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[kaysixteen]

So what is actually more important for a late adolescent to learn-- the ability to follow arbitrary directions made either for the sake of making them or explicitly for the professor's convenience, or actually learning, and learning well, the facts and skills the course is supposed to teach?

[larryc]

Bah--the "I'm preparing them for the real world" argument is specious. You can pay your bills and taxes late, with a penalty. You can turn in work late in most situations, with a penalty on your performance review. You can enter a movie late, though you miss the previews. You can be late to your own wedding, though here the penalty is pretty severe!

The no late policy is for our convenience. Which is a perfectly legitimate reason, but it is the reason.

[carebearstare]

Bah--the "I'm preparing them for the real world" argument is specious. You can pay your bills and taxes late, with a penalty. You can turn in work late in most situations, with a penalty on your performance review. You can enter a movie late, though you miss the previews. You can be late to your own wedding, though here the penalty is pretty severe!

The no late policy is for our convenience. Which is a perfectly legitimate reason, but it is the reason.

Isn't this the whole point--that there should be penalties?

Likewise, there are penalties for me if I spend three weeks grading papers that trickle in rather than one block of time Sunday afternoon doing it.

[chemystery]

The assignment is due at the beginning of class.  It it's not turned in within the first 5 minutes of class, it's late.  The late penalty is 10% per business day.  All late assignments must be turned in prior to the next class period (when I will be handing back the graded assignments that were turned in on time).

[kedves]

10% of the assignment per business day.  This is for paper parts (draft, revision) that are due on Fridays, so the weekend doesn't count.  I give an extension for any reasonable excuse and if a draft is really late but a genuine effort, I deduct half the official penalty.  

If the draft is on time or nearly so, the chances are slim that the revision will be late.  But if a draft is so late that a revision is not possible, I have to give that student a 0 for that requirement.  I can give an incomplete only to students who did everything but the final exam.

My late policy is intended to balance students' work habits, the goal of the assignment, and my workload.  I teach four large classes, all with many writing assignments.  If the penalty is too light, as I've tried in the past, then many students delay, the schedule is kaput, and it all gets piled into one week.  I'm too old to pull grading all-nighters any more.  This works for my students and me.  I don't get complaints (well, not about deadlines). 

In my intro class, essays are two pages, so students do them on time--but those who spend more time write much better ones.  Lateness isn't a problem in that class.

Things happen, people mess up, and we have to take that into account.  But I don't see how papers are entirely different from exams.  We could argue that if a student does not read, attend class, or study, then the value the course dwindles and skills are not learned.  Should we give that student a make-up exam and extra study time?  Exams test students on a set day, not when they are ready.  Paper deadlines are similar.  College offers students an opportunity to learn, not a guarantee of learning. 

For me, it's not about getting them ready for the real world--I assume that we're in the real world.  It's about how they and I can do the work of the course within the time boundaries of the semester.

[noof_]

Like most, I don't accept late small assignments. I will accept a late paper within one week of the due date, however the student gets an automatic letter grade deduction. The student earns a zero exactly one week from when the paper was due. I do not accept late final projects (in lieu of final exams).

Larryc, I don't entirely agree with you about the reason we have deadlines. My lessons, like many I imagine, build upon the ones before. A student who turns in something late is behind the curve as the rest of the class moves forward. If a student consistently turns in late work, hu is very likely not going to do as well in the class as someone turning work in on time. Feedback is an integral part of the grading process. Further, if the student turns in an assignment late, does that mean I should rush to give it back so hu can catch up with the rest of the class?

There is also the matter of equity. Why should one student be allowed to turn in work late (without penalty) when others - often people who work full time, have families or have physical, emotional or learning disabilities - manage to meet the deadlines.

If a student wants to turn in assignments whenever hu wants, hu should take a self-paced class.

Story: I had a friend in undergrad who thought it was great that she could turn in work late (no deadline, as I recall) with a letter-grade deduction. She flunked out after her freshman year. Now (at 40-something) she is taking night classes, turning her work in on time, and getting straight A's.

[bluesocks]

If the assignment is anything other than busy work, its objective is to teach the skills and knowledge covered therein.   Thus, not accepting anything late and/or only doing so with a draconian late grade penalty encourages not doing the assignment if it cannot be completed exactly on time, and skills are not learned.  The pedagogical merit for this would be exactly what?

I tend to agree with your point of view.  I create assignments that I want my students to complete to demonstrate their understanding of the material.  But, I don't want to be accepting assignments late for days on end (or weeks on end). 

So what is your late policy?  Do you just accept all late work?  Is there some cut off? 

[_touchedbyanoodle_]

I take assignments through Blackboard. Deadlines are Friday by midnight. They can hand it in late, up to Sunday at midnight, for a letter grade deduction. I grade most of them after Monday anyway, so it doesn't affect me. After that, no go, unless I have heard from them. Then we figure something out.

I used to take no late work. It was the only issue on which students consistently went over my head to complain. I learned.

[svenc]

So what is actually more important for a late adolescent to learn-- the ability to follow arbitrary directions made either for the sake of making them or explicitly for the professor's convenience, or actually learning, and learning well, the facts and skills the course is supposed to teach?

Ultimately, most deadlines (outside of the context of a hospital emergency room or battlefield) are arbitrary to some extent, but necessary nonetheless. 

Beyond that, the timing of many assignments actually is important to the sequencing of classroom material.  You simply don't learn as much if you do the assignments a week or two late, because you are necessarily behind on the current material as well.  Yes, to some extent this may be field- or course-specific, but it's certainly true in my classes.

My personal classroom policy (can't speak for others) is to not take late work, but allow students to set their own deadline if they approach me in advance with the request.  I recognize that sometimes my deadline falls on the same day as two exams in other classes, etc.  I am very happy to accommodate busy lives, but have little interest in indulging poor planning.  And it's amazing how a firmly worded policy can encourage better planning. 

[imawakenow]

Bah--the "I'm preparing them for the real world" argument is specious.

Not in my case.

You can turn in work late in most situations, with a penalty on your performance review.

Again, not in my field. If you consistently miss deadlines, you get fired. Simple as that. I've seen it done. I've done it.

[wanna_writemore]

I don't take reading responses late, but I do have 13 in the syllabus and students only need to do 10.  For longer papers, I deduct 1/3 of a letter grade for each 24-hour day, starting from class start time. 

This part I don't publicize: If a student gets way behind or seems to not intend to turn the late paper in at all, I usually encourage him/her to turn it in anyway and mention that there is a "floor" of a D for a decently-written paper turned in very late.

[gradgirl]

Amazingly, I  find myself agreeing with Kaysixteen for the first time.

I am a TA, so I have to comply with professors' requirements. However, some professors have left me to my own devices on this issue. In those cases, I gave extensions as needed for students who requested them in advance. If a student did not request an extension in advance but wanted to turn a paper in late, I accepted it late with a penalty of one "level" on the letter grade scale (i.e A paper became A- paper etc.). The penalty remained the same no matter how late the paper was.

This was not something I advertised to the class in general. I gave them clear
deadlines. However, if a student approached me with a problem I explained this policy and applied it equally to all students.

Of the few who turned in late papers, most did so within a day or two (usually before I had even gotten to grading the papers). Very very few students turned in papers late in the semester.

In general, I tend to treat my students in the way that I would have liked to be treated in the same situation. I have never turned an assignment in late. However, if I found myself in a situation in which I was suddenly very stressed out or something in my life happened (I'm not talking about something document-able like medical situation, but just, well, life) and I needed to turn a paper in late, I think I would like to be able to go to the professor or TA and explain and get the opportunity to do the work. I would feel quite humiliated if the professor said "well, I'm taking 10 points off for every day you miss".

That being said, so far my students have been pretty reasonable and I haven't felt that they were taking advantage of me or making up excuses. I suspect as I teach more and run across more problematic students, I will be forced to implement some sort of late policy. But I also suspect it will not be of the "points docked for every hour/day" kind. Probably more like "if you missed a paper we will schedule a new deadline together after which I will not accept it."

[amiens]

--1/3rd a letter grade per day, including weekends
--work that is not turned in two weeks after the original due date (unless the student has made a prior arrangement or has documentation from an administrator) receives a 0

Students seem to find this policy reasonable. 

[the_myth]

So what is actually more important for a late adolescent to learn-- the ability to follow arbitrary directions made either for the sake of making them or explicitly for the professor's convenience, or actually learning, and learning well, the facts and skills the course is supposed to teach?

Let's just give them all As since grades are arbitrary too.

I can't believe so many so still respond to these reductio ad absurdum objections.

Late adolescents (like the Kindergarteners they were just 12 years or so earlier) need to learn to follow directions and do the work the authority figure tells them to do.  It's how the world works.  You know it and I know it.  Everybody knows it.

If a student does not do the assignment in the time allotted, they will fall behind.  As svenc noted, if they cannot stay on-task for weeks at a time, how exactly will they be able to keep up with the material?

As I think back, nearly every single late assignment I have ever accepted was inferior in comparison to each assignments handed in on time.

Why even bother to torture them?  And why make more work for myself trying to track when/if a dozen late assignments were ever be handed in and figuring out how best to penalize them?

If it's not a major assignment, or the student has no major life crisis [death or disfigurement], then why do they need more time?

[finallyfullprof]

I'm in the no late work camp as well, but I will work with students if the assignment is major and the circumstances truly are exceptional. I also sequence my course materials so one assignment builds on another and make the materials relate so that by the end of the term, they are using everything they learned for the major project. Students can still get participation points for handing in something up to 24 hours late, but they won't get the assignment points. That way they can still get feedback on their work and learn from the experience.