Deadlines etc.

In the commercial/working world into which you are going you will find that deadlines are deadlines and instructions are to be followed to the letter.

Why should it be any different at university? 

University is not school: it is a vehicle to prepare you for the realities of life.  So please note the following which forms part of my marking criteria for each and every assignment:

·       In fairness to all other students who have ‘hit’ the deadline (even though they might have wished for more time): you MUST hit it too.

       I will only ever accept work which is presented late without penalty if it is accompanied by a valid medical certificate or a note in writing from the Head of your Academic Programme. 

     Work presented up to a week late without evidence as above will be marked and returned, but no matter how good it may be, the maximum mark awarded will be 10/20 because it does not meet the professional assignment criteria.. 

     Work presented more than one week late without evidence as above will receive formative feedback (to enable you to learn from my comments) but it will be automatically awarded a mark of 0/20 because it does not meet the professional assignment criteria. 

·         Please abide by the assignment submission instructions. I will almost always ask for hard copies of written assignments to be handed to me on a given day at a given time in class so that they are ALL there and cannot be lost.

       Email is NOT for me an acceptable alternative you can choose to use without my express permission. This is because:

o   You may send an email – but for any number of reasons (especially if there is an attachment or you have a ‘strange’ web address my email account doesn’t trust) the email and your work may well not arrive at all or may be sent by the spam filters direct to my bin and dumped automatically without me ever seeing it.

o   I teach on some 20+ modules on 4 campuses with 500+ students. If just 5% of students were to email their work to me I would have 25 pieces of work coming in for each assignment. 4 assignments a year would mean I could have 100 pieces of electronic heading my way. Maybe half of them (50) might go direct to my spam-bin and a significant number of students would be complaining that they had submitted material when I had never received it! Believe me, this has happened! Plus, I would have to print out some 50 assignments on my home inkjet at my personal cost.  On neither count is this acceptable.

So…please give me hard copy on the due date unless otherwise specified. Thanks.