In the last few weeks, I have seen a lot on the internet (then of course it’s true!) about how The Art Institutes don’t prepare their students for the “real” world. However, I have seen this so many times, and with the school’s late work policy, I can see why this statement is almost undeniably true. The history for the late work policy has been pretty broad at AILV:
1. For the longest time, if you turned in an assignment late, you would automatically get 30% off up until a week later. You would (or were suppose to) receive zero credit if you turned in the assignment after it was a week late.
2. Then it changed to where you could turn in any work up until Week 9 and you could still receive a 75% for that assignment. Since homework assignments (my experience has been anywhere from 10% – 25%) aren’t usually a big part of the grading, this pretty much encourages students to procrastinate.
3. Last quarter (Mid 2014), they altered the last late work policy a little bit. Any homework in the first two weeks of class could be turned in until the last day of Week 3, and all of the homework from Weeks 3-9 could be turned in until the last day of Week 9 for 75% percent maximum. Also included with this was, “The discretion of faculty will determine any changes to the late work policy per student.”
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For final projects, late participation, late presentation, midterm, and final exams, there are a lot of words talking about how if a student late for almost any of those, they will get a zero (save mitigating circumstances). However, so many times students have been late with their work or late to take exams and students have been allowed to present or take a test and have (most of the time) received credit. There have even been instances when a student arrived near the end of the test-taking period and the instructor would give him/her the test and sometimes even let him/her go to an empty classroom to take the exam.
It was never any of my business to ask if they received full credit or not, but if they are receiving zero credit, then why even bother spending the time presenting / testing? Especially with the presentations…I have never wasted as much time doing a “productive” activity as when I have sat through so many near-worthless presentations that were also late.
The 400-level classes are suppose to have a no late work policy. I have heard it defended that students getting closer to graduation should be held to a higher standard. Why can’t everyone be held to that?
The claim for the new late work policy is to encourage students to complete assignments. I don’t feel it encourages that. If it does, assignments that are turned in late don’t have nearly the amount of effort. I’ve pretty much never thought of turning in an assignment late, but this policy has altered my mindset a bit. Why not take advantage of this lackadaisical policy? This is how the real world operates?
We are told all the time that if you aren’t early to a shoot, you are late. It’s such a big deal. I have seen way too many midterm/final projects get turned in late and time is spent watching/critiquing them. Very rarely do teachers state that when students turn their work in late that the work is actually late.
Ideally? Well, the first policy makes more sense than the newer ones. If I had it my way, I would say 50% off when not turned in on time, and a 0% if turned in a day after it was due. This would be based on:
1) No projects would be due in a short amount of time.
2) All projects would be reviewed in detail Week 1.
There was one instance where a class was released after everyone presented their final projects and one student showed up after almost everyone was out the door. The instructor asked those of us who hadn’t stepped out yet to stay and watch the student’s project.
The problem here? I don’t know if that student was given full credit or some sort of reduction on his/her final grade, but it shouldn’t have even been shown in the first place. That school preaches “We’ll prepare you for the real world” like no other, but its execution on that promise is very soft.
I was in a group which had a 45 minute final presentation. When it came time to present, some of my group didn’t have their presentation ready and one student was running late (no surprise at all). I stood up in front of the class like an idiot for a bit while things got sorted out. The instructor even stated that our time already started. I just looked back with a smile. It was clearly obvious what was going on. Being a 400 level class, everyone who wasn’t ready should have failed the final project, as per the late work policy guidelines.
On a final note, for some reason, instructors don’t like to give out the details for projects early. They have, on multiple occasions, rejected students’ requests to get more information on the projects. Not sure why.
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