Accommodated students abusing their status

[Ruralguy]

Well "having a conversation with" isn't precisely the same as "second guessing." I suppose its a matter of
attitude.

[Aster]

For most of my colleagues that talk about this issue, I don't think that second-guessing is quite the right term either.

We do more like first-guessing. Our disabilities office didn't even make a guess in the first place.

[mahagonny]

I believe hamburger tends to post things about students behaving in disappointing ways. But he/she may have valid reasons for doing that..

[fishbrains]

I think that in these cases, you have to give up on your own values and do whatever the admin wants-if that means giving them As even if they are failing.   

This is horrible, no good, bad advice. This will make you the person everyone points their fingers at when the $hit hits the fan, and it will hit the fan at some point. Plus, the students will have you by the short hairs.

Document that you have followed each accommodation form to the letter, and grade unsubmitted work as zeros. If your administrators want you to do anything else, tell them to put it in writing so you can follow their directions to the letter. If they put these students in someone else's course, throw a party.

[mahagonny]

I think that in these cases, you have to give up on your own values and do whatever the admin wants-if that means giving them As even if they are failing.   

This is horrible, no good, bad advice. This will make you the person everyone points their fingers at when the $hit hits the fan, and it will hit the fan at some point. Plus, the students will have you by the short hairs.

Document that you have followed each accommodation form to the letter, and grade unsubmitted work as zeros. If your administrators want you to do anything else, tell them to put it in writing so you can follow their directions to the letter. If they put these students in someone else's course, throw a party.

isn't the subtext here 'do you have tenure, or are you just another disposable faculty member with no standing to make rules and have them followed.'

[lightning]

What documentation of accommodations did those students provide? What is on file at whatever office manages disability accommodations?  (And was this "colleague who is like somebody working at the customer services centre" a Student Services or Office of Disability/Accessibility representative?)

If their approved/on file accommodations allow for skipping class and turning things in whenever they feel like it (which I very much doubt), then that's an issue. I have never seen such accommodations; even for students who have an accommodation related to attendance, there have been clear parameters & expectations that said student will be keeping up with the work.

I'll note that you have, pretty consistently, made statements here which seem to indicate that you doubt students' accommodations/actual disability. If this attitude has colored your interactions with students who do have documented accommodations, then I can see how that would be a real problem for your administrator (and for these students). I can't tell if you are connecting their choice to disrupt class with their  accommodation or not, but it might be worth considering whether this is happening and if it's impacting how you interact with students.

Although rare, they exist, and I've seen it. I have one right now. The student simply has to notify me that they are exercising their option to not attend class and/or submit work late. What the student does not know is that I know the student's boss at the student's part-time job. The boss reports to me that the student always shows up and does their job and is actually pretty good at their job. I'm guessing the difference between the student's boss and the student's professors, is that there is no way for the student to get the same disabilities accommodation at their part-time job. IOW, the student gets away with their b***s**t because they are abusing their accommodation. But the real crux of the matter is that academic affairs, student services, and the disabilities office know they are getting played, but they don't care.

[kaysixteen]

Indeed.  Disabilities accommodations need to be reasonable, but many of these offices at least *seem* to be acting like students' personal injury lawyers, and when/if illegitimate accommodations are proffered,,students may well end up with worthless degrees.  Sadly this has also occurred at the hs level, and the worst offenders, not counting underfunded and overwhelmed inner city and rural public schools, are usually tuition-driven private ones, just like many of the non-selective private colleges regularly lambasted round these parts.

[dr_codex]

I think that in these cases, you have to give up on your own values and do whatever the admin wants-if that means giving them As even if they are failing.   

This is horrible, no good, bad advice. This will make you the person everyone points their fingers at when the $hit hits the fan, and it will hit the fan at some point. Plus, the students will have you by the short hairs.

Document that you have followed each accommodation form to the letter, and grade unsubmitted work as zeros. If your administrators want you to do anything else, tell them to put it in writing so you can follow their directions to the letter. If they put these students in someone else's course, throw a party.

isn't the subtext here 'do you have tenure, or are you just another disposable faculty member with no standing to make rules and have them followed.'

No.

[ciao_yall]

At the end of the day, the student has to demonstrate they have achieved the intended outcomes of the class.

They demonstrate the intended outcomes through the key deliverables - performance on exams, creation of projects, whatever.

At the end of the day, if a student wants to spend more time and energy trying to negotiate timing and deadlines than just getting their deliverables accomplished to demonstrate achievement of their outcomes, why is it even your problem?

[Hegemony]

Yeah, people here seem to be overly focused on students missing classes and not turning things in at the deadline for the rest of the class, and those seem like red herrings to me.  I wonder if people here are treating those things as some kind of proxy for "showing respect."  At the end of the day, the student is responsible for knowing the material of the class, and attending and turning things in at certain points are just supposed to support that larger aim, not be sources of absolute good in themselves.

I came up through the British university system, which, at least at that point, had no attendance requirement.  If the lectures were useful, it would be good to attend, although some people still didn't.  The ultimate point was to learn the material and show you had done so on the exam, and if you could do it without attending lectures, that was fine too.  And if missing lectures meant you did badly, well, the punishment was built in and didn't need any extra help from me.

In my own classes, I set deadlines for assignments, and I don't mention that actually I will give anyone an extension for any reason.  About 97% will meet the deadline.  The other 3% ask for an extension, I give it, they respond with joy and gratitude, and some of them get their assignments in and some never do (whereupon they fail the assignment), and no problem for me.  I can't grade a massive pile of assignments all at once anyway. 

So if someone student thinks they're getting away with high mischief by not attending class or turning in assignments late — I am not full of high dudgeon.  Either they'll learn the material, and so they'll do well, or they won't, and they won't.  The rigor of the material stays the same.  I don't really see that they're getting away with much of anything.

[polly_mer]

I came up through the British university system, which, at least at that point, had no attendance requirement.  If the lectures were useful, it would be good to attend, although some people still didn't.  The ultimate point was to learn the material and show you had done so on the exam, and if you could do it without attending lectures, that was fine too.  And if missing lectures meant you did badly, well, the punishment was built in and didn't need any extra help from me.

My engineering education was similar as a weeding out process limited to those who were motivated enough to learn.  The keys to the homework were in the library on reserve and people were to do as much as they needed to do based on their self check.  Lectures similarly were a support to help one learn by giving examples and allowing for questions.  The idea was that people who wanted to learn had all the tools, including recitations with TAs at the low-levels to build in additional question time as well as office hours with the professors for more individual question time, and would take charge of their own implementation details to learn.

What I noticed as I taught at various institutions was that the places with a substantial portion of enrollees who weren't college ready tended to expect more supports for the students to demonstrate that the professors had done what they could to help those who needed guidance on how to learn.  That was never a full-time/part-time split, but an acknowledgement that the faculty job with unprepared students needs to include the scaffolding for what good student practices are needed:

* reading quizzes to ensure the reading was done every week

* participation points to ensure that people show up to class and engage with the material

* graded homework every week to ensure that some practice problems were attempted

* graded drafts to ensure that the term paper goes includes research and goes through several revisions

I don't see a difference in accommodated/not accommodated students so much as many institutions don't have college-ready folks who want to learn and thus are putting the burden on instructors to be middle-school teachers providing scaffolding to reluctant learners who are merely going through the motions instead of professors to true students who are engaged in their own educations.

[Hegemony]

Yep, I agree with all of that.

[kaysixteen]

How does that British non attendance policy, relying solely on exam performance, deal with the reality that people who do not really *know* the material can nonetheless cram their way to short-term exam success?

[ergative]

Yeah, people here seem to be overly focused on students missing classes and not turning things in at the deadline for the rest of the class, and those seem like red herrings to me.  I wonder if people here are treating those things as some kind of proxy for "showing respect."  At the end of the day, the student is responsible for knowing the material of the class, and attending and turning things in at certain points are just supposed to support that larger aim, not be sources of absolute good in themselves.

I came up through the British university system, which, at least at that point, had no attendance requirement.  If the lectures were useful, it would be good to attend, although some people still didn't.  The ultimate point was to learn the material and show you had done so on the exam, and if you could do it without attending lectures, that was fine too.  And if missing lectures meant you did badly, well, the punishment was built in and didn't need any extra help from me.

I think this approach presupposes that classes are primarily lectures, where it makes little difference if there are two people in the room or two hundred. But if the instructors use more modern, interactive pedagogical methods, it makes a huge difference. I like to do demonstrations of experiments, and I need at least ten or fifteen people in the room to respond to the stimuli before the patterns I want to demonstrate emerge. I need at least three or four groups of people doing the activities before the varieties of approaches in solving a problem or interpretations of a text can be shared and discussed. I need multiple people to have written their drafts before peer-review sessions are useful. In an activity-based class, the difference between two people and twenty is enormous, and when students are absent they hurt their classmates as well as themselves.

How does that British non attendance policy, relying solely on exam performance, deal with the reality that people who do not really *know* the material can nonetheless cram their way to short-term exam success?

Not terribly well---although a focus on essays (in certain disciplines) rather than fact-cramming for MCQs helps. But this tradition is definitely changing, and universities are pushing heavily to diversify the assessment strategies and move away from lecture+exams only. New staff are often required to undergo training programs, which are a tiresome waste of time, but do certainly get across the idea that assessments should support and enhance learning, rather than simply check off what students have crammed in an end-of-year exam.

[Hegemony]

I wouldn't say that people who don't know the material really can cram their way to short-term exam success.  If so, the exams are not very well designed.  In my experience, the exams are not like American exams, in that they are based on a very limited amount of material, carefully outlined in a syllabus (what my British lecturers termed "spoon-feeding").  They cover a vast range of material, and trying to guess the exam questions was not a very successful endeavor.  I remember the famous botany exam question which was supposedly simply: "Trees. Discuss."  And the exams were not marked (i.e. graded) with a lot of generosity towards slackers either.  Basically you had to apply yourself to the material, however you did it.  Certainly this system only works for the self-motivated.  But I do take the approach that if students really don't want to be at university, and don't want to learn the material, however appealingly presented, I'm not going to seize them by their collars and drag them through it.  They can show up, and probably do better, or they can not show up, and experience the consequences.