Syllabus
Make-up Work and Extra Credit
I do not make provisions for the practices commonly known as "make-up work" or for "extra credit". Inasmuch as other teachers do offer these, I am obliged to explain why I do not.
Make-up Work
This phrase normally comes up when a student has missed an assignment, thereby losing points, and wishes either to do the missed assignment after the deadline has passed or else to be allowed to turn in some other sort of work instead. I mislike this practice for a number of reasons, of which I will mention two here.
First, this is an asynchronous course. All assignments and all deadlines are known to the student from the first day of the semester. Since any and all assignments may be begun at any time, there is little excuse for missing an assignment or for turning one in late. Very occasionally a student knows s/he will be away from the Internet for an extended period prior to an assignment deadline (e.g., someone in military service). I have made special arrangements in such cases.
I do not, however, allow some other work to be done instead. If the original assignment is appropriate for the student in the first place, then it remains appropriate despite the unforseen circumstance. Make-up work may make a certain amount of sense in the case where there is a real-time component to the assignment, but not for an asynchronous course.
The second reason has to do with more general pedagogical principles. While I understand that things come up and that every student has a life outside of class, the student requesting the make-up work must understand that the other students likewise have a life outside of class. Those other students may well have had a crisis at home, or been ill when they did the assignment, or were rushed, or had a sick child, or any number of other incidents in a normal life. Yet, those students did the work and turned the assignment in on time. Their grade may well have suffered as a result.
With such considerations, it is unfair to the rest of the class to permit one student to do work according to a different set of rules.
Extra Credit
While make-up work applies to one assignment done instead of another assignment, extra credit normally means assignments done in addition to the assignments listed in the syllabus. This is typically requested because a student is dissatisfied with the prospects of the final grade and is looking for a way to improve it.
I don't give extra credit for a simple but important reason: grading is qualitative, not quantitative. If it is my evaluation that a student has done B-level work over the course of three months, then doing more B work doesn't somehow turn the grade into an A. If the student does better work on the extra credit, this merely means the student was afforded more chances than the rest of the students, which is patently unfair. In any case, such a result is rare. Usually, the work is of roughly the same quality.
Extra credit invites students to think of the grade as a reflection of effort rather than as a reflection of accomplishment. To encourage students to think this way would be a disservice to the students and an abrogation of my responsibilities as a teacher. As always, this particular method may be appropriate in other subjects with other teachers, but it is not appropriate in Skip Knox's history courses.