Still more questions…
Q: I have another friend who doesn’t do faculty initiated withdrawals and doesn’t want to give an “F” so she gives students who have never attended an “I” grade. Does that make you happy?
A: Absolutely not. Just the opposite. By the way, are you sure you have this many friends with withdrawal issues?
Q: Of course! I have a whole arsenal of friends with all kinds of records issues. Don’t you have a lot of friends?
A: No, not really…
Q: There’s a surprise. Anyway, can we deal with the “I” versus “W” issue please?
A: How many is an arsenal of friends? Where did you meet all these people who actually like you? Do you think any of them would like me?
Q: Dubious. Can you please answer the question? I’m meeting some people for lunch.
A: Okay. You can’t cop out of the withdrawal versus “F” issue by giving the student an “I”. An “I” grade should only be given when a student can reasonably finish the work for your course without retaking the course, i.e. they just need to turn in one paper or take the final exam. And you need to meet with them and create a contract with a deadline and an alternate grade for if they don’t finish the work by the deadline. This procedure would hardly be applicable to someone who never attended your class.
Q: So the bottom line is that she either has to withdraw them or give them an “F” and she should never leave the grade blank if she has no intention of ever submitting a grade?
A: I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Q: Yeah but you would have taken about twice as long to do it. A couple more questions…
A: I can’t believe you STILL have questions about withdrawals.
Q: My friends (and I have A LOT of friends) are curious as to why we have to fill in all those bubbles on the Faculty Initiated Withdrawal (FIW) form.
A: Maybe because the form is SCANNED and there needs to be something to actually scan. How many is A LOT of friends? More than two? Three?
Q: Three friends are not A LOT.
Okay. That makes sense about the scanner. So why if we fill in all the bubbles do we also have to write in the information above the bubbles? The scanner isn’t looking at that.
A: No, but countless humans are looking at it both when the form originally comes in and in the future when research needs to be done regarding the withdrawal. The FIWs are imaged for posterity and it is very difficult to do research looking at an imaged form that only has bubbled information on it. Someone has to sit and reinterpret all the bubbles to get the information. Plus, bubbled information doesn’t image as well as written information so the interpretation of the bubbles could be inaccurate. It seems to me that if we have three people who really like us that is A LOT of friends.
Q: It would be for you. I understand the research part by why does it matter what information is written in when the form is first turned in if it goes to a scanner?
A: Because if a form is bubbled in with the wrong number, ex. ENG 101623 is bubbled in and it rejects, the R&R clerk can look at the form, see that ENG 101023 is written in the boxes and make the correction so the withdrawal can be processed. Otherwise the withdrawal is processed later or not at all depending on whether the problem can be resolved.
Q: I doubt that happens very often…
A: Then you doubt wrong. The only thing worse than having to fill out dozens of faculty initiated withdrawals for all your semester deadbeats is being the person in R&R who has to CHECK and finish filling out hundreds and hundreds of them prior to scanning and imaging. If both the bubbles AND the information written above the bubbles is filled out the whole process runs smoothly and the “W” grades get applied to the student’s record before the grade rosters are run.
Q: Okay. So you want us to fill out the forms completely and submit them by November 23. That seems reasonable.
A: You DO realize that today is November 22, right? That means the forms need to be submitted by tomorrow.
Q: What the…. Gotta run!
Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
11/22/2005 |