Last Thursday was the deadline for one of my assignments at university, and I had handed it in on Wednesday so it was over and done with. But at our university, not only do you have to submit a paper copy, you also have to submit an electronic copy on the internal hub, ebridge.
Well, I handed in the paper copy and got home, loaded up ebridge and uploaded the document. You are faced with a page which allows you to upload and tick a box which declared it's your own work. Then you hit submit, and it comes up with a preview page, where you can view the file again and hit submit once more to make sure the right file is selected. I clicked on the file to make sure it was the right one, and it was the latest copy. I closed the file, and swear that I pressed the final submit buttom before closing off the web page.
As it turns out, on Saturday I found out that it hadn't actually gone through. Fearing the late penalty would apply, I emailed the course office to ask what would happen seeing as the paper copy was in early. They said that unfortunately both copies have to be in at the same time. The penalties are -10% if it's up to 24 hours late, and -10% and a cap at 40% if it's 24 hours to a week late.
So for an assignment I worked my ass off on, handed in early, and because of the -blam!-ing stupid electronic submission, I'm capped at 40%, which is a bare minimum pass. Now, if this were a small assignment which wasn't worth much in the module I wouldn't mind, but it's 33% of an entire module, and the last 33% is on an exam which I fear I will not be able to get a good mark in. Essentially it's an entire module lost. There goes my aim of getting a first in my first year.
Has anyone else got similar stories or hatred for electronic submissions?
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My university stopped wanting to pay to use the blackboard setup, so they created their own 2 years ago. Not only is/was it horribly buggy, some students have difficulty in navigating/using it, and worse yet some teachers are completely confused by it or even refuse to use it. I haven't had any submission issues like that, but I believe other classmates have. My hangup with it is that the university can completely view anything you do once you log in, and they don't actually bother to tell anyone that. Not necessarily a big deal, but it's not exactly fun knowing someone could be watching you when you get online.