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[rodentmind]

Wouldn't  a more sensible solution be:

Give student two choices (1) take grade up to that point (2)
replace the assignment with another paper

Maybe people were just joking with the automatic A thing, but that
just doesn't sound right.

Asking a student to write a whole new paper when the professor lost the original paper is what wouldn't be right.

[anon11]

The rest of the story....

Grades were due last Friday at 4:30 PM. Yesterday, I got a call from the department secretary, saying that the missing two papers had been placed on her desk by a very apologetic faculty member.

With your good advice, I think I did the right thing in giving the students the benefit of the doubt, without requiring extra work. The students did the right thing, but the system broke down.

Turning papers in to the department office was the weak link here. Too many papers from too many courses for the admin assistant to track, (probably) too many faculty and TAs walking through the office picking up papers = big problem. Next semester, I'll make sure that I collect final projects personally.  Thanks for all the comments!

[kaysixteen]

Random comments:

1)Riot act needs to be read to someone, either the 'very apologetic' faculty member and/or the secretary on whose desk the papers were supposed to be placed.  What happened here-- no individual boxes for each professor's classes to put their papers in?  Lazy professor just grabbed something and did not read it before doing so?

2) What abou the old standby of having kid slip paper under professor's door, or place it in his mailbox/

3) If Prof. X knows he lost (or suspects he lost) paper, and tries to make student write another one, he is probably going to be up sh*t creek if student complains.

4)Say student X's paper is lost, and before paper his average was 85%=B.  Paper is supposedly worth 20% of grade.  Sure, he could have written just another B paper, but say he really wanted to raise grade to A- and worked his butt off writing an excellent paper, but lazy paper-losing professor just takes the easy way out and gives kid a B anyhow.  Say further that he never mentions to kid that paper was lost (because professor here was set to leave town and papers were not going to be returned anyhow-- and why is that? Shouldn't prof give secretary unclaimed papers before departing, so that they can be distributed to students after break?).   Kid assumes he just wrote a B paper, I guess, but is really convinced he wrote better than that... for a worst case scenario, assume somehow, say from an idle comment of another dept. professor or secretary, that he then finds out his paper was lost and professor just made something up, took LCD route, etc.?

[musclememory]

I have a clause in my syllabus that strongly advises students to keep backup copies of all assignments on their computer in case anything goes horribly wrong.  I'd hate to have to invoke it, but it's kind of a CYA move.  It's humbling to ask for a resubmission (lie? "My dog ate your homework"?), but it's either that or shutting up and giving them an A.

[tattletale_heart]

I would NEVER just give any grade for the very reason that aneumey mentioned, and because you just know that student would want to you to go through the paper with him/her and explain the grade.

I panicked once when I thought this had happened to me (I had just misplaced one paper) but I have used TurnItIn.com ever since.  It does oh-so-much more than just check for plagiarism - it is the backup I need when my brain misfires.

[infopri]

So far, I've never lost a paper, but I too have a warning in my syllabus (and always have) that students should keep both printed and electronic back-ups of all their work.  I'm teaching online-only this year, so of course all submissions remain on WebCT (and in my computer, once I download them), but I think the warning serves the students well for the future, so I've left it in.

[gstrong96]

This has happened to me before. I teach high school so this may not be applicable, but I give my students a choice between re-doing the assignment or accepting a 3/4 credit.

[hegemony]

This has happened to me twice.  In both cases I just asked the student to print out another copy of the paper, they did, I graded it, end of story.  I think it's very unlikely in this day and age that they wouldn't have a copy of the paper on their computer, right after the class ends.  Rewriting it is not an issue -- they should have a back-up.

[rustymuscle]

Related stories...

Couple semesters ago students handed in essays. The next week I handed back and one student made a big fuss in class about it, "Where's my paper, I turned it in last week!" After a few exchanges (and using the broken record technique with her) I told her to email the paper to me. I never received it.

Same semester a student emailed at the end of the semester why I had not posted a grade to blackboard. I told him I hadn't received his paper and offered he could resubmit via email. He said he didn't have it. I dug around in my stack o papers on my desk and oh boy....it was sitting in the pile. I emailed apologies and turned his grade from a B to an A.