Of the 10-20% who do not turn in their work on the due date, how many eventually turn it in, and how does their quality of work compare to those who turned it in “on time”?
I would say, about 2⁄3 of the people who miss the due date turn in their work a little late. Of those who don’t, a handful will turn in a batch of late papers at the end of the semester, which is a pain in the ass, but at least they did it. And then there are the people who just give up on the class but don’t actually drop it. They make up the bulk of the people who don’t turn in their work ever.
The quality of the late papers is, on average, lower than the quality of the on-time papers. This makes sense; the more diligent students would tend to do better work and get it in on time.
It would be interesting to see a repeat of the experiment Yvain mentions, with another class added using your “obviously fictitious due dates”.
One confounding factor is that the study Yvain mentioned has only three assignments, whereas I have a larger number that are due more frequently. I suspect that my method might not work quite as well with a smaller number of assignments.
The quality of the late papers is, on average, lower than the quality of the on-time papers. This makes sense; the more diligent students would tend to do better work and get it in on time.
Do you have a method for disentangling any negative bias you might have towards late papers (because they are ‘a pain in the ass’) from your quality judgements? I imagine the degree to which completely objective quality measurements are possible is a function of what subject you are teaching.
I hadn’t thought of that, but it turns out that yes, I do! I handle the grading in two phases; in phase one I assign grades, and in phase two I enter them into the grade book. The pain-in-the-ass aspect comes mostly in phase two. I don’t really mind grading late papers; it’s dealing with the school’s broken-ass computer system, Blackboard, that is really aggravating when I’m entering late grades. Or any grades, really, but late grades are worse.
Therefore the grades I assign should be fairly disentangled from any annoyance I may feel later in phase two.
(By the way, nice job thinking up that criticism. The ability to habitually see possible cognitive bias in everyday life is important, and needs to be lauded more.)
(Also, if you happen to be an educational institution, never use Blackboard. It’s the worst thing since BonziBuddy.)
I’m not denying that Blackboard sucks—my university uses it, too—but I’ve not had too much trouble entering grades by the download-edit-upload method. The download and upload options are in the “Grade Center” under “Manage”, and the file is tab-delimited (or some alternate option I have already forgotten about) and editable in Excel.
I would say, about 2⁄3 of the people who miss the due date turn in their work a little late. Of those who don’t, a handful will turn in a batch of late papers at the end of the semester, which is a pain in the ass, but at least they did it. And then there are the people who just give up on the class but don’t actually drop it. They make up the bulk of the people who don’t turn in their work ever.
The quality of the late papers is, on average, lower than the quality of the on-time papers. This makes sense; the more diligent students would tend to do better work and get it in on time.
One confounding factor is that the study Yvain mentioned has only three assignments, whereas I have a larger number that are due more frequently. I suspect that my method might not work quite as well with a smaller number of assignments.
Do you have a method for disentangling any negative bias you might have towards late papers (because they are ‘a pain in the ass’) from your quality judgements? I imagine the degree to which completely objective quality measurements are possible is a function of what subject you are teaching.
I hadn’t thought of that, but it turns out that yes, I do! I handle the grading in two phases; in phase one I assign grades, and in phase two I enter them into the grade book. The pain-in-the-ass aspect comes mostly in phase two. I don’t really mind grading late papers; it’s dealing with the school’s broken-ass computer system, Blackboard, that is really aggravating when I’m entering late grades. Or any grades, really, but late grades are worse.
Therefore the grades I assign should be fairly disentangled from any annoyance I may feel later in phase two.
(By the way, nice job thinking up that criticism. The ability to habitually see possible cognitive bias in everyday life is important, and needs to be lauded more.)
(Also, if you happen to be an educational institution, never use Blackboard. It’s the worst thing since BonziBuddy.)
I’m not denying that Blackboard sucks—my university uses it, too—but I’ve not had too much trouble entering grades by the download-edit-upload method. The download and upload options are in the “Grade Center” under “Manage”, and the file is tab-delimited (or some alternate option I have already forgotten about) and editable in Excel.