Adventures in Teaching: Redoing Assignments

As many of you are aware, I am teaching my first undergraduate-level course this semester. I have posted about how I didn’t realize how much work the syllabus and planning a course takes (blog post 1 and 2) as well as how I found teaching a remarkable way to improve my own skills (blog post 3).

The semester started off with fairly straightforward assignments, but we’ve begun moving towards the final end-of-semester paper. Unfortunately, it came with some issues where some students did not do so well on some assignments. They asked me if they could re-do the assignment.

I said no for a variety of reasons:

• The overall paper was already broken up into five different assignments, with the last being the final paper. They had to turn in their APA references, an outline, a paragraph, and a draft before finally submitting the final paper. Their grade on the final paper is worth far more than any of the prior assignments, so they should be stepping stones to get them there.
• It seems unfair to other students who read the instructions correctly and paid attention in class. For instance, on the outline assignment, I had two students turn in full paragraph essays. This was after I lectured in class on outlining and went through examples. One of the students was not present during that class, but the other claimed to be confused on what I meant by an outline. On one hand, perhaps I was not clear during the lecture… but on the other hand, every other student got what I meant by an outline and the slides were available for students to review.
• I have mentioned multiple times to students that they could send me things to review to make sure they’re on the right track.
• I let these students know that I would be more than happy to review a revised assignment even though their grade would stay the same.
• If the issue was time, the late policy allows late assignments but caps the highest possible grade by one full letter grade each day. For example, if it’s late 1 day, they can get a B as the highest grade; if it’s late 3 days, they can get a D as the highest grade. They could have just waited another day and gotten a max score of 18/20 instead of 20/20.

On the other hand, I recognize why I might allow re-dos. They get another chance to get better at the material, which would increase their motivation for the course and content. It would bring less stress and anxiety towards assignments if they know they have another opportunity. But I am wondering when I might allow students to re-do assignments. Here are some of my thoughts.

• Allow re-dos but require them to do some additional work. For instance, perhaps they have to write a paragraph on the differences between the two essays or what they did to improve the essay. Perhaps they have to write an even longer essay so that it’s not just revisions they have to do but also extend the edits into new content. Perhaps they have to meet with me in person and discuss or email me their plan for improving the re-do.
• Perhaps I could not have the prior assignments count towards their final grade. If students are worried about initially poor work that ends up in a high-quality paper, then just have the initial steps be required but not graded. Relatedly, I could have the prior assignments all by peer reviewed to reduce my reading load but give them opportunities for feedback.
• If students want feedback prior to a final assignment, they have to send it to me a certain number of days in advance. They can either accept that grade or re-do it for a higher grade.
• For the students that got the assignment completely wrong (e.g., one student turned in the paragraph for the outline assignment) and, based on the rubric, would have gotten a severely low grade (e.g., that paragraph would have gotten max 3/20 points on the assignment) then I let them re-do the assignment with the late penalty in place.
• It seems to me most people are willing to allow re-dos for tests. I totally get doing this for a test, particularly those that aren’t the final culminating test, and I would totally be willing to allow re-dos for these.

What do you think? What is your re-do policy?