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A student is asking for an alternative exam because he was "completely exhausted" due to overwork the last month or so of the semester, including the exam day.
He provided a doctor's notice validating the claim and explaining the physical symptoms. He also provided another notice proving he did actually took an excessive number of courses recently and did well.
Should I give him the opportunity to retake the exam?
You should do whatever you or your institution would ordinarily do for a student who brought a doctor's note after missing an exam. You are not the student's doctor and the cause of the student's illness is completely irrelevant.
I don't think you should decide this alone, and here's why. If it's an unusual circumstance -- well, okay, we're all human. But if there's been a pattern -- that's disrespectful of the instructors' time. So check with the undergraduate program director. in the department
Many of the answers so far have focused on either the fact that the student did this to himself (by taking too hard of a classload) or that exhaustion is not a valid excuse because it is common at the end of the semester.
This answer does not focus on the medical issue per se or its validity, but I wanted to point out that there are valid opposite side to these two issues.
Point 1. The student failed to manage his own time by signing up for so many classes.
I agree that some students fail in this regard, but these failures, around exam time in particular, are not always the student's fault. Example: when I was an undergrad, I majored in both math and molecular biology. My university scheduled exams over a 6 day period with exams for classes not commonly taken together typically scheduled on the same day. This is designed to accommodate most students who have picked one major, but for those of us who had interdisciplinary interests, the result was that we often had as many as 3 or 4 difficult exams crammed into something like an 18 hour window. For a junior or senior taking advanced classes in which the professor believes they know what other classes their students are taking and how difficult they are (because most students follow their department's curriculum), these conflicts can potentially be devastating. Ultimately, It may not be fair to allow two students different timelines for an exam in the context of the class, but it is also quite unfair for the algorithm that schedules exams to systematically disadvantage students who have interdisciplinary interests.
Point 2. Exhaustion is not a valid excuse, particularly because everyone is exhausted at the end of the semester.
I feel that this sounds convincing on its face, but it makes me uncomfortable. This line of thinking may come from a desire not to give anyone preferential treatment, but the net effect of this as a policy is that students with more resources get preferential treatment on average. Those students whose tuition and living expenses are covered by wealthy parents or who have the option of painlessly extending their degree to 5 years will always benefit from this policy on average while students who must work/raise children during college or who can't afford to spend more than 4 years getting their degree will always be hurt on average by this policy. One can argue that this is the best bias we can extract from a general policy, but I don't think one can argue that this policy is universally fair.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that one should or should not follow such a policy universally; rather I'm arguing that the policy has a non-trivial bias. The OP should consider if the biases implied by such a policy are biases that they are okay with in the context of their class/grades or whether they would prefer the biases carried by other policies.
Conclusion. I don't have a direct answer to the question, but I wanted to point out that rigid adherence to a policy position is not more fair just because it is more rigid. In particular, if the OP's goal, in teaching the class, is for the students' grades to best reflect their level of understanding of the topic (rather than to best reflect a standardized test on the topic) independent of other students, then adherence to a rigid attendance policy is probably antithetical to fairness. If the OP's goal is to have a clear paper-trail that shows they did nothing amiss, then the best thing is always to route things through the proper administrative channels. If the OP's goal is to prevent a situation where any other student might feel cheated, then obviously they should disallow the makeup exam. But if the OP's goal is to be as fair as possible to the student in question, then the answer isn't going to be found verbatim in a policy document.
Probably not; it would be unfair to the rest of the students, who managed their time and took the final when scheduled. A more likely alternative is a hardship or medical withdrawal. Check with your department chair about policies at your own institution.
Edit: I've reconsidered. You should record the grade the student earned, without the final exam, or with the grade earned if the student took the final, and let the institution's policies take things from there.
Ultimately you will need to consult university policies and applicable local laws.
I think your best option here is to grant the request. In the US at least, this would normally consist of giving the student a grade of Incomplete. Exactly what warrants an incomplete can vary from institution to institution, but these guidelines given by the University of Wisconsin are fairly typical in my experience (emphasis mine):
College policy states that Incompletes should only be given in situations where students are receiving a passing grade in the course, have completed most of the course assignments, and are not able to complete their coursework due to unforeseeable circumstances.
Incompletes should only be given when there is a reasonable expectation that a student can and will complete the work in a timely fashion.
Now my initial reaction to all of that is that your student does not qualify for an Incomplete: exhaustion is a completely normal and foreseeable circumstance of overloading and overworking yourself. Any college age student will be familiar with this concept. However, I think there are enough possibilities where this could still be "beyond their control" enough that you should give them the benefit of the doubt. They may, for example, have a mental disorder which drives them to compulsively engage in such behaviors, regardless of their knowledge of its negative impact.
Such things would all be beyond what you should inquire about. You should either give the student the benefit of the doubt that one or more such things apply, or if you fail at that then ask the relevant university office for guidance and if they can independently verify the matter. You probably want to—and in some jurisdictions may be basically legally required—to distance yourself from the medical particulars and let the University handle verification of these things on their own, and have them pass onto you their evaluation of the situation. This keeps the private information of the student out of your hands and helps ensure no one engages in discriminatory behavior towards protected classes.
From him providing a notice which showed that he took an excessive number of courses and did well suggests to me that it was intended to show that he is otherwise a "good student" and should be allowed to take a substitute exam on that basis, but it also suggests that his exhaustion was self-inflicted and thus he did not manage his time - he bit off more than he could chew.
Perhaps it is normal where-ever you are that a doctor's note which validates a claim of illness or unfitness for work/duty also explains the physical symptoms, and if it is a medical certificate such as someone would provide to an employer to explain an absence then I see no problem with allowing a substitute exam on that basis - unfit for work or unfit for an exam can be taken as the same thing.
Here, and in many other places, a medical certificate to explain an absence says little more than that a suitably qualified medical practitioner has certified that the person was unable to attend work due to a valid (medical) reason, and the specifics are confidential between doctor and patient. The details are covered by privacy, an employer does not need to know and are not entitled to that information.
However, if the note from the doctor is something other than a medical certificate stating that he was unfit to attend on that day, then I would say that his exhaustion was self-inflicted, he didn't manage his time and/or workload with his courses and should not be given special consideration as a consequence.
For me, it comes down to the students overall performance/engagement during the entirety of the course. If the student was generally good, but bombed one test (obvious outlier score) I'm usually willing to give another shot, albeit the test will be harder (which is hard on me, too). If it's too soon to tell, I might say to him/her to prove their resolve through the rest of the course, and if that one test was indeed aberrant, we could work out something towards the end of the semester. But, you have no obligation to do any of this.
I come from a background where it is totally acceptable and common to not attend the regular exam just because you want some extra time to study. Any students who missed the first exam or failed it are automatically registered for the make-up exam, no justification needed. So, leaving out the "moral indignation" aspect, unless you have strong practical reasons not to organize a make-up exam, let them take it.
In my opinion, exhaustion is not a valid excuse for not taking an exam, even with a doctor certifying that you are indeed exhausted. By the end of a term, everyone is exhausted! I'm especially unsympathetic to a student who admits the problem is entirely of his own making, that he's exhausted because he took too many heavy classes.
Here in the US, most institutions have a student disabilities office that decides what accommodations a student should get based on their needs and the law. Professionals in that disability office review any medical information and may discuss possible accommodations with the student and the instructor, but ultimately, they decide. As an instructor, you follow their instructions. Until you have instructions from the disability office, you should not offer accommodations due to disability because you're not qualified and it's not your job to make that decision and it's not fair to the other students.
What I would do is tell the student that all requests for accommodations based on disability or medical conditions beyond the obvious (e.g., you're in the hospital) must be decided by the disability office. I would tell the student I could make certain accommodations on my own, e.g., rescheduling an exam for a student with another exam in the same time slot upon verification, but that I am not qualified nor is it within my authority to review medical claims. If the student wants an accommodation based on exhaustion, they will need to present approved instructions from the disability office stating what accommodations are to be provided.
Offhand, I don't think a disability office will accept this excuse either, especially retroactively, but I also don't know that it will get that far. Once you tell the student you need an approved disability form, I think there's a good chance they give up and the problem goes away. Otoh, if the student does take it to the disability office and they say the student should get a make-up exam, no problem, you just do it. But now you've followed the rules and let the professionals own the problem.
