Apparently I don't write all that clearly ...

Shouldn't it be African-Americanboard?

 

That is what I was thinking as well. They should have been able to understand that they had 150 minutes and it had to be completed by 1:30 p.m., but I'm not surprised that some either got confused or hoped that they could claim they were confused in an attempt to buy more time for themselves.

 

LTL's obsession with me is becoming a tad troubling.

 

This confusing policy is going to cost them scholarships

 

Not "may"... "shall"
Never give hope!

 

It says "a grade of zero may be recorded for your final exam score." I

It didn't say it will be recorded. Maybe they thought the zero was optional.

 

Didn't think about it, but I should probably note that Blackboard is one of those online course management systems. I give exams through it, and it works very well. You can schedule the "availability" of a test, which is what I did with this one. It became available at 11 a.m. and was due at 1:30 p.m. Thus the 150 minutes.

I had warned the class on two separate occasions that this was the way the final was going to be scheduled, because of a couple of serial offenders with regard to exam durations/due dates.

The handful of violations involved those who blew off the 1:30 p.m. thing. One kid emailed me and said, "I submitted a few minutes after 1:30, that won't be a big deal will it?"

 

Ah. I didn't realize from your first post that the test wasn't available to them until 11 a.m. No, there is no excuse for them to be submitting it after the deadline.

SpeedTchr is correct. By using the word "may," you did give them hope that they might not receive a zero for failing to follow instructions. The real question is how you are going to handle it. You would be perfectly justified in giving a zero to every exam submitted after the deadline. To do otherwise is unfair to those who did follow instructions.

 

dq, I think we all know how the teachers would handle this at Poin High. Case-by-case basis.

 

Yeah, "may" leaves the door open to interpretation. If you'd said, "will," or "shall," it leaves zero wiggle room.

That said, if I were in a class with those sorts of limitations, I would be very harsh about such limitations in a course evaluation or in a complaint to your department head. Yes, I know you had a couple of serial offenders. But I would come away arguing that I've got other stuff going on in my life that makes such hard and fast time limits impractical.

 

May or will. Never shall.

 

My choice of the word "may" was deliberate. I'll not give 'em a zero, but they're going to sweat it until next week (when grades are due). What I will do is mark wrong every answer submitted after the deadline (the system will tell me which ones). That's what I've done so far with my serial offender, who on three 80-minute tests submitted 4, 22 and 24 minutes after time had expired. Unfortunately for him, he hasn't bothered to check his exams and realize that: 1) some of his correct answers have been marked as wrong; and 2) he'd be passing the course but for this nonsense. He's a nice kid, plenty of smarts, just got a bad case of caput-in-rectum* disease.



*for Riptide ... best I can come up with for "head-up-ass"