Why? No forgetting. Working on-line means having the access of creation and submission at your fingertips. It is like writing a birthday card at the mailbox and forgetting to send it. Creating something or preparing a project on a computer often means printing it out or burning it to a disk in order to physically hand it to the teacher. Admittedly I am not quite to the level of all electronic submissions, but I should be and tend to be soon...although that is a future topic to discuss.
As our world is increasingly electronic, it makes little sense for us to assign things that we know are are done or completed electronically, but we require a hard copy. One thing would have to be changed though: more sever penalties for late submissions. The two people that can tell liars better than anyone else are cops and teachers. Due dates can be fudged and have excuses made for and sometimes the teacher (possibly me) will buy into it and give an extra day. On-line submissions release teacher error in this manner. The following is possible now:
Student: I left my assignment at home
Teacher: Why
Student: oh I just forgot it (or my printer died or i dont hav a printer). Can you be here after school (or my mom can drive it in)
Squishy teacher like me: ok but you have 30 minutes to get it here (or by the end of the day or you have to email it to me by 5pm)
Student: ok
The conversation would switch to the following:
Student: I forgot to send in my assignment
Teacher: Why
Sttudent: I did it but I just forgot to email (or what other type of electronical submission you want it in) it to you.
Teacher: So you mean to tell me that you spent an hour doing this and could not spend the next 90 seconds opening up your email and sending it to me...???
Student: Um...yea
Teacher: That does not make sense. I dont believe you did it.
Student: No really I did!
And of course the conversation can continue but tht teacher has more ammuniton instead of an innocent sounding "oops!"
As I said, my and other teachers not accepting online submissions is a problem for another entry, but when the decision has been made to accept all outside classwork electronically, starting this process must be thorough:
1) For homework the first week, each student has to email you.
2) You must email the students back.
3) The student needs to printout a a copy of the email you sent for verification
4) Everything must then be electronically submitted and if not, must be handed it physically (if they feel there is an error)
5) Policy needs to be changed to at least 50% off for the first day late
6) Policy also needs to be changed to a form where if they send it in one day before it is due, they have an opportunity to see if the teacher received it and after that the previous policy goes into effect (this is for anyone who claims email problems which are nearly non-existant unless the sender gets a error message)
A slow implimentation towards this end will increase proper use of technology and instill timliness amongst students, preventing extreme procrastination.
Comments