The Case of the Missing Drafts

I have typically taken a firm position on following the instructions that are prescribed for an assignment, explaining to my students that if they can't follow small, simple details here in school, how they expect an employer to keep them on at the company if they showed the same inattention to detail at work. Here, I emphasized is where you need to get it right so that when you journey into the workforce, you will be that much more impressive to your superiors than those in the company who can't seem to get anything right. But after much insistance over long period of constant reminders (multiple reminders for each assignment, I might add), they still could not get everything right. Well, most of them couldn't. There was a majority who could. I tried insituting such penalties as: 10% off per day late (incomplete assignment counts as being late). No matter how many times I reminded all of them days in advance of the paper being due, they would still forget. So I figured that I would ease up on them a little and see what would happen. Really, there was no change. So I concluded that freshmen are going to be freshmen: they won't always get things right, no matter how much you remind them. So, in the case that was presented for our blog post for this week, I would do what I do now. I hold conferences with each student for every major paper the day before peer review to make sure they understand everything expected of them for the paper. I allow peer review to help them catch the lower order concerns and then they turn in the final draft after that. This formula has worked better for me this semester. If I requires other drafts and they forget them on the day of the draft, I just tell them to make sure they turn it in to me before the end of the day when I go home. To tell the truth, I don't start grading them on the day that take them up. So, it really doesn't matter much to me if they forget to add something the day the final draft is due. 90% of them get everything done on time. The others aren't always the same people for every paper, so it's just human error and nothing more. And that I can deal with.