solely on attendance.</p>

<p>To answer some of the questions:
She had a week to do the quiz and waited until nearly the last minute because she had a lot of tests that week and was overwhelmed. She is a strong student with a strong work ethic and doesn’t take things lightly. Stresses over her exams and work so this was out of character. She appealed to the professor and told her that this was not a reflection of her work ethic, etc.<br>
The problem with the online program: Someone had used my Ds computer to log onto the program under their own acct. Normally when that is the case and another student tries to log on, the program won’t allow it until the other student is logged off. The glitch has been that the program hasn’t been recognizing immediately that two accts are open on the same computer and allows the second acct to open. A half hour later, it just shuts down. The IT person acknowledged that this has been a problem of late and told my D to tell the Professor her name and explain the situation.
i see it from both sides. She shouldn’t have waited until the last minute because stuff happens but if I were the professor and their is a bug in the system, I would cut some slack. If my D were the kind of kid that was always making excuses and looking for preferential treatment, it might be a different story. Anyway, a B won’t kill her.</p>

<p>Fwiw, all of my online classes explicitly state that if you wait until the last minute and the system messes up, then they will not extend the deadline. It is on you to ensure that you have enough time to complete the test/quiz/assignment knowing that technology sometimes messes up. (This could just be a guideline… I’ve never actually had anything go wrong so I’m not sure how it works in practice.)</p>

<p>Now, if she were to start the quiz at noon and contacted the IT department right away and they couldn’t get it fixed 6 hours later, then I’m sure the prof would have been more understanding. That’s outside of the student’s hands.</p>

<p>You have a good point Romani,
I will ask her to check the syllabus to see if there is anything in writing. I think her only hope is to go to the professor in person and take ownership of waiting too long. My experience has been that people will be more understanding and flexible with someone who takes responsibility than they will with someone who has a sense of entitlement.</p>

<p>“She had a lot of tests that week”–how many is a lot, 4? Sounds like midterm week. Get used to it because that’s college life for you, sorry. Still agree with the professor on this one. She should have started the test earlier, she was in danger of not completing the test as it was given this happened 15 minutes before the deadline. What if she ran into a long essay question and couldn’t complete the test even if the computer hadn’t crashed? Again, it’s a great life lesson not to leave things until the last minute.</p>

<p>Yes, the syllabus would be a good place to start. The school also might have a general guideline for this. </p>

<p>Good luck. Either way, it’s a life lesson :).</p>

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<p>Maybe nowadays, but that didn’t seem to be the case in the early-mid-'90s at my NYC Specialized High school. Almost everyone from the US govt/history classes we had with her ended up getting locked out at least once for lateness. </p>

<p>Moreover, the Deans, Principal, and most of the parents back then backed her up even though some felt she was a bit extreme.</p>

<p>It was the case at my NYC specialized high school (and I was there in the 70’s). Perhaps it is because your school felt that rules did not apply to them (we see how that has worked out for them).</p>

<p>Next time she can take screen shots of the work and document it in a word file. She can at least email that for some credit if it happens again.</p>

<p>I don’t quite understand this statement. I can file my tax return online or via UPS, FedEx…This student only had one way of taking the exam.</p>

<p>? Wouldn’t hoping FAFSA or your tax forms to be received by mail or UPS by deadline, require more advance planning than hoping you were able to file online at the 11th hour?</p>

<p>I am not familiar how people file FAFSA, I only know about tax returns, which only requires a time stamp of when it is mailed.</p>

<p>I don’t think OP’s D needs to take total responsibility and hit for a bug in the system.</p>

<p>But she should take responsibility for poor planning, and perhaps poor time management and not prioritizing.</p>

<p>There was no poor planning. She took the test within the time frame it was given to her. It was poor planning on the teacher’s part to use a program with a bug. Where is the teacher’s ownership on that?</p>

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<p>If the only reason these last minute people couldn’t finish was that the fafsa or irs software was broken, then yes they should be accommodating.</p>

<p>I entirely sympathise with the daughter in this case. Sure, it might have been poor planning if something had gone wrong on her end and she hadn’t been able to finish it. A deadline is a deadline. But in this case, she was on the right side of the deadline, except that the college screwed up.</p>

<p>If this really is going to drop her grade, I think a formal appeal might be in order.</p>

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<p>In which case it’s not a glitch or a bug in the system, but the system working the way it’s supposed to for the sake of online security. I am sorry this happened to your D, but she exposed herself to this difficulty by allowing someone else to log on to her computer and not making sure they were logged off before she began the quiz. It’s not IT’s fault.</p>

<p>Update: I’m assuming that the computer is her own and not a lab computer used by many.</p>