After years of being accommodating to students, and providing flexibility to deal with their hectic schedules, and alternative assignments to cater to learning styles, we’ve done it. We’ve helped create an entire generation of students who assume alternatives for everything, and expect us to accommodate everything. They also comfortably assume that every instruction, limitation, restriction applied to their coursework will be repeated to them many times in a variety of formats, and are, at any rate, negotiable if they didn’t get it the first four times.
Yes, I’m to blame! 
Desiring a harmonious classroom, whether on-site or online, and genuinely feeling that stressed students are unhappy and do poorly, I’ve been relaxed and pretty darn accommodating for at least a decade. In my on-site classes, student homework gradually accumulates into a portfolio, so they can use their own work to reference for tests and the final exam (of which there is a take-home essay they draft in class). All due dates are posted, and reminded, and reminded again. When anything changes, which is rarely, I use email and in-class announcements, written on the board or posted prominently online or both. I don’t bother with doctor’s notes, and I don’t want to hear the excuses from their personal lives — they only upset me and make me feel I’m demanding personal revelations I myself wouldn’t be comfortable with. Instead, assignments a week late get partial credit.
So it’s kind of amazing to me that things still happen. A couple of weeks ago, I did not get a class’ weekly homework graded in time for the quiz. They are allowed to use their homework while they take the quiz, so I put the homework down for collection. I said, “I didn’t get the homework graded yet, so please use it now and then turn it in again with your quiz.” The students began to pick up their homework. “Hey,” the first one said, “how come there’s no grade on this?” I explained, so all could here, that I had not graded the homework in time, so please use it for the quiz and just turn it in again so I could grade it. Lots of nods. About 20 seconds later: “Excuse me? why is there no mark on this?” I explain again, to a chorus of nodding. About 15 seconds later, “Whoa! there’s no grade on my homework!” I say, very loudly, “For the fourth time…”
Today, the plan was to submit the take-home final essay, then sit down and take a short assessment for half the final exam grade. They had drafted the essay in class last week, then taken it home. Instructions were to submit the typed final version with the draft attached, and had been announced in class repeatedly and posted to the website in two places. I usually have a student or two that doesn’t get it, and comes in without the draft. This semester, half a dozen students did that. Two chose to drive home during the two-hour period to get their draft; the others said “oh well” and they’d take the grade they got. One only had the draft, not the final copy. Instead, they turned in the portfolio that was due two weeks ago.
And I don’t think the answer is more policy I can point to and say: “the syllabus says if you get it to me more than a week late it doesn’t get points” or “this won’t be accepted after x”. It’s about people, not policies and rules. That just justifies my power, which I hold anyway, by virtue not only of my position, but by the respect of my students. Unlike some professors, I do hold this respect, regardless of policies and grades, to be the underlying operating system of my classes. And yet, that personal respect does not extend to my artificially created deadlines, primarily intended to distribute my workload from 200 students each semester. So an increasing number of students turn stuff in, you know, later, whenever, by the end of the semester.
Enabling, that’s what they call it. I really don’t like to be harsh, but I can’t imagine them negotiating every deadline (most don’t even both to negotiate it — they just skip it and hand it to me later) and requiring instructions be repeated four times in the working world. I hope they grow up to be highly successful professional surfers, fashion designers or movie producers with a secretarial staff and personal assistants to take care of them, but some won’t. It sure keeps things friendly but, even setting aside my own mild annoyance at all this, I don’t think we’re doing them a service.
I’ve been teaching a little less time than you, I think, so caveat accordingly. I have observed so far that 1) students expect a certain amount of flexibility, but 2) they need/crave/benefit from a clear framework and the time management help it provides. Our task – our monumental task – if we teach undergraduates is to help them make the transition from over-programmed, dependent high schoolers to self-managing, self-starting, independent adults.
I’m tweaking my approach semester by semester as new observational data come in. But the persona I’m trying to achieve is that of a humane disciplinarian. I set the bar, their job is to clear it. But it is a reasonable bar, the rationale for which is transparent, and I am sensitive to their circumstances (translation: I recognize that we are all fallible human beings, but assume serious effort on their part and won’t reward lack of effort). The balancing act continues…
You’ve raised one of the big conflicts in education in this century: grading based on behavior (late homework, for example) versus grading based on learning and knowledge (no penalty for late homework, for example).
In April 2008 Toronto public schools became the first to disallow penalty for late homework by teachers; late coursework can only be penalized in “progressive consequences” (the later, the more penalty). The Board of our national education association, the Learning Resources Network (LERN) last month became the first national association to call for grading based on learning and knowledge, not behavior; including a call for no penalties for late work.
With grades submitted for the Fall semester, I’ve had half a dozen students email me to negotiate their grade in some way. This instant access to posted grades, and presumed instant access to the professor, completely disrespects the finality of the semester. At what point do we stop? At what point do we quit taking late work? 24 hours after the final? 48 hours after the grades have been submitted? 2 years after the course ends? As long as the professor is alive? For Pete’s sake! Call deadlines artificial if you want, but there *must* be an end to a course, doesn’t there?
Becky — I am also getting last minute attempts at negotiating. Instead of submitting my grades as soon as I’m done grading, I now wait until the deadline at the Records office (3 working days after the last final exam), though I don’t announce that. The only change I’ll negotiate after that is from an F to a W, for students who stopped attending but forgot to drop. And yes, there should not only be an end to the class, but to the assignments. What would happen to our workload of all assignments were turned in at the end of the class?