Built-in Flexibility for Late/Missed Coursework

Students benefit from both clear structure (e.g., a course schedule or calendar with due dates; clear policies for late work or missed assignments) and flexibility when unforeseen circumstances arise and get in the way of their learning. Providing clear pathways to indicate what students can do if they need to be absent or turn in work late can reduce stress for instructors and students. If policies and pathways are unstructured and/or ambiguous, students may make incorrect assumptions about requirements and instructor expectations. Some students may ask questions or request extensions, but others are likely to accept policies as they’re written and hope for the best. 

MIT instructors have adopted a variety of strategies to offer “built-in flexibility” – pathways they design in advance and communicate in the syllabus – when a student has a significant illness or personal difficulty and cannot make it to an exam. The examples below are divided between policies for exams (Second Chances, Make-up Exams, Excusing Exams, and Oral Exams) and assignments (Small Number of Free Extensions, Small Number of Dropped Psets, Scaled Psets, Contingencies for Complicated Situations)

Exam Policy Key Features:

  • Clearly stated policies around what is considered a valid reason for missing an exam
  • Clearly stated policies so students know what to expect if an exam needs to be missed
  • Teaching staff identify a policy that works well for their logistics
  • General choices include:

MIT Examples:

Second Chances: Some students’ struggles with exams are less about what they know and more about how they perform in a testing environment. Therefore, some instructors purposefully build in policies to give students a “second chance” to show what they know.

If you fail a regular midterm, you will be notified of an opportunity to take a make-up that can boost your midterm grade up to the minimum passing grade, which will be announced. These make-ups will happen on Monday March 13, on Tuesday April 18 and Monday May 8, all at 7.30pm.

Make-up Exams: Some classes are able to offer make-up exams. If it is difficult to create an alternate exam, instructors have also given the same exam but required that the student sign a statement promising that they did not see or discuss the content of the exam. Ideally, as in the below example, all of the make-ups are given together such that only one additional exam would need to be created

QUIZ AND EXAM MAKEUPS

  • Makeups of quizzes and exams are offered as needed to students who miss them for reasons that are non-arbitrary, unavoidable, and/or beyond the student’s control such as illness (including Covid-19), personal crisis, or family emergency. If you are unsure if your reason qualifies, please contact Laura for help; don’t assume it won’t qualify, check with us!
  • Makeups are not intended as a flexible alternative to your usual test time. They are to help students in difficulty.
  • No makeups are given due to students taking another class that meets at the same time. Students are expected to attend 3.091 to take their tests as scheduled.
  • We provide one makeup session for each quiz or exam, held on a date TBD about a week later at 8:00 a.m. The delay is to allow sick students to recover. The early start time provides a time that all students can make regardless of class schedule.
  • Makeups require permission granted directly from Prof. Gomez-Bombarelli, Dr. Kolenbrander, and/or Laura.
  • Laura will work with students to schedule makeups and ensure they are taken.
  • If you are in need of Student Support Services (S^3), contact them first and please loop us in as soon as possible.

Excusing exams: In some classes, it is very difficult to write a separate make-up exam. If a student misses an exam for a verified extenuating circumstance, the exam will be excused, with the points being distributed to other parts of the course.

Requests for conflict exams must be made to the instructors more than two weeks prior to the scheduled exam date (per MIT policy). Exam excuses for unforeseen circumstances (sickness, other) require a note/request from Student Support Services (S^3). For S^3 excused exams, a make-up will not be given; rather, the exam will be dropped from the final score (renormalized to the TOTAL number of points). Out of three exams, students must take at least two to get course credit and a letter grade. Exam regrade requests must be submitted via Gradescope within one week of the exams being returned.

Oral Exams: Alternatively, some classes offer an oral make-up, in which students are expected to show their understanding of the material through discussion and problem-solving with the instructor

There will be three 50 minute (in-class) exams and a three-hour final exam. All four will be closed book. We will provide you with a comprehensive formula sheet for each exam. In addition, for the final exam only, you may bring two double-sided handwritten pages of notes of your own. 

The Final Exam will be comprehensive.

You should expect any make-up exam (except the final) to be administered as an oral exam.

Late Work Key Features:

MIT Examples:

Small Number of Free Extensions: You can provide a limited number of extensions to account for the smaller things that could come up for any student over the course of a semester–illnesses, personal stressors, etc. By having a policy that provides them across the board, you are communicating that you understand that there are small challenges for everyone. This can also save you time because you are less likely to receive as many e-mails about extension requests. 

Late Work: Everyone gets two free, no-questions-asked extensions on any of the short writing assignments: one for a week, and one for a day. These can be used at any time, including on the same assignment, and you do not need to tell us in advance – just put a sentence at the top of your submission saying you want to use your free (one week/one day) extension when you submit it. I am also happy to work with students who have legitimate problems meeting a due date if they give me reasonable notice (how much notice is “reasonable” depends on the reason an extension is required). Outside of these cases, the penalty for late work is ⅓ of a letter grade per day (e.g. from a B+ to a B, or from a C- to a D+), including weekends.

Small Number of Dropped Psets: You can write a statement that accepts that everyone has weeks that are tough and that a dropped pset system can give some relief for students who have an illness or a hectic week. If you describe the kinds of reasons for using a dropped pset, that can also normalize that everyone has tough weeks. In addition, by dropping psets instead of doing extensions, you can help protect the time of the course staff. In one of the examples below, students are asked to still show that they have been able to understand the pset by annotating it.

Problem Sets: There will be six problem sets worth 20 points each. Only your best five scores will be used in determining your grade. If you are unable to complete one of your problem sets, this one will be elected to be your dropped problem set. Problem sets will be available on the course website. Solutions to the problem sets will be posted after the problem set due date.

Scaled Psets: The value of psets varies to re-weighted to reduce the % of the grade if there are particular weeks when the student has outside stressors.

We understand that health, personal, or other issues arise over the course of the semester that might prevent students from doing their best work on one or more problem sets or handing them in on time. In a class this size, though, dealing with each individual issue can consume an overwhelming amount of instructor and TA time that we would rather spend teaching economics. We, therefore, have a no excuses policy: no late problem sets accepted and no missing problems sets excused. (See 3. above.) Since we know that legitimate issues can arise, though, we will grade the problem sets on a sliding scale. Your best out of six problem sets will be given full weight. Your second best will be given 80% weight. Your third best will be given 60% weight. And so forth, until your worst problem set is dropped. Despite the sliding scale, it will still be in your interest to work hard on all problem sets, since they are designed to reinforce the lecture material and prepare you for the exams. Please think of all of the problem sets as a requirement of the course and the ones with zero or little weight as the grading concessions that you were able to extract from me and my staff when you presented us with your legitimate excuses.

Contingencies for Complicated Situations: Beyond the built-in flexibility for the standard needs students might have, it can be good to have a plan for how you will work with students with more extensive needs. For example, if a student is hospitalized during the semester. This should be clearly defined so students understand what their steps are if they are in a particularly difficult situation, including how you would like them to communicate with you, and if you want to connect them to other resources (like GradSupport or S3).

…This built-in flexibility is intended to help you manage events that we expect will come up over the course of a typical semester for many students; it is intended to cover lateness that arises from sports, music, interviews, projects, bad days, busy weeks, computer problems, minor illnesses, or any other reason. You do not have to ask for this flexibility to be applied to any particular lab; we will apply it to the maximally beneficial labs for each student at the end of the semester.

If you are experiencing serious personal or medical difficulties that prevent you from completing work in 6.101 on time, please talk with a Dean at Student Support Services. With their support, we can consider additional extensions or alternative arrangements, but generally only for serious situations that are impacting you for more than one week; we expect the built-in flexibility to handle other cases. Without written support from Student Support Services, we cannot consider any exceptions to the rules outlined on this page.

Let’s Talk

If you have any questions or want to talk through your syllabus, please contact Teaching + Learning Lab, GradSupport (for graduate courses), or S3 (for undergraduate courses). If you want to go deeper, please visit the TLL’s Syllabus Checklist to Support Student Belonging & Achievement, a comprehensive, evidence-based syllabus checklist which informed this resource.

Principle:

Syllabus Topic:

Back to MIT Syllabi >