Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Dr. Jenn Stephenson,

Due to a technological failure in submitting my final exam which significantly impacted my overall mark in the course, I am asking you to reconsider the decision to not grade my resubmission of the proper exam file or otherwise a credit standing in PSYC 100. If neither option is granted, I would also write a deferred exam provided the opportunity to do so.

On May 11th I received a final exam grade for PSYC 100 as 9.33/40, which was a far lower result than I had anticipated. Since the exams were not returned to us and I could only view the mark, I contacted the course coordinators to learn why I obtained this grade. They determined that they had received my multiple-choice answers, however for the short answer section they received a document only containing the questions with no answers attached. This means that they received the word document they created with the questions included, without the edits I made to the document with my answers. This was very upsetting because I am certain that I completed my answers and submitted the file prior to the exam window closing, however because of a technological problem the answers were not received. As a result of receiving no answers, I was given a zero for that section which resulted in me failing the exam since it was worth two-thirds of the exam mark. This significantly impacted my final grade on the course since the exam was worth forty percent of my overall mark, resulting in a final grade of C+. Additionally, this lowered my cumulative GPA considerably despite achieving a final grade of A+ in all my other courses except for one where I received an A.

Considering this, my professor allowed me to resubmit the file I was working on during the exam. Unfortunately, I was surprised to find that the only document on my computer with the completed exam answers had a date modified a day after the exam was completed. Due to this modification date, the professor decided she was unable to mark my resubmission. While I understood this outcome, it was disappointing for me because I know I completed the answers on time, yet because I must have closed the document the day after, it would have altered the last date modified to after the exam's completion. Therefore, through just opening the document without editing my answers, the date modified would have changed to a time after the exam period was complete. I would have no reason to change my answers on this document since I thought I had already successfully submitted the exam the day before. This can be proved by the exchange of emails on the day of the exam between the course coordinators and I, where I attempted to ensure my exam had been submitted on time and would not be considered late.

Following the final decision made by my professor to not mark my resubmission, I attempted to figure out why my answers were not received and how to prove that I completed them on time. I did this by contacting my cousin who used to work for Microsoft, and he instructed me to first look through the version history of the Microsoft Word document containing my answers. Unfortunately, the document did not have a version history present since it had not been saving to the OneDrive while completing the exam. I do not know why this is, because I have always had autosave on while editing Microsoft Word documents such as this one. Following this he offered to look through the document himself, however through his search he was only able to find what was already known: the creation date and the last date modified.

So, despite my efforts to prove that my document had been completed on the day of the exam, I was unsuccessful in determining why my answers were not properly received. I could only speculate that my edits were not being saved on the day of the exam, and therefore I submitted just the initial state of the document without my answers included. However, I still do not know for certain what the reason for my answers not being received were. If the exam were completed in person this technological mistake would never be an issue since what I wrote down would be immediately received by the grader.

I aspire to go to medical school in the future and have worked very hard all year to obtain the marks necessary to achieve that goal. Despite the challenges of this past year, my remote learning through Queen's has been very rewarding and successful. Unfortunately, due to this catastrophic technological failure, my grades in this one course have been seriously impacted. I request a regraded exam, the opportunity to write a deferred exam or a credit standing.

Thank you for your consideration.