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

Where does it say the exam is available at 11 a.m.? That's one of the first thing I thought of; you could start at 10:30 or 10:42 or 10:51, but you have only 90 minutes to work on it and you have to hit the "submit" button before 1:30. If that's not the case, yes, further clarification should have been provided, notwithstanding the may/will/shall discussion.

 

This could open a whole different discussion on whether or not students should be able to read between the lines.

Perhaps college level students should be smart enough to do that, but trying to force them to assume what your intentions are is doing them a disservice in my opinion.

 

Outing: DocQuaint is Tom Coughlin

 

After reading this, your original instructions were quite clear.

 

Tenure is a wonderful thing when it comes to handling grade deductions.

 

I'm not familiar with the system, but it seems to me that the foolproof way to combat this is to have all exams automatically submitted when the clock runs out on the 2 1/2 hours. Students don't have the ability to click on a submit button, the system grabs the exams without any student action. And anyone that thinks students don't cheat on exams administered remotely by computer is living in a fantasy world. You want to eliminate cheating and fairly grade students on their performance - bring them all in the same room and watch them take the same exam together. Not all new tech methods are superior to the old methods.

 

And if a student gets a 97 for finishing at 1:29 and another gets a 0 for finishing at 1:31, you have not assessed the knowledge of the content in your subject; all you have assessed is the ability to finish on time, which I doubt is on the title of the course.

If you want to deduct for tardiness of content submission, then deduct 1% off the grade for every minute late. Ten minutes late, then 10% off the grade and no chance at an A.

And... "Exam opens on Dashboard at 11:00 a.m. and closes at 1:30 p.m. All answers must be submitted by 1:30 p.m. Late answers and exams will be subject to penalty."

And why are you giving an exam over lunch?

 

Most colleges have set finals schedules. As for fraud, you can reduce opportunities for fraud through question design. As for people taking tests for others, how often do you think it happens?

 

Final exam times are set by the university, and the university makes a big hullabaloo about conforming to that schedule. Believe it or not, there have been instances of students complaining simply because they had the option to take an exam at some time other than the scheduled time even though the scheduled time was an option as well.

Thus I set the test to become "available" at 11 a.m., and this was clearly noted by the system. The system has some quirks, among them that it will autosubmit if you take longer than the time allowed but it won't autosubmit simply because the due date has been reached. It is recommended that you not use autosubmit, however, because if the student loses his/her connection, the system will go ahead and autosubmit and won't allow the student back in to resume.

Ultimately, only my repeat offender and four others actually violated the rules. Three of those four submitted only a few seconds past the due date. The other, and my repeat offender, submitted four minutes after the due date. I decided that any questions answered more than two minutes after the due date would be graded as incorrect (the system timestamps each question submission). It cost the non-repeat offender one question (3 points), but it didn't cost the repeat offender anything because he had 'em wrong anyway.

Now my repeat offender's emailing me about maybe getting some extra credit work so he can move that final grade up a letter. Yeah, sure, I'm gonna get right on that.

 

Too bad your repeat offender is not female.

 

The cafeteria was out of fish anyway.

 

That sounds fair. And IT stuff is someone else's problem.

I would not allow that student any chance at extra credit, as well.