The excuse towel . . . .
Years ago, as an online student, I used to write down all the excuses students gave when not completing their homework. When I graduated, I always joked I had enough to embroider me a bath towel.
Now, as an online instructor I sometimes feel like Colonel Blake on MASH dealing with all of Clinger’s excuses and deaths in his family. I used to keep track of all the excuses students gave me, and try to follow up. This quickly became an impossible task. However, there has to be a best practice for dealing with the multiple excuse students give for not submitting their homework.
The best one I ever received for a student not submitting her online assignment, “my dog ate my homeworkâ€. When I reminded the student she should use her back up plan, then she could have still submitted her work, she laughed at me as said, that was my back up plan. My puppy ate my Flash Drive and I keep all my homework on that flash drive. I had to then remind her to never store her work in just one location. The back-up plan is to prevent late assignments, and when you don’t have double locations, you don’t have a back-up plan.
By the way, my excuse towel could easily be an excuse California King Blanket.
What suggestions, thoughts or ideas can you share on student excuses for not doing their work?
Hi Sarah,
That's right, doing is the best way to grasp the concept.
Patricia
When one has a job to do, one must be responsible. How are you going to learn, but by doing something.
Hi Colin,
Once you truly feel in your heart that you have done all for your students, then the rest is on them. Stop beating yourself up; continue to offer support and motivation, and emphasize to your students that you are giving them your all, but they must put forth great effort in order to be successful.
Patricia
Teaching at a culinary school, I am bombarded with excuses for lateness, absences, missing work, poor quiz scores, etc. I used to get personally upset when to me it seemed that my students were almost willingly underperforming. Now, not so much. I have become increasingly more clear and concise on Day 1 of class, with all expectations communicated in both writing and in my introductory lecture. I no longer get upset. If students want to make the least out of their very expensive time in my school, that is 100% on them. I will (and do) offer encouragement and support until I am blue in the face, but I no longer kick myself if the student chooses to NOT meet me halfway.
Hi Nicholas,
Will you waive due to extentuating circumstances?
Patricia
I actually never take any excuses. There are some extenuating circumstances, however, students are given plenty of time to complete an assignment. They're all adults and are told to keep several copies of assignments.
I agree Carla. This is how I have handled the problem and in my classes and it has worked. I found that some students have turned assignments in early knowing that they will be out. In my syllabus, I state the penalties for each late day and many jump on the early wagon to avoid any problems.
Hi Claire,
Some students will play the excuse card every time. I use my best discretion as to what is acceptable or unacceptable. I do not take many lame excuses at all.
Patricia
One time I did a survey of all the instructors in our school to get a list of excuses. It was very interesting to me that students in the medical fields tended to have medical excuses (often described in appropriate medical terms), while students in the business, legal, and IT programs had primarily computer excuses (printer out of ink, lost flash drive, computer crashed, virus, etc.) My plan was to give this list to the students on the first day of class and have them decide which excuses they'd accept as an instructor. (I'm always trying to come up with new plans to deal with different challenges.) I thought this might help students see that I've heard every excuse before. It kind of back-fired, though, as students felt I was making fun of the serious reasons (death, illness of a chld, etc.) that they might be late with an assignment.
One thing I've done is on the first day of class, I have the students work with a partner. Each shares with the other what they anticipate their biggest problem will be in getting their assignments in on time, and then the partner provides advice. Then each one shares with the class the anticipated challenge their partner is going to have, and the partner then shares the advice they received. So a person may say, "I know I have a tendency to procrastinate," and the partner may suggest a calendar, breaking an assignment into pieces, starting on the assignment early, etc. Another person may tell her partner she knows she has a problem balancing work, school, family, etc., and again the partner will give advice. Often the students have better ideas for dealing with challenges than I do.
I also am too generous in accepting excuses, and I also keep trying to be stricter. I've tried reduced points for late work and not accepting late work at all, but unfortunately students who've had me before know I'm a softie. This quarter, on the first day, when I announced that no late work would be accepted, my students laughed!
I teach legal courses, and I have required that students file a "Motion to Accept Late Work" along with supporting memos, affidavits, and exhibits, and this has helped a little. This might work in some other kinds of classes -- i.e. requiring a memo in a certain format that would help teach students business skills as well as documenting the reason for requesting an extension.
Require a certain amount of work to participate in a project or field trip or they can not participate or earn their points for it.
If you have a clear procedure for handling late assigments with points taken off for each day it is late, the problem of excuses will take care of itself. If there are extenuating circumstances (hospitalization, death, house fire, etc.) there should be some documentation that can be provided, otherwise points will be reduced according to the schedule. This policy should be included in the course syllabus.
I really like your comments. You are right on! I had one student who had the exact same illness in 2 different classes and another whose mother died twice. I guess both forgot they had had me as an intructor before. Your right about planning ahead and have a back up plan. I'm finding that by far the most popular excuse is internet went down and couldn't get work in. I remind them that internet is available at the local library and of course if you have a laptop, many businesses provide wifi. I've had to use both these backup plans myself.
The collage I work for has the instuctors keep a log of absence "excuses" so they can forcast a real problem and track just plain old bad habits.
Hi Ellen,
As instructors we do have hearts, but a lot of these excuses mentioned sounds like they waited until the last minute to get started. I always tell my students to set mini goals for themselves to reach the overall goal of completing the assignment. I've also told my students to email me what they have so that I can make a judgement call from that point. Most of the time they do not have anything to email, and that is when I say no. You waited for the last minute, this is on you, sorry...
Patricia
Hi Kimberly,
Excuses are unacceptable! The only excuses are those that are due to extenuating circumstancs, and proof must be provided.
Patricia
Great topic - and I totally understand your frustration and humor! Assignments in my online courses are always due on Sunday evenings. The emails and phone calls start rolling in around 8pm - father in hospital, sick child (very popular), in ER all day with sick child, had to go out of town for work and didn't realize wouldn't have internet access, worked so much overtime this week couldn't see straight, have the flu, don't understand the problems, and the list goes on. There's really not much that can be done, because if you're given a serious excuse like in ER all weekend with sick child, you have to accept it as is, sympathize, and work something out. I never leave late assignments open ended and always make them commit to a date, and if the date isn't met, there's no further mercy. If the excuse is around not understanding or being out of town, I don't think those are excuses. Call me for help; plan ahead. I am probably way more lenient than I should be, and I am working very hard to be a bit more firm and do the parent-lecture thing of telling them "when you have a huge, important presentation due for a meeting on Monday, what steps would you take to ensure you are successful, ready and on time?". This is something I'm sure we're all challenged with, and if anyone has any good ideas to get the message across without resorting to the parent-lecture thing, I'd love to hear!
