[M.D. Holloway]

The semester has ended with little fanfare. The majority of my students did respectable – averaging around 83%. A few standouts mostly from the guys that are over 30 and looking to snag their degree part time. Some real talented 2nd and 3rd year students really turned it on. A few bombed for no good reason.

The students have known all semester that the final would be given on-line and they also knew they had a 48hour window. Once they began the exam they had 2 hours to take it.

Half of the graded work was done on-line and submitted as such. The students knew the drill and all were able to do the on-line work. They were told repeatedly that if they experience any issues that they should call me (my cell phone # was given and I provided a 24/7 pick-up or callback – really!). If for any reason I do not call back within a few minutes to call the TA immediately. They also have the Help Desk hotline which does answer 24/7 (I know, I try them periodically). The thing is they can get to somebody for help. Technical difficulties are a weak but semi-acceptable excuse.

One of the best and brightest students – a frosh from NJ who is studying computer science and has tested out of many classes already - this kid has the chops to be a heck of a gamer. He calls me up at 1:00PM yesterday and tells me that he can’t get into the site to take the final. “Dude, the deadline has pasted. It ended midnight. You had all weekend – what happened?” “I guess I must have spaced out and got my dates confused”. I told them all not 48 hours prior!!! I even said to start it early incase of any web issues. WTF???

Two kids out of 20 from his class and 3 out of 20 from the other class missed the final deadline. The hard part was that most of the kids that missed the deadlines were actually doing great. The final is 15% of the grade. A ‘0’ will bring down their grades for sure. Pretty sad.

I talked to the chair today on his behalf to see if I could lobby an exception. I was shut down like a Mormon child asking for an extra slice of ham. All the students could not offer up even a decent excuse. If they told me it was a web issue it would have been one thing. But it wasn’t – they just spaced. Oh well. Do that in the corporate world and find out what happens…