Lesson should have been learned in October. The prof should consider she is teaching freshman who are learning Blackboard. My daughter never missed a class and this dash was never explained and you don’t see it until you go into the subsection and there is no reason to go into it when it’s showing an A as your overall grade. She has gotten an A on every closed book in-class test and has beaten the class average every time. These post class assessments are online at home - meant to boost your grade not hurt it,
I’m sorry this happened and can understand how frustrating it must be that a simple mistake (only looking at the overall grade, not reviewing the details of individual assignments) is resulting in what feels like a harsh penalty. My guess is that the Blackboard program is set up to hold open a place for all assignments and tests (the “-”) and although teachers can input grades as they determine them, at the end of the term either the teacher then just goes through and changes all the “-” to “0” or the program automatically defaults to “0” after a certain date. Not an unreasonable system for college.
If your daughter has proof she submitted those assignments, she will have a good case. Otherwise, she will probably need to accept that this is one of those life lesson sort of things. In high school, the onus is shared between the instructor and student; it’s reasonable to expect the instructor to prompt and remind about assignments. College is the start of the shift into adulting where the onus falls on the student to keep track of what assignments were due and proof of submission. And bottom line, it sounds like your daughter simply forgot or overlooked two assignments and is expecting the instructor to share responsibility because the instructor didn’t prompt her to remember.
If this were my child, I’d:
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Help her understand that the responsibility for keeping track of assignments, keeping proof of submission and checking details is hers. This might be new if she attended a highly structured HS with extensive oversight from school adults and parents. More responsibility isn’t a bad thing because it also comes with greater freedom, so this is an opportunity, not a punishment.
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Help her decide what next steps to take (if any.) Given the fact set, it sounds unlikely this grade will be changed, so I’d be counseling her to preserve her relationship with that instructor and the dean, since those could be critical relationships she’ll need for research, internship, scholarship and other key future activities. She does not want to get the reputation of a whiny grade grubber (not saying she is, just a common perception about premed students which she should try to avoid because again, she’s going to need those relationships) in her very first term.
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Help her focus on the long term and big picture. She’s obviously very smart and hard working. This is a disappointment, but a very minor bump in the grand scheme of things.
I think the point is that a dash line only appears because there is no assignment submitted. If she had submitted, she’s have seen an indication in that spot, not a dotted line. Also, for her to say “she doesn’t see how she could have missed them” is different from “but I definitely did them!” I feel really bad for her, but as a prof, I often keep a grade open in case a late submission comes in. The instructor was quite probably grading the submissions in a timely fashion, just not the non-submissions. Additionally, it is puzzling that she knew she had an A, when she had two open grades, still. It really sounds like she’d accidentally forgotten about them; otherwise, wouldn’t she be factoring in that they “hadn’t been graded yet” before she assumed an A?
My classes are small enough that I would have probably nudged an A student to see why things were missing since it would be out of character. That may be different in a big lecture class.
I’m sort of surprised these two things could bring a grade down that much. I give small HW assignments along the way that do not carry much weight–missing two would not kill an otherwise stellar grade. But every class’s system is different.
- Well...this should be easy to check. If she did it and submitted it in any way...it would be in her “sent” box. In addition, she should still have the completed assignments saved.
- One B grade isn’t going to make or break her in any way for the future.
- If SHE doesn’t see a letter grade for an assignment in the future...she should immediately contact the instructor...not wait until the end of the term.
I can understand your frustration OP. My daughter is in the middle of her first semester of finals too and more than 1/2 of her engineering class assignment grades were never posted. Some of her other courses curve for the semester after the final. She has “projected” grades in three classes (only her two others have actual grades), but she doesn’t think her engineering one is accurate because so few grades have been entered. Very hard to gauge where she stands, but it means she just needs to do her best on each every assignment and test.
For going forward, she should confirm that every online submission is received. DD has been doing screen shots with time stamps since high school.
I would not obsess about this and put it in the “lesson learned” category.
This is what is confusing:
That makes it sound like she might have missed the assignments. It also seems like there must have been fairly substantial to bring a grade from an A to a B (or B+?). Unfortunately, if she has no record of doing these assignments, she has no way to prove she did them. Without that, I would highly doubt the professor would be willing to change the grade since there is no proof that this was a system failure. I am sorry for your dd. As a first semester freshman, I doubt that one B will derail her future plans.
I think the professor is being unreasonable and should change her grade. She obviously deserves the A.
It the missing assignments were really meant to be “grade boosters” then they should have been considered optional.
You’ve already taken the grade to the biology chair who will ask the prof about it. That is all you can do. It’s still up to the prof even if the chair agrees with you.
My D successfully appealed a grade at a college, but only because it was wrong. Her teacher literally did the math incorrectly and came up with a B where it was actually an A. Even that took my D three weeks, multiple emails and calls, and involving the department chair. And the teacher even admitted her mistake- she just didn’t want to change it. I think your D’s grade is likely to stand in the situation you’ve described.
Many high schools and colleges have no online grading portal. Your daughter learned her lesson as a freshman-it is up to her to ensure all her assignments are received, it is not required for the professor to grade them promptly, remind her of assignments, or notify her if they have not been received.
Interestingly my son is going through a similar situation also in Bio. He had a final lab that was due last Thursday by midnight. He had completed the lab early and brought it to class on Wednesday (a day early) and tried to turn it in. The instructor said it had to be turned in online. When he returned home he went to submit it online and his internet was down. Fast forward to Thursday night and he is studying for the bio final and realized he hadn’t turned in the lab, looked at the clock and it was 12:15. He immediately emailed the instructor and submitted it online. The response from the instructor was “let this be a hard lesson on deadlines, you get a zero. Do you really think in the business world you get any credit for turning in something late?”
He is devastated as this will most likely pull him from a B to an F due to the weighting of the lab. He replied to the instructor’s email asking for a time to discuss options, partial credit, admitting his error and she did not respond. After the final on Monday he asked her if they could discuss it and she refused, said there was no time in her schedule.
He has contacted the department head who seems to understand the situation and has asked for a couple of days to talk with the instructor so not all hope is lost.
Long story short he understands he made a mistake but also understands that in the business world missing a deadline by 15 minutes does not negate the last 4 months of work, contrary to the instructors view of the business world. He is willing (and has proposed several) compromises so we will have to see what comes of this.
My middle son has had frustrating things happen with professors, too. It’s just part of life. A B instead of an A is SUCH a minor thing! Seriously. I wish that were my oldest son’s situation. 
I am told that in the olden days before the magma cooled and while dinosaurs roamed the earth, the teacher had this green wirebound thing called a gradebook in which s/he recorded grades and which was not accessible to the student (or parent). It was the responsibility of the student to turn in the required work on time, not the responsibility of the teacher to provide up-to-the-minute grade notifications.
Now in this case, the student can certainly appeal. If she lucks out, consider it a gift. If not, lesson learned.
I just looked over Blackboard instructions on line, since I haven’t used that LMS in a few years. It definitely indicates when an assignment has been submitted successfully, and in the Grades area, every assignment is listed as Graded, Submitted but not yet graded, or nothing there ( just the dash). So if it were Submitted but not graded, the site would clearly have shown her that, as opposed to the dash.
Because those controls are built in for clarity at both ends, it’s unlikely she’s going to prevail. As I said above, I’m surprised that two small (it sounds like, anyway) assignments (or one, I guess, since she can drop one) could have such a large effect on a grade. That’s weird weighting, but probably not challengeable, unfortunately.
I don’t think your daughter has a good case. From here on in she should not rely on the online grades to keep track of her work. She should perhaps print out a syllabus and/ or keep an assignment book and check off what was done and submitted. She should also make sure assignments were sent. I don’t think online grades should be used for the purpose or managing assignments, frankly. I am concerned about the two posters whose kids’ grades were impacted by health events. This should never happen. Any student ( or parent if student is unable) should speak with a dean, submit documentation - and the dean would then support the student in a case where a professor was not accommodating.
The longer you go on making excuses the more your D will feel entitled to make excuses. Bottom line is she missed assignments. which I imagine: 1) most students in the class were aware of and completed and 2) were likely stated either on the syllabus or assigned in class. This is college and professors (especially in large lecture classes) typically do not coddle students and remind them of missing assignments. It is the students responsibility to be sure all the assigned work is handed in on a timely basis.
I don’t think your D has grounds for appeal other than perhaps admitting the error, acknowledging that she misunderstood how the blackboard system works, and appealing the kindness of a professor’s heart.
Please understand that if this is the biggest problem your D has than life is very very good. One B will not make or break anything. She made a mistake that she should own up to and she should determine how to be sure the error is not repeated in other classes moving forward.
Every college class that I have had has a syllabus with a grading rubric. I’ve had experiences where the instructor has added a caveat to the effect of “Failure to complete any assignment will result in a failure for the course” even if a zero on an assignment would not have dropped the grade mathematically to the F level.
Agreed. That would have been valid grounds for appeal, IMO. Even if the instructor stated as such from the outset, an individual’s grading policies would not supersede the school’s policies.
Students do need to make sure everything on Blackboard is correct. The system can make mistakes (though it doesn’t sound like the case here.) My dd had a very A in a class that ended up being posted as a C in the course. The teacher had had a make-up exam date for students that had an official school event. Dd did not take that exam. She took the exam on the original exam date. She had seen the zero that had shown up on make-up exam date and had just ignored it bc she knew the grade didn’t apply to her. Big mistake. The system factored the 0 into her exam grades. She contacted the professor after she received the final grade and didn’t here back from her. She ended up meeting with the dept head who did get the grade fixed in the system, but it could have all been avoided if she had just asked about it after it showed up.
Lesson learned. Always ask if you see something you don’t think is correct.
I so agree with @happy1 on this. This is a major learning experience, and she should have been keeping track of her own grades. You can’t ever truly trust the LMS, because you don’t know which options the professor has applied (the prof has options to treat ungraded assignments as zero or to not include them in the grade, and there are good reasons for both options). Also, as for all the comments about students with illnesses. I have rarely, and I mean, rarely met a professor who wouldn’t make an allowance for an actual, documented illness. But I have often, and I mean often (as in approximately ten students a term) had students lie about illnesses in order to get free extensions on assignments. You have to understand the context before you judge the professors, please. Maybe your kid is honest, but, unfortunately, many are not.
In HS my kid had electronic grading – everything was posted online. So if mommy saw something that was missing, the kid would get at “what’s up with that.” The kid learned to contact is teacher and make sure s/he had the assignment and was just late on grading them. He did have to pester a few teachers to get their stuff done.
That’s not true. Back in my day It was stone tablets.
But usually teachers would review your grades & their grade book with you when you asked.