What to do about a student who missed multiple assignments and claims illness?

Question

I am the professor in charge of a first-year course for undergraduates. Recently, I received an e-mail from a student, the general meaning of which is the following:

Dear professor,

I am sorry for missing the last few lectures and assignments. During the last few weeks, I was really sick with the flu. Could you please help me to get right on track with the class?

How should I respond to this e-mail? Should I give the student an opportunity to "make up" the missed assignments, or should I give the student zeros for the missed assignments?

Answer 1

First, there may very well be policies in place to handle this, so I would check those first, in case your hands are tied in some way.

Generally speaking however, I'm fairly permissive with medical absences and helping students catch up, if (as it seems from your email) the desire is actually for them to catch up. In your case, for example, I'd schedule a meeting for the student to try and figure out a path forward.

I'm aware that this leaves me open to being exploited by the occasional student who has decided to fake an illness, but I'm far more concerned with make sure those students who do have major medical or life-related issues have the chance to do well in my classes, and I'd rather the occasional student get away with an undeserved extension than have someone who genuinely needed my help not get it.

Answer 2

Check with your schools policy

Usually, such things are in general handled on a different and official level, like: bring a doctors certificate or similar. So in your response, politely point him to your schools policy.

Official repetition exams

Sometimes, policies allow for repetition exams for the ones who failed/were sick. This is like a second try, as if you booked the course again. Whether this is available depends on your school and usually on your willingness to prepare such an exam. This is although a more fundamental decision about how should students get a second chance? Repeat the whole course? Get a second exam?

Exceptional cases

Last, there can of course be exceptions from the policy under some circumstances. Test whether this is the case here (say, is there an extraordinary thing which makes it reasonable to apply special rules to this student?), but for me this does not seem to be. Also think of what the alternative for the student then may be (he has to repeat a whole year because of this but would have finished otherwise). Be careful with exceptions tough as they can create precedence cases! So choose them carefully, if at all.

Answer 3

We have a nasty flu going around that has left people being very sick for weeks. They would love to have had the limited version described by another person in this thread.

Why are people so quick to judge on these things?

to answer the question: give the opportunity to make up the work, but perhaps give a 5% penalty for failure to email you earlier if there's no third-party evidence coming along.

Answer 4

1. Requirement: Your duty as human is to provide help for that in need (all humans next to you).
2. Requirement: Your duty as teacher is to provide information for that in need (students).
3. Requirement: Your duty as employee is to validate (check) the knowledge of the students.

Based on these requirements the solution of this is basically, that you help him out by providing him a path to reintregrate in class, because his illness could be serious. But, do not hessitate to give him small validation exams, in order to keep record of his progress. You should give him time to regenerate from illness and compensate his knowledge lack.

Answer 5

This answer focuses more on addressing the issue in future semesters. If you have room to innovate, it may help to focus on your desired course outcomes and let assignment policy (and even the assignments) flow from them.

With a set of outcomes in mind, and a sequence of major assignments that (I hope) all play a role in reaching them, I knew I wanted to orient all of my policy around getting students to work hard, complete the full assignment track, and learn from their mistakes (both in coursework, and time-management/responsibility).

This orientation led me to a few specific conclusions:

• Getting students to learn from mistakes means: making sure they have room to make them, providing clear feedback that they messed up, and expecting them to rectify it.
• Unless I receive notice of a university-verified excused absence, I apply a diminishing daily late-work penalty that ensures it's worthwhile to turn assignments in on the due date, but leaves enough points on the table that it's always still worth completing late assignments.
• Break major assignments down into a few parts to dilute the impact of an occasional discretionary absence or missed due date.
• Require corrections on all major assignments.
• Aim for a well-distributed workload with weekly deadlines and steadily-increasing assignment weights. This communicates my expectations (and puts procrastinators on notice) with clear grade feedback while the stakes are low.

A relaxed attendance or late-work policy isn't directly compatible with some kinds of work, but I think it's a good nudge to re-examine assumptions. As long as you still make appropriate full-credit accommodations for people with officially-documented excused absences, I think it's fine to have an office-hours make-up option (i.e., same exam for half credit, much harder essay exam, etc.)

Answer 6

We all know the student is telling a white lie here. I think that is a decent choice of action. One thing that really matters is that the student learns. Secondly, its important to uphold timelines in order for the school to be efficient. As long as no one perceives this student to be blatantly disrespecting the timeline given, there'll be little or no damage to the integrity of the rule, making the greatest good being achieved by bowing to their request.