Online Courses Late Work Policies

[MorningGlory]

Hello everyone!

 

I would love to hear the "late work" policies for the various online courses that your students take. How far in advance must students inform the teacher that work is going to be late? What are the lengths of extensions? Can students have more than one extension during the year? Etc. 

 

Just gathering info...thanks in advance! 

 

 

[freesia]

I think it is really student/teacher specific. My ds is doing well in this AP classes and so, when he has asked for one extension for each class, Ithe teacher didn't hesitate. He also had s good reason

 

In AP English lit with Lili Serbecki (pa homeschoolers) he asked two weeks early for an extension on the ten page paper bc of an honors interview weekend that ended the day before it was due.

 

Last weekend he was at another scholarship weekend. It ended Saturday and I couldn't pick him up at the airport bc if a big storm so he slept there until 5:30. So on Sunday he asked for an extension on a Monday test. It was quickly granted. This was AP US gov't with Julia Reed (PAH)

 

Homeschool Spanish Academy is flexible. A couple of times when he said he wasn't ready for a test and it was rescheduled for the next session.

[freesia]

I just realized you were probably gathering info for your own class. I forgot to say there were no points deducted from ds either times.

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

One of my kids has had to ask for extensions a number of times due to his schedule. So far his various instructors have been accommodating. We did discuss his situation ahead of time so the requests for extensions weren’t a surprise.

 

One instructor was posting assignments last minute so ds had no option to get the work done early, which he tries to do.

[eternalsummer]

Lukeion will open a window for submission early if someone wants to submit a quiz or homework before going on vacation, or something.  Other than that, my impression has been that they'd like you to be dying or in the middle of a natural disaster before you're willing to ask them for an extension, and so DD has never asked for an extension.  I will say that they leave the windows for submission pretty wide (days).

[rdj2027]

Lukeion, yes, my son never dared even to ask for it. AOPS, has a one or two extensions per class for whatever reason but you have to let them know ahead of time.  My son used it once because he was sick and had several exams in other classes the same week.

[skimomma]

Agreeing with recent posters in that dd has only asked for an extension one time in all of her online classes and it was due to a death in our family.  As an instructor, I would try to hold the line to avoid asks as much as possible.  Many kids taking online classes have complicated schedules as that is sometimes the reason for seeking online education to begin with.  My dd travels a great deal, often in places with no cell/WIFI access.  Part of the reason we homeschool is to accommodate that travel.  She could not do the things she does within the framework of traditional schooling.  I feel it is her (with our help) responsibility to make the class work around her schedule.  Dd's instructors do not even know that she has these commitments that require her to be on the road for 1/3 of all schooldays.  This often means taking exams early and working ahead.  She has taken exams in a McDonald's parking lot so we can poach the WIFI.  She is in one class where due dates and assignment details are often changed at the very last minute.  This means she has turned in items that ended up being "cancelled" or turned in more work that what ended up being due.  It is annoying because I feel the instructor should have her plan together better than that.  It kind of sucks that a diligent student who is trying to make her schedule NOT be the instructor's problem gets bit by being "responsible."  But ultimately it is on dd to deal with that.  I can definitely see how quickly it could get out of control for an instructor that was too accommodating with extensions.  The best safeguard against this is to have a clear schedule and firm policy.  If assignments and other required items are available with large windows, I think it is reasonable to deny extensions for all but very serious situations.

[Caroline]

GAVS official policy is 10% deduction for each day late. All work is due by midnight each Wednesday and is posted well in advance. So my DS spent last night doing the work that is due a week from today.

[skimomma]

I wanted to add that I teach (in-person) at the university level.  I am always flabbergasted that students think they should be granted extensions because they had to work or go to a basketball game or had a cold or or or.....  I have found the best way to address this is to allow extensions to anyone but with a 30% reduction in grade.  Students with legitimate reasons for needing an extension, such as family emergency, serious illness, etc...., can still meet with me to negotiate due dates without penalty.  But this policy allows me to skip listening to someone's sob story about their dog eating their homework.  I simply point them to my policy on the syllabus and wish them better luck in the future.

[teachermom2834]

My kids have been in online classes for I think five years now (3 kids , over 25 classes across a variety of providers) and I can't remember anyone ever asking for an extension. I do think each kid has had a minor assignment or two handed in late simply because it was overlooked or a technology glitch led dc to think it was submitted even it had not gone through. In these cases the dc just took the late penalty or zero and tried to be more conscientious.

 

All that to say I think the need for extensions should be rare. Granted my dc have not had major illnesses or deaths in the family. In those cases we would assume the teacher would work with us. But most kids should be able to get through a course without an extension.

 

My dh teaches cc and he is constantly asked for extensions. Sometimes for purely recreational events, sometimes because "I forgot". It is obvious from the number of requests that some students have been conditioned that this is standard procedure. I appreciate our online providers helping teach our kids that the extension is for a major crisis and not standard procedure.

[...................]

We have done 5 courses with 5 different providers,

 

Usually there is a 24-48 hour window when the test or quiz is open and that’s it. Once it’s closed it’s pretty much a zero unless the teacher re-opens it. That includes essays because it’ll only show on canvas during that period.

 

CurrClick His Science is the exception where the kids get two attempts and they are open for a month (maybe indefinitely I don’t know since she hasn’t been in the course that long) I think this is far too lenient because the real world will never work that way.

 

Hope this helps !

[...................]

Ps extensions should only be for very serious emergencies/ Illness

 

Or they should be with a 30-40% drop in grade if you do extend for any other reason than flu or family funeral - so they really get it that this is better than a zero but absolutely not acceptable

On a regular basis.

 

The reason is, as stated above, that you are helping parents teach their kids the real world and in community college there aren’t extensions unless you visit office hours or talk to the teacher after class and even then nowadays the teacher would have to re-open the quiz/thing on Canvas which takes time from their own life. It’s no longer you physically Handing them a piece of paper.

 

:)

[Miss Tick]

You are smart to have a policy in place, and it is ok for you to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis if it suits you.

 

I think my dh is fairly liberal with extensions for his college students, but they need to contact him at least three business days in advance.

[Roadrunner]

We haven’t had to ask for extensions for exam or an essay, but my kid is routinely a day late on his foreign language assignments and it seems to be no problem. It’s due Sunday night, he is uploading it on Monday morning.

 

 

I will say that what has been so difficult is our inability to take any vacation the entire year because no breaks coincide at all between providers. We are exhausted, so we are just going to take off for a week and beg for extensions. I am hoping for more lenient attitudes that I am seeing on this thread 😋.

[regentrude]

Another alternative is to have a policy that one or two assignments are dropped.

In the online class I teach, exams are live, but quizzes are online. I drop the lowest two quiz scores which allows each student to miss two quizzes.

With 300 students in the course it is not feasible to do case by case exceptions.

 

The online courses my DS took did not allow late assignments.

Edited February 21, 2018 by regentrude

[skimomma]

 

 

I will say that what has been so difficult is our inability to take any vacation the entire year because no breaks coincide at all between providers. We are exhausted, so we are just going to take off for a week and beg for extensions. I am hoping for more lenient attitudes that I am seeing on this thread 😋.

 

We have found that dd's instructors are always happy to help her come up with a plan as long as it is addressed beforehand.  As an instructor, I only have a problem with people not planning ahead and then asking for extensions.  I think students are far better served by working on the front end and asking for assignments to be opened early rather than asking for extensions and trying to catch up afterwards.  Not only is it easier for the instructor to deal with but also far better for the student.

[Roadrunner]

We have found that dd's instructors are always happy to help her come up with a plan as long as it is addressed beforehand. As an instructor, I only have a problem with people not planning ahead and then asking for extensions. I think students are far better served by working on the front end and asking for assignments to be opened early rather than asking for extensions and trying to catch up afterwards. Not only is it easier for the instructor to deal with but also far better for the student.

Only trouble is essays are based on reading and discussions in the class, so it’s hard to write something you have yet to cover. Same with foreign language.

We will just have to double up.

 

But I know what you mean.

[RootAnn]

Spanish the first three years with La Clase Divertida - never asked for an extension that I remember, but over the three years, she missed one assignment because she just didn't see it on her assignment list (originally a zero, but he did eventually grade her late submission & put it in without a penalty) and one vocab quiz due to misreading the date/time (12 am vs pm). She was penalized 10%, I think, for that.

 

I know you know Wilson Hill's new late policy.

 

CLRC's German teacher doesn't seem to penalize the kids if they turn in assignments late. She encourages them to do the work so they get the practice. While I'm not a fan of loosy-goosy due dates, I do like that she is so encouraging that they do the work even if they are behind. She seems to really want to get the kids to learn the material well & grades in a much more lenient fashion than I would.  :o

 

I don't remember many other late policies because we haven't had to use them, thankfully.

[skimomma]

Coming back to this only because I am currently in an email war with a college student who thinks I should grant her a one week extension on a significant project deliverable because she "had a calculus exam last night."  They have had five weeks to complete this assignment.  These are lessons that are best learned well before college.  I denied her the extension with my usual lecture about my very clearly stated policy on my syllabus and the invitation to turn it in late with a 30% reduction in grade.  She is going to "talk to my supervisor."  Good luck with that.....  

 

In the end, the goal is for the students to learn.  And I am glad there are providers that are more lenient that have students who do catch up when they fall behind.  But many college instructors are juggling hundreds of students.  Trying to manage grading when things are coming in late is extremely taxing.  I have to hold the line to my policies or else literal chaos will rule my classes.  I am not strict about this to prove a point or "stick it to" the students.  I am strict because I have to be.  I am beginning to think that the pleas for extensions and exceptions that I am seeing in increasing frequency each year is coming from more lax policies in high schools.

[cjzimmer1]

I very much appreciate providers with more lenient policies. During the spring semester we travel frequently for competitions that my kids are in. While we know in advance when we will be gone, we don't always know how the big projects of various classes will line up in relationship to our trips. And sometimes the trips end up being longer than anticipated so the kids don't have that day they though they could work on homework and get behind. On top of that my kids work extensively in a business my parents own. They get called on when there is more physical work than my parents can handle. It's not always possible to anticipate how much or when this will happen. But these are all the reasons we homeschool, so that our life can still happen and we will school around it.

 

So when it comes to our online high school classes, if the providers won't accept late or are very hardcore about those policies, well we just won't take classes with them. There is a time and place for that type of approach (aka I think that is appropriate for college) but I don't feel like high school homeschool classes are it.

[yvonne]

I think the key is to have some policy, explicitly stated in the syllabus, available up front when the student registers for the class. Then be conscious of how much flexibility you can allow so that you, as the instructor, don't go crazy. If you're going to allow extensions, state up front how far ahead the student needs to ask.

 

We've taken a number of classes with a number of providers. Lukeion's extension policy is the most severe. There are no extensions unless the student died that week. My kids are afraid to even ask. I guess that's one way to handle it. LOL  We work with it, but we've only been able to do so because none of our other classes have as severe a policy on extensions.

 

My kids are very active in speech & debate. From Feb to April, they have a couple of three to four day, all-day (7:15am - 8:30 or 9pm) tournaments each month, plus several single or two-day tournaments over the season. Before registering for classes, I explain the situation to the instructor and ask if s/he has any flexibility around due dates. Most instructors have been willing to work with my students. Our WHA & PAHS instructors have been fantastic.

 

I very much appreciate instructors who are able to be flexible with due dates. I also appreciate instructors who set out a clear policy, whatever that policy is, so that we can factor that into which classes we take. A clear policy also ensures that my students don't just take it for granted that they can get an extension whenever they want. They know extensions impose a burden on the instructor, so they only ask when there's a real scheduling problem with debate that we can't avoid.

[eternalsummer]

I think the Lukeion policy works well (for us, and it's just the second year of Lukeion classes, so ymmv) because they leave all assigments/quizzes up for several days.  So if you've got a difficult week coming up, you just turn in the quiz on the first day possible (for DD12, this is Friday; it can be submitted as late as Monday, so there are 4 days of the week possible).  If you're going to be on vacation from Friday to Monday (we've done that before) and not be able to access the internet, you can ask them to open it early for you so you can turn it in Thurs or Wed.  Homework is the same way, can be turned in Tues-Fri any time. 

 

It would not work as well if it were only open to submit for like 12 hours on Friday, or something - that would be a pain.

 

As it is, the only times she's not submitted her quiz/homework have been when she has forgotten.  Even so, no homework or quiz is such a huge part of the grade that it's had a major effect.  

[Julie of KY]

I appreciate "some" flexibility and leniency. I also like the basic policy spelled out in the syllabus. I expect work that will be missed from planned conflicts will be done early. 

 

Sometimes it's easier on the instructor to build in the policy that an assignment or quiz can be dropped. - seems more common on the college side of things rather than online high school from my experience. I like Carol Matheny's policies best with AP Statistics. - x% off per day late up to x many days late.

 

As far as my experience asking for late extensions - My son was in an online AoPS class and I asked on day 1 if he could access the last three weeks of material late since he would be on a backpacking trip. Alternatively, I was simply going to print out the classroom instruction and problems and he'd do it late at home. They had no problem extending the deadlines and it was minimal effort on their part.

 

I've had one trip to the ER that royally messed up deadlines and I emailed the instructors and had no problem.

 

 

[RootAnn]

I remembered Memoria Press's policy - at least for their Latin classes we've taken - they open the test/quizzes right away so you can work ahead all you want. There is a firm closing date for each quarter's worth of work and it is final. Really, it is only tough to make the closing date if you are really behind near the closing date. You know from the very beginning of the year when those firm dates are, so you should be able to catch up by each of those dates (or work slightly ahead) if you will be busy or out of town or an emergency comes up.

 

So, lots of flex in the basic design, but no budging of the firm dates four times a year.

[...................]

Another alternative is to have a policy that one or two assignments are dropped.

In the online class I teach, exams are live, but quizzes are online. I drop the lowest two quiz scores which allows each student to miss two quizzes.

With 300 students in the course it is not feasible to do case by case exceptions.

 

The online courses my DS took did not allow late assignments.

This is what my son has generally seen, there are no late anything...not even with drops in grade.

 

BUT teachers usually drop the lowest quiz grade.  

 

I think it's completely ridiculous and unfair to ask people for extensions unless you're at your grandmas funeral.  Seriously, this is real life and it's not fair to the Professor/Instructor.  They have a life!