How to handle students who try to negotiate away penalties for late submission of coursework?

Question

I'm teaching a course where coursework is submitted online. Recently, an important group project assignment was due. The students are required to submit a project report, which contains a link to a video produced by the students, usually uploaded onto a site such as YouTube, Google Drive or Dropbox. We had announced that for every day that an assignment is late, students will lose 10% of their score for that assignment.

As you might have predicted, there were several student groups who submitted their assignments late. The problem is that some of these students have sent me e-mails begging me not to impose the penalty for late submission. They gave reasons such as:

• The original PDF file which we submitted was corrupted, so after the deadline, we had to submit the PDF again
• There were some technical problems with the original video link, such that it is not possible for the video to be viewed at that link, so we had to upload a new video and are now sending you the new link
• The project was due at 9 PM, and we submitted it at 9 PM (see our screenshot!) but the system marked it as late

Initially, I told them that they will be penalized as specified in the policy, in order to be fair to the students who did submit their work on time. However, the students continued to say that I should be more considerate or fair.

In my mind, I want to say to these students, "Stop wasting my time arguing for marks!" But this doesn't seem to be the right way for me to respond to the students. How should I respond to these students who keep on asking me not to penalize them when the penalty is deserved?

Answer 1

Adhere to the guidelines and syllabus you posted. If students can get around consequences of late submission by arguing, you have set a precedent, and they (and future generations of students) will argue again the next time. Don't go there. Consciously cultivate a reputation that pointless arguments don't work with you.

Next time, make it clear that "normal" IT problems like corrupted files or network lag is not your responsibility, and encourage students to upload their work sufficiently early so they won't run afoul of such problems. If possible, allow students to change their submissions, so they can upload whatever they have a week before the deadline, and keep on uploading polished versions, with the last successful submission before the deadline counting for the grade. This is the way most MOOC sites do it.

(Of course, if the university servers went down, you should take this into account.)

This earlier question seems to be similar: How to deal with failing a student? (And I gave the same recommendation there.)

Answer 2

How should I respond to these students who keep on asking me not to penalize them when the penalty is deserved?

I would say that your "Stop wasting my time arguing for marks!" just needs a slightly different phrasing. So if students keep bugging you with basically the same unfounded reason to grant some exception, I would finally write something like

"I did consider your inquiry and your arguments throughly. Based on the announced rules, the present facts and the points you raised, I formed the decision that the deduction of 10% does apply in this case. My decision will not be altered after further inquiries."

I feel that it often helps to acknowledge the inquiry and state that you considered the points.

In case you are discussing with the students in person, I would go for "inquiries on grade changes have to made in written form" (paper better than email), see my answer here.

Answer 3

I have tried many methods, to varying degrees of success. Here are some that work.

1. Check the wording in the syllabus to make sure it's impeccable. For example, "due by 9pm" can be revised to more specific as "due by 9pm, based on the indicated time of submission on [whatever online platform]."

2. Allow for 15 minutes technical mayhem leniency. If it's due by 9pm and there is a technical issue, and the students failed to notify the instructor about the technical issue by 9:15pm through e-mail, it's considered as late. You may consider adding this term to the syllabus.

3. Consider a low-risk mock submission. For instance, insert a few smaller assignments or projects into the course so that the students can get to make a pdf, create a video link, and try the submission platform. This would help reducing their anxiety and also provide them a chance to identify possible technical issues.

4. Slightly evil approach: If you're indeed correct that they were late. And they just want "no late penalty." That's fine. Remember you still have control over bonus. So don't take any penalty, give them what they deserve. It's 10% penalty, which means their score should have been multiplied by 0.9. Now go and divide all other on-time assignment scores by 0.9 to grant other people's an on-time bonus, about 11%. I usually tell them "Now this is technically and validly late. I understand you don't want a late penalty and I am happy to retract that. Do know that I will apply a bonus to other students for being on time." I have also used this at students asking for bonus points or extra credits. I used the same method to them. Thus far, out of about 5 incidences in the last 6 years, no one went for what I proposed. (And it's funny that none of them took it even I switched to absolute grading from relative grading; somehow people cannot accept a scheme that benefit more than just themselves.)

I will not recommend allowing the on-time students another chance to revise for a higher grade. They have done their due diligence to plan their academic life and now would be coerced to spend more time on it. I don't think that's fair.

Answer 4

Combination of bullet-proof written penalty text, and very lax actual timing:

Official text: The submission system guarantees acceptance until 31. Nov 1pm. The submission system will close after the deadline and late submissions will not be eligible to any points.

Then configure the system to close down 24 hours later. Anyone who has not submitted by then will be more than 24 hours late and have no grounds to argue. - Anyone a few hours late will thank god for his luck that submissions were still accepted. You don't have any hassle.

Answer 5

My advice on the specific case is similar to the other answers, but I want to add a general point on such penalties. I have found time-dependent penalties useful -- immediately after the deadline, the submitter starts losing marks based on how late they are, up to a maximum (which could be the entire assignment if you're evil).

This penalty model has the advantage that submissions that are only a few seconds or minutes late will be penalized by only a small amount, and students won't feel treated unfairly for network lag and bother you. People submitting really late however will be penalized more harshly.

You can have non-linear penalties to teach them about exponential growth at the same time. A penalty of 1% after 30 minutes is not much and allows for network lag, computer problems, corrupted files, etc. But 50% after an hour should encourage submissions that are roughly within the deadline!

Answer 6

I think instead of writing bulletproof rules for submissions, what you really need is to put a reminder above the deadline rules:

It is recommended that students account for possible technical issues on their and their network's side by submitting early enough so they can check their results!

After all, all the problems you have mentioned were on their side:

• They submitted broken PDF. It's not exactly their fault, but it's fault of the software they're using.
• They did not check the video link.¹
• They obviously did not account for network lag.

I think all this should be obvious to average person, but well, a friendly reminder won't hurt anybody.

Remember however, that if your evaluation script is broken, that's not a problem on student's side. Your system should first record time of submission, then handle the homework data.

¹ I see one exception here: If they submitted the homework on time, then the link went down, it's really not their fault and you should accept that. It's not clear from your post if it's the case.

Answer 7

I found this useful to prevent students begging: Explicitly state that your decision is final and it will not be changed no matter what they claim. You could also follow with telling them they are wasting their time by arguing with you.

Edit: As explained in other answers, you should not budge from your decision. If you give an inch, next time a yard will be in question.

Answer 8

Stick to your guns.

If the submissions are late, then they are late, and the deduction applies. This is a crucial learning opportunity to gear up students for life in both academia and the 'real' world: deadlines matter. Make a point to emphasize this to the students, in class, along the lines of

a post-deadline bid on a contract, or a late submission of a grant application, will most often result in the application not being considered.

Enforcing strict submissions deadlines is simply a reasonable model of life, and if students are playing brinksmanship by seeing how close to the deadline they can submit then that will also get them in trouble later on.

Answer 9

After having a number of problems with group projects not being submitted on time and repeatedly hearing something like "It was Jack's job to upload the file." I came up with the following strategy that helps prevent excuses like "corrupted file" and finger pointing...

Students will work in assigned teams which will create a Powerpoint file as described below. This file must be uploaded to the class DropBox no later than 09:00 a.m. on __________. EACH STUDENT will be responsible for INDIVIDUALLY uploading a separate copy of their project file with the filename is to be your team name and your student email name and the Powerpoint extension (example: superwinners_jsmith32.pptx). The Powerpoint project is a team effort and all members of the same team must upload the same file contents. The project will be graded on the team's results HOWEVER individuals will have points deducted for uploading their individual copy of the work late. On the other hand, if ALL team members submit their copy of the project file at least 6 hours before the deadline the whole team will earn extra points on the project submitted.

This approach is carrot & stick, with bonus points awarded for improved teamwork. Additionally it seems to help decrease the "let one guy do all the work" attitude that sometimes plagues group projects, since everyone wants the file on time for their own sake. The final deadline is hard, but the early deadline is a bit softer since I am trying to reward the effort to work together and to submit early.

Point out verbally that it is in everyone's best interest to work together on the project and help each other get the file uploaded early.

Answer 10

• Use services that backs up all changes and logs events.
• Set deadline for upload and deadline to verify succesful upload. (say one hour)
• If students encounter any problem, they shall inform you. (Server is down, what should I do?)
• Set the rule, that after deadline student will lose 10% per day.
• Count it as -0.007*[minutes].
• Add false-complaint penalty of another [significant ammount].

Cancel the penalty only if the student proves that the hour-long delay was caused by university servers malfunction (brakedowns shall be logged) and that the work was done before the deadline (timestamp).

If they cannot prove their statements then apply both delay and false-complaint penalties.

You can make submission more bulletproof when using multiple services and the work must be uploaded to all services on time. Probability of all services corrupted is much lower than probability of one service corrupted.

---

Or you can reject their complaints saying:

You were expected to upload your work and verify its validity before the deadline and proper plannig was part of the task. Your complains were raised late and will be ignored. Take it as a lesson for your further work.

In real life, companies are losing fortune per day if the work is delayed, no matter the circumstances. Students are about to lose couple of points. Take it to acount as well. :)

Answer 11

Since the issue here seems to be that you want to be slightly lenient without giving in to frivolous requests, here is another simple solution. Apply all deadlines strictly but give graded work that has total credit more than 100%. For instance you could easily have graded work that totals to 120%. It is especially useful if the extra 20% is more difficult, and you may even wish to label them as optional assignments or for bonus credit. People who are on time will have no need to do the extra work, but people who are late will have to earn the extra credit to cover their lateness.

The benefits of such schemes are obvious:

1. Students have an avenue to make amendments for their lateness.

2. Leniency with respect to lateness is not free and must be earned.

3. Not just the good students are encouraged to learn more.

Answer 12

I would like to introduce randomness into the late submission penalty process, mimicking the situation in later life that you often do not know what the outcome of not finishing something by a deadline will be.

It would probably work better in the old days of having to physically hand in work, but I imagine a process where if you submit the work in late, for any reason whatsoever, I pull out a 20-sided die, and invite you to roll. Roll a 1, you get 0 for the work. Roll a 20, no penalty. 2-10, 10% per day pro-rated to the minute, 11-19, 10% per day, not pro-rated. After the first day, 20 also becomes a 0 zero mark, i.e. 10% chance of getting 0 marks, which should be somewhat motivating to not submit late. Obviously, there is no negotiation with a d20.

Answer 13

Require a proof of the assignment existence at the given date

We all know that we should take upload time into account, but it is very easy to face unexpected delays when submitting near to the deadline: from the not accepting the , the generated pdf file being quite big (all those photographs looked very nice when preparing the document), the university server giving a timeout for the large assignment file, the teaching platform being slow when many files are being submitted at once, or simply the upload link being quite slower than expected.

However, an email simply saying "We are having issues sending the assignment foo of sha256 cb2730cb4d47b879f6f1a5627e0e94d8261065052375b5dd76abb44e1838008e" won't hit any size limit. They can even hand it out physically the next day in a DVD/USB.

By giving the cryptographic hash, they are committing to the exact file they will be handing out, thus you can verify there were no changes after the deadline. Explain to the students how to generate them on the first day, after the usual talk on "take into account upload time". You may even encourage them to email that (or post it into the forum for your lecture) on normal submissions (no screenshots showing the upload).

Having an official procedure will (a) make students more confident about what to do when genuinely getting computer issues handing out a work they performed on time and (b) give you an argument to disregard claims for students that did not follow the given procedure in case of upload problems.

Answer 14

In addition to agreeing with the general don't negotiate view of other responders, I always make it a point to remind students that my university has an appeals process that allows them to lodge an academic appeal if they believe that they have been unfairly treated or discriminated against. Some of my colleagues don't like me mentioning appeals but my own view is that it is simply part of my adherence to formal processes. Some students are already aware of the availability of an appeals process and it strikes me as being, in some ways, discriminatory not to mention the (often foreign) students who are not familiar with the idea. One of the things positive things I have noticed, however, is that a student will rarely persist with their attempts at negotiating/bullying ... and only very very rarely will one appeal.