How do you respond when students submit the wrong assignment, but you only notice after the deadline has passed?

Question

I occasionally get students who submit their assignments, but I only notice that they've submitted the wrong assignment when I begin grading. I can think of three possibilities to explain this:

1. They made an honest mistake
2. They are trying to buy some time to submit their assignment by making it seem like an honest mistake
3. They didn't do the assignment at all and are trying to get some kind of credit

Sometimes I allow students a few hours or 24 hours to resubmit the correct assignment (is 24 hours too long?). If they don't, then I usually assume they haven't actually completed it. Other times, I'm just tempted to give them a zero.

The student in question submitted an assignment that was submitted previously in the semester.

Is there a better way that you know of to confirm whether they're being honest or not?

By the way, I'm looking for a general answer that can apply across multiple situations. In this specific situation, due to many different factors, I decided to allow the student to resubmit. She resubmitted right away, which seems to demonstrate it was an honest mistake.

Answer 1

The fact that you're left guessing at unknowable motivations suggests a deeper problem to me. I always found guessing games like this very frustrating when assignments are due; giving students the benefit of the doubt sounds harmless... unless you're a student who scrambled to meet the deadline, while your peers took advantage of the professor's good will. This is especially true if the class is curved.

The policy I use now leaves my opinions completely out of it:

1. Give clear due dates and turn-in proceedures
2. Give students a "budget" for late assignments. I like to give three 12-hour tokens they can use at their discretion, no questions asked. If they turn something in late, I automatically use whatever tokens they have left to cover the time.
3. Anything beyond that requires an issue serious enough that we're probably involving academic affairs as well. Things like serious illnesses and hospitalizations, for example.
4. Anything turned not turned in on time, or within the scope of one of their "late tokens", gets a daily penalty added onto the score.

That way you're never faced with trying to ascribe motivations to what students are doing, and the rules are laid out clearly for them, which I find students like.

Answer 2

I announce a policy at the beginning of the semester that the course staff will only grade the work that is actually submitted, before the deadline, for each assigned homework problem. So if a student submits a solution to the wrong problem, for any reason or no reason, they can expect a grade of zero, exactly as if they submitted nothing at all.

(Behind the scenes, I tell my graders that they are welcome to swap obviously misplaced assignments if it's easy, if they have time, and if they want to, but they are absolutely not required to.)

On the other hand, I also drop the lowest 25% of homework scores before computing final course grades. For example, in a class with 32 homework problems, only the highest 24 scores for each student would count toward their homework grade. (A majority of the grades in my classes are based on exams.) I also announce this policy at the beginning of the semester.

So in practice, if a student submits the wrong homework, they've burned one of their free drops, and they don't get feedback from the graders, but it has no significant impact on their overall course grade.

For similar reasons, I never give homework extensions. The deadline is the deadline is the deadline.

Answer 3

Personally I always just tell them to make sure it doesn't happen again and let it go at that unless I see a pattern.

I think to get to the right answer here (which I believe mine is) you have to ask yourself what the purpose of grading homework even is in the first place and why does it matter if they turn it in on time. I mean, unlike exams, homework isn't really a good measure of student ability and even if it was it's not like anyone is spending all the time between assignment and submission working on it.

In an ideal world (and in some grad school courses) student grades would purely be based on mastery as shown in exams or projects. Unfortunately, at the UG and lower level we need to assign and grade homework as an incentive to keep students from just leaving everything to the last minute and never learning the material. In other words I'd argue that graded homework is a necessary evil done to keep students from hurting themselves (and why I usually allow students course grade to be just their exam grade if it's better).

As such if a student goes to that kind of length to get more time on hw I figure they are mostly just hurting themselves (but I also give extensions liberally as long as it doesn't become a problem for keeping up).

Besides, from a fairness POV there is really not much harm if some students get some extra time. I mean that's just noise compared to the unfairness inherently present in time to work on homework between students who need to take jobs and who don't and besides that extra time comes out of the time needed for the next assignment.

Answer 4

I don't think anything but #1 is a reasonable assumption. They submit something and presumably that took time and effort to prepare.

Is there any reason not to be generous here? Especially since you say it is occasional.

The time you give them would depend on the assignment, of course. But I doubt that a day is too long.

It might be different if the same student does this repeatedly. Then you should explore more deeply into why it is happening. It is even possible in such a case they have something like dyslexia that makes it hard for a person to manage things accurately.