Sunday, August 30, 2015

Letters to my students - Re. Late penalty

teaching rules

Dear Student,

You are referred to this letter because you have requested me, by way of email, not to apply late penalty to your current assignment, which, as a matter of fact, has been submitted after the stipulated deadline.

I receive an appreciable volume of such requests each trimester after each assignment. Replying to each individual request adds much unnecessary administrative burden, I, therefore, request you to read through the following analysis. If you think your situation falls outside the categories below, please do not hesitate to contact me.

You may have based your request on the following grounds:

1. You have only been late for a negligible period of time, which is too insignificant to warrant any late penalty.

2. This is your first time submitting an assignment online, which bars any late penalty being applied to you.

3. Your situation warrants special consideration (e.g. the request is on a medical ground), which immunes you from late penalty.

I will now explain the reasons why requests submitted to me on the above grounds should be dismissed.

1. If you are late for X seconds, no matter how small it may appear, and exempted from late penalty on the ground there are mere X seconds difference, then it is not reasonable to apply late penalty to whoever late for less than 2X seconds, because, with the same token, there are only X seconds difference between whoever submitted X seconds late and 2X seconds late. Repeatedly applying this logic, I cannot apply late penalty to whoever is late, which manifestly contravenes the intention of the marking criteria. Therefore, late penalty will be uniformly applied to students regardless of how much late they may appear to be and part day late is counted as whole day late.

2. A prudent student would have made leeway for potential technical difficulties, and ensured their submission made online by closely following Moodle manual or seeking IT support. You have failed to exercise your due skill and diligence expected from a prudent student and therefore late penalty is warranted. However, should you wish to apply for an extension on such a ground, please refer to the next paragraph.

3. As per university policy, students are required to seek assignment extension from the course coordinator through Moodle should they think their situation warrants special consideration. Granting such extensions falls outside my authority and therefore any such request submitted to me will be dismissed and students are subsequently redirected to the corresponding course coordinator. I am bound by the university policy to apply late penalty as it is stipulated in the marking criteria in the absence of a valid extension.

Having said all that, please do not hesitate to contact me if you think your situation is uncommon.

Best Regards,

Wen