Timeline for Resolving Incompletes

[polly_mer]

Several threads recently have prompted thoughts of the grade of incomplete.

1) What are the rules on recording an incomplete grade where you are?  I am accustomed to grades of incompletes being awarded only for students who were doing fine in a course and then having a personal situation in the last couple weeks of the semester so they get an incomplete because they missed several large-impact assignments/exams/projects and will need more time to get a fair assessment.  I bet that COVID affected guidelines for incomplete awards in the spring, but are those changes still in place as we start recording fall grades?

2) How long do students have to resolve their incompletes by submitting the necessary work?  I'm accustomed to the deadline being somewhere between midterm of the next semester and end of the next semester.  People whose lives unexpectedly became such that they couldn't finish substantial amounts of work in the final weeks of the semester just before Christmas probably aren't going to have all that work done over Christmas break, even if magically their lives resolved themselves at the last minute.  How has that timeline changed with COVID?

[EdnaMode]

At my institution:

1) An incomplete is for extraordinary circumstances that prevent the student from completing the semester,** and to be able to receive an incomplete they must be earning a passing grade at the time they are determined to be unable to complete the course.

2) They have 10 weeks after the final grade reporting date of the semester in which they requested the incomplete to complete the work and have the grade changed. And if the grade is not changed by the end of that time period, it automatically turns into an F.

** there are some courses where, by design, the work of the course extends beyond the end date of the semester, and incompletes are given to everyone in the course, but in that case, it must be approved in advance by may people up the chain of command

Covid has had no specific impact on our official incomplete policy, the same request/approval process is required.

[sprout]

Quarter system here.  I believe students have to resolve the incomplete the next quarter after receiving it or it turns into an F.

[Biologist_]

At my institution, students have one year to resolve an incomplete. When we record the incomplete, we have to enter the grade that will apply if the student does not submit any more work, so (as far as I can tell) the grade can revert to something other than an F even if there's no update. That's a nice feature if it works the way I think it does.

There's a different grading code that we can enter if we can't report a grade at the end of the term in a project or independent study course where the work often extends beyond one academic term. If we enter that code, I don't think there's any deadline; the placeholder can stay on the student's record indefinitely until it's updated.

[Liquidambar]

My college's rule is that the work should be completed the following semester.  I think individual faculty can set a deadline earlier in the semester, and we can easily ask for an extension of another semester (or more), so we have a lot of flexibility.  I had one student complete a class over a year afterward because of ongoing medical issues.

[the_geneticist]

1. Incomplete grades are for students who were passing, but had some sort of emergency/life disruption that prevented them from finishing the course.
2. I'm not entirely certain on the timeframe, but students do have to resolve Incomplete grades if the "I" is in a course that's a prerequisite for the next course.

In Spring 2020, we handled the pandemic disruption by allowing students to drop a class AFTER they knew their total course grade and not get a W on their transcript.  Enrollment in Summer classes was the highest we've ever seen, and I think the late drop was a major contributing factor.

[Parasaurolophus]

Here's incompletes are given at the instructor's discretion (but the student has to explicitly request it). You record the incomplete as well as the mark the student earned up until that point, and then they have until the end of the next semester to complete the work (although the instructor has the discretion to modify the workload). Otherwise, the I reverts to whatever the other mark was you entered.

[clean]

1. Incomplete grades are for students who were passing, but had some sort of emergency/life disruption that prevented them from finishing the course.

2. Time frame is nebulous.  The Grade must be changed within a year.  (IF the year is up, the registrar sends a NastyGram as a reminder.

[FishProf]

1) Must be passing and have completed >80% of work at time it is granted.
2) Must be resolved by 8 weeks into next semester at the latest (professor can stipulate earlier due dates).
3) Failure to resolve reverts to failing grade.

[kiana]

Incomplete generally supposed to be given to people who were passing and with most of the work turned in. Nobody really checks but you'd probably get in trouble for giving out a large number.

You have until about halfway through the next full semester (summer doesn't count) but you can put an earlier timeline.

[aside]

1.  Like others above, my institution stipulates that incompletes are only for extraordinary circumstances for students who are passing the course, not for students who just have not take care of business in a timely fashion.

2.  The incomplete automatically becomes an F if not made up by the end of the following semester, yet instructors may submit grade changes at any point.  Administrators tend to approve grade changes without question unless they sniff something fishy.

[San Joaquin]

Oh.  I read this thread title as Timeline for Resolving Incompetents.  Now that would be a disruptive innovation...

[Caracal]

1. Incomplete grades are for students who were passing, but had some sort of emergency/life disruption that prevented them from finishing the course.

2. Time frame is nebulous.  The Grade must be changed within a year.  (IF the year is up, the registrar sends a NastyGram as a reminder.

Same. I've given a couple incomplete for people who had concussions making it impossible for them to focus for a short period of time and other medical crises. We are supposed to agree on a due date with the student, but I think that's a department rule. It will become an F in a year. Every student I've given an incomplete to has completed the work within a few months.

[polly_mer]

Oh.  I read this thread title as Timeline for Resolving Incompetents.  Now that would be a disruptive innovation...

I've written employee improvement plans that were more properly titled "Timeline for Firing Incompetents".  More than one of those were for tenured faculty who ended up gracefully retiring when the option was presented as "You could retire now with a nice party or we spend the next few weeks following the hearing procedures to be fired since you didn't step up and fix the problem over the past year per this written proof".

[bopper]

I took two incompletes in my college career...once because I got pneumonia and once because I was in a car accident. In both cases I finished most of the classes I could but put off a couple of the harder ones via incomplete and finished them early the next semester (both times were in spring semester).