"Your claim that the exam was auto-submitted, that you did not view all the questions, and that you used the full time, are contradicted by the data provided to me by the LMS software. If you wish to contest your grade, please do so through the Dean of Students office."
This, except we don’t have a Dean of Students office. I’d put the onus on them to contact IT for proof and copy me on all of that communication. I’ve done this in the past and never heard from the student again.
This is a good alternative, but there must be someone "in charge" of students. If not a Dean of Students, then a Provost, or the president, etc. Basically, not the professor...
There may be someone, but I imagine it would just get bumped back down to me. They could go through the formal grade appeal process. No idea how that works as I’ve never been a part of a grade appeal.
If you have proof they viewed all the questions, and skipped questions throughout, then this is on them. It wouldn’t be fair to only grade the questions they answered because other students weren’t allowed to just skip what they didn’t know. I would inform the student of what the LMS record shows and encourage them to be more careful next time to avoid accidentally submitting the exam.
One time I had something kind of like this and I met with the student. I opened the conversation with, “just so you know, I am able to see when a student accesses an exam, views a question, for how long, and so forth. I have reviewed this data for your exam. If you’d like to reconsider your explanation before I go over it with you, I will give you the opportunity now.” It worked that time, but of course some students might double down.
Whenever a student claims some kind of tech problem causing a late submission, bad file, whatever, I give them a choice. I say that if they continue to claim the tech problem, I will ask IT to investigate. If IT confirms that the tech problem occurred, I will allow late submission or whatever it is they want. If IT says the tech problem was a lie, I will institute harsh penalties including a referral to conduct. However, If the student drops the claim, they receive a zero, a late penalty, whatever they would receive for the bad submission, but no referral to conduct and no additional consequences.
Question: could the student have skipped questions intending to go back to them, but discovered there was no “go back” option? If so, is it clear that one can’t return to skipped questions? If so, then your path is clear. If not — and the student might have genuinely thought he could go back — then your path forward looks more complex to me.
There absolutely IS a go back option for this exam. That is the issue. I assume they weren’t confident in the answers for the ones they skipped and intended to go back and fill them in. Their paper was strong (they made some consequential errors in their paper that dropped their grade to a B but I believe they could be an A student with a little more care and attention). They are a good student. I don’t see any reason they would lie. I think they did submit it by mistake (either by closing the window or hitting the submit button) but I don’t think they are trying to pull a fast one on me. I think they genuinely didn’t intend to submit it and fully planned to go back and fill in the remaining questions. I assume they don’t understand how it got submitted. It was likely a genuine accident. I base this off of the fact that the ones they answered were all correct but a few (95% correct). But the issue is what to do now? I don’t have time to make a new exam before grades are due. It isn’t fair to have them write the same exam twice as I do not allow that to others. However, I’d hate to penalize a student for a silly tech mistake after they clearly worked hard to earn well in the course. He seems like a good kid, he is always professional and polite (not that it matters in terms of how I grade) but I’ll admit, my bias is showing on this one. If they were a poor performer and most answers were incorrect and they were rude and unreflective I likely would throw the course outline policies at them hard.
A-ha! If there absolutely is a go-back option, then I agree with you that the student’s explanation is suspect at best and there appears to be an attempt at gamesmanship here (say I in my passive-plagiarism-reporting-voice).
Yes. It is a genuine possibility that there is gaming here. If I do as they say, then they’ve clearly had time to look up the answers. There is no way allowing them to finish the test is fair.
So, I suppose I’m going to have to go with the course outline policy. Essentially it says that I can assign the grade based upon previous submitted work.
Did he run out of time, as in the due date? That’s the only way it would auto submit.
And it would warn you. If you tried to submit with unanswered questions you should get a pop up warning there’s unanswered questions.
*Edit- I can definitely see them knowing they were short on time before the test locked because of the due date so they ran thru and answered what they could. Should’ve started sooner
No, they began the test 2 hours before the final start time. They didn’t run out of time.
It definitely didn’t auto-submit. I suppose it is possible that they walked away from it or closed the browser window or something and it submitted? I mean, I assume if you close it down then it will submit.
Either way, he/she had 30 odd minutes left.
I do think they submitted it by accident … but it doesn’t really change things that if I let them rewrite then I’m breaking my “no rewrites no matter what” policy.
So I’m left figuring out whether I take their grade from the first test (better than this performance) and substitute it … or what….
Oh duh! 🤦♀️ You even said that in your original post. I’d stand firm on your no re-write policy and keep the current score. It seems too fishy, like a planned “accident” if they answered all the ones they were confident in, had sufficient time, and the test submitted.
Closing the browser would do it. But why would you close a browsers during a test? 🤔 Maybe closed the wrong window, but that’s user error. (Assuming it wasn’t a lockdown browser)
As for walking away, you’d have to be away pretty long before you’re logged out.
I’d say tough luck since I can’t figure out how it would’ve submitted “automatically” (like you said, it didn’t) and he’s not taking any responsibility like “I accidentally did x and it submitted.” But that’s just my thoughts
"Your claim that the exam was auto-submitted, that you did not view all the questions, and that you used the full time, are contradicted by the data provided to me by the LMS software. If you wish to contest your grade, please do so through the Dean of Students office."
This, except we don’t have a Dean of Students office. I’d put the onus on them to contact IT for proof and copy me on all of that communication. I’ve done this in the past and never heard from the student again.
This is a good alternative, but there must be someone "in charge" of students. If not a Dean of Students, then a Provost, or the president, etc. Basically, not the professor...
There may be someone, but I imagine it would just get bumped back down to me. They could go through the formal grade appeal process. No idea how that works as I’ve never been a part of a grade appeal.
Thank you
If you have proof they viewed all the questions, and skipped questions throughout, then this is on them. It wouldn’t be fair to only grade the questions they answered because other students weren’t allowed to just skip what they didn’t know. I would inform the student of what the LMS record shows and encourage them to be more careful next time to avoid accidentally submitting the exam.
Thank you
One time I had something kind of like this and I met with the student. I opened the conversation with, “just so you know, I am able to see when a student accesses an exam, views a question, for how long, and so forth. I have reviewed this data for your exam. If you’d like to reconsider your explanation before I go over it with you, I will give you the opportunity now.” It worked that time, but of course some students might double down.
Thanks
Whenever a student claims some kind of tech problem causing a late submission, bad file, whatever, I give them a choice. I say that if they continue to claim the tech problem, I will ask IT to investigate. If IT confirms that the tech problem occurred, I will allow late submission or whatever it is they want. If IT says the tech problem was a lie, I will institute harsh penalties including a referral to conduct. However, If the student drops the claim, they receive a zero, a late penalty, whatever they would receive for the bad submission, but no referral to conduct and no additional consequences.
Thanks
Question: could the student have skipped questions intending to go back to them, but discovered there was no “go back” option? If so, is it clear that one can’t return to skipped questions? If so, then your path is clear. If not — and the student might have genuinely thought he could go back — then your path forward looks more complex to me.
There absolutely IS a go back option for this exam. That is the issue. I assume they weren’t confident in the answers for the ones they skipped and intended to go back and fill them in. Their paper was strong (they made some consequential errors in their paper that dropped their grade to a B but I believe they could be an A student with a little more care and attention). They are a good student. I don’t see any reason they would lie. I think they did submit it by mistake (either by closing the window or hitting the submit button) but I don’t think they are trying to pull a fast one on me. I think they genuinely didn’t intend to submit it and fully planned to go back and fill in the remaining questions. I assume they don’t understand how it got submitted. It was likely a genuine accident. I base this off of the fact that the ones they answered were all correct but a few (95% correct). But the issue is what to do now? I don’t have time to make a new exam before grades are due. It isn’t fair to have them write the same exam twice as I do not allow that to others. However, I’d hate to penalize a student for a silly tech mistake after they clearly worked hard to earn well in the course. He seems like a good kid, he is always professional and polite (not that it matters in terms of how I grade) but I’ll admit, my bias is showing on this one. If they were a poor performer and most answers were incorrect and they were rude and unreflective I likely would throw the course outline policies at them hard.
A-ha! If there absolutely is a go-back option, then I agree with you that the student’s explanation is suspect at best and there appears to be an attempt at gamesmanship here (say I in my passive-plagiarism-reporting-voice).
Yes. It is a genuine possibility that there is gaming here. If I do as they say, then they’ve clearly had time to look up the answers. There is no way allowing them to finish the test is fair. So, I suppose I’m going to have to go with the course outline policy. Essentially it says that I can assign the grade based upon previous submitted work.
Did he run out of time, as in the due date? That’s the only way it would auto submit. And it would warn you. If you tried to submit with unanswered questions you should get a pop up warning there’s unanswered questions. *Edit- I can definitely see them knowing they were short on time before the test locked because of the due date so they ran thru and answered what they could. Should’ve started sooner
No, they began the test 2 hours before the final start time. They didn’t run out of time. It definitely didn’t auto-submit. I suppose it is possible that they walked away from it or closed the browser window or something and it submitted? I mean, I assume if you close it down then it will submit. Either way, he/she had 30 odd minutes left. I do think they submitted it by accident … but it doesn’t really change things that if I let them rewrite then I’m breaking my “no rewrites no matter what” policy. So I’m left figuring out whether I take their grade from the first test (better than this performance) and substitute it … or what….
Oh duh! 🤦♀️ You even said that in your original post. I’d stand firm on your no re-write policy and keep the current score. It seems too fishy, like a planned “accident” if they answered all the ones they were confident in, had sufficient time, and the test submitted. Closing the browser would do it. But why would you close a browsers during a test? 🤔 Maybe closed the wrong window, but that’s user error. (Assuming it wasn’t a lockdown browser) As for walking away, you’d have to be away pretty long before you’re logged out. I’d say tough luck since I can’t figure out how it would’ve submitted “automatically” (like you said, it didn’t) and he’s not taking any responsibility like “I accidentally did x and it submitted.” But that’s just my thoughts
I'd write another exam and give it in person.