How do I appropriately penalize late projects?

Question

I am teaching an elective course in which students' grades are determined on the basis of a final project. Due to unforeseen circumstances, this year I had to grant a one-week blanket exception to all of the students. However, several students asked for, and received, an additional extension beyond the general extension, based on legitimate issues related to other academic commitments.

Unfortunately, some of these students have still failed to turn in their project, and this is leaving me at a loss for how to proceed. For this year, I have decided on a policy of deducting a full letter grade for each 24 hours beyond the deadline, but this at once seems too harsh (to the individual students affected) and also too lenient (because everybody else managed to turn things in on time).

Is there a reasonable way to handle tardiness in submissions of final papers or projects, particularly when they are the sole basis for determining a grade?

Answer 1

Here are some ideas of how I try to handle this sort of things. Maybe they will help, maybe you already are aware of these points.

• As students, they aspire to become professionals, and you want them to. So, to a reasonable extent, treat them as professionals. In real life, finishing a project late triggers penalties, which can range from small to catastrophic (“the missed deadline? come back next year”). The rules are usually announced in advance, so they know how important each task is, and can weigh their own priorities.

  It is not common, but for long projects, I have once used the rule of “late projects will simply receive the failing grade of incomplete”. Needless to say, noöne was late.

• Also, as in any professional setting, there is always room for negotiation (as you did). If they realize they will be late, they should come and make an well-argumented pitch, and asking for a specific extension.

• Not reporting on your progress is the worse possible action. I mean, simply skipping the deadline and coming two days later asking for clemency will not fly. In fact, I wouldn't consider listening to anyone who has not at least come forward on the deadline to indicate they are late, and try to work out a solution.

Of course, there always are special cases: hospital, tornado, the usual… :)

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I'll highlight another method for evaluating student projects, which I find very interesting but have not had time to put in practice yet (but my wife did). In that approach, you set the project deadline so as to leave the students ample time, and you allow them to hand you their reports at any time before the deadline, for you to review. And you state that after the deadline, they will fail (if they have not given you anything yet), or be graded on the last version of their project you saw.

Then, obviously, grade fairly strictly… because their work will usually be very good, since you already reviewed it once or twice (for most groups). This has been found (don't have the reference right now, I will ask) to improve acquisition of knowledge over the usual method.

Answer 2

For a course in which the final project is the only (or the majority of the) grade, one letter grade (or a 10% penalty) per day is not too severe. Compare to the final exam. If a student needed to make up a final exam due to legitimate extenuating circumstances, how many days would you give that student to make up the exam? Not many.

I would also encourage setting a date after which you will not accept the project. At my institution, and likely at most, final grades are due by a specific date. If the project is not submitted by that date, I would assign a zero grade for the course.

Regardless of severity, most students would respect a policy that:

1. is communicated upfront, preferably in the syllabus.
2. is enforced uniformly.
3. has some small amount of wiggle room for true emergencies.

Answer 3

Here is an alternative way of thinking about the issue.

Some argue that punishing students for late assessment is counter-productive to the learning goals of a course. For instance, this blog post presents a good argument for this case. The author argues

Students should be graded on the quality of their work (their ability to meet the desired learning targets) rather than how punctual the assignment is.

I've also read this elsewhere in books such as Biggs' Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student does or Ramsden's Learning to Teach in Higher Education.

Answer 4

At my high school in the US, every English and Social Studies class (two courses certain to have term papers) required both students and parents to sign a document at the beginning of the year acknowledging a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY for missed deadlines on projects and papers as well as the late policies for homework. These deadlines were established at the beginning of the term in the syllabi, much like university policy.

Students could turn in any paper ahead of time without gain or penalty, but without documented family/medical/extenuating circumstances, no work was ever accepted past the deadline. Zero tolerance = 0%. This was the perfect timing for a wake up call on making excuses for high school students.

Later in university in Québec, there were even more explicit reasons defining extenuating circumstances, which could take months of arbitration, i.e. your name in a mass-media, published obituary being the burden of proof necessary to miss a deadline as a result of the death of a family member.

Most recently, as a middle school teacher, I hit the middle ground of the -10% per school day (not per class period) for homework assignments. Otherwise, I need a note from a parent or guardian excusing the tardiness by the due date or upon the day of the student's return to school from an excused absence. I'd like to require a doctor's note in some notorious cases, but we all have to conform to the school handbook, don't we?