Quote:
Originally Posted by Ollie123
I'm just curious what strategies others have for dealing with students who miss exams. I was pretty forgiving in the past, but find myself becoming more rigid as I 1) Am assigned larger classes and thus would need to devote substantially more time to accommodate people and 2) Grow weary of dealing with lame excuses.
This semester I dropped one exam thinking that would alleviate the need for make-ups, but no it is "unfair" that I drop the one they missed because they overslept/crashed their car/etc. instead of one they failed. In the past I've granted make-ups for students who had bad reasons (i.e. oversleeping) but were apologetic, but that seems to have been abused so I'm considering just giving out zeros in such cases. One faculty member has a policy that all make-up exams (regardless of excuse) are essay, which seems an effective deterrent but perhaps overly harsh for legit excuses.
Just curious what strategies others have developed for dealing with these. As you may have guessed, it is finals week and the whining has began!
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I've heard of the essay make-up exam strategy, and yep, it definitely seems to be effective for curtailing excessive absences. If the issue is that you're having to schedule multiple make-up sessions, you could try putting in your syllabus that all make-up exams for the semester will be offered on a single date. Multiple instructors in my program used that technique effectively.