Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I Initially contacted my course instructor immediately after the exam in question. I received the instructors final official reply for my appeal of the grade on November 24.

During the midterm for PATH 310. I experienced a technological issue that resulted in my computer freezing, which required me to call technical support and re-start my computer. The tech support person I was speaking with asked me to estimate how much time I had lost for the exam before I re-started, and I thought it was about 8 minutes, and I was given an additional 9 minutes for the exam. I was unable to finish the exam in time, resulting in a significant portion of the questions going unanswered. After reviewing my phone call and the exam process, I am estimating that I lost more than 9 minutes of exam time due to my technical problem: the phone call with tech support was 15 minutes and the exam required pre-exam procedures (i.e., room scan, mirror view, scrap paper etc.) to be done while the timer was running, which I had to complete twice. I have requested review of my video to determine the actual amount of time I spent active in the exam, but the video review done by technical support only included recommendations for browser use. The OnQ exam timer was used to show I used the full amount of time, but this time runs as soon as the exam is started, regardless of time spent frozen or re-starting a computer. Given the tight time frame for this exam, I think it is reasonable that a resolution be provided if I can show my exam attempt time was less than the allotted time. I have not been provided any evidence, such as my video to confirm my claim that I had less than the allotted time to complete the exam, but I did take a screen shot of my call with technical support that shows I was speaking with them for just under 15 minutes, which should account for at least 6 minutes of lost time (although I believe it was more than this with the repetition of exam procedures). When I spoke with my classmates, all have said they barely finished the exam and would have benefitted from an extra 5 minutes, so I think even a small loss of time is significant in this exam’s case.

This was an “extenuating circumstances, beyond [my] control” because it is an unusual event. In the past I have taken the Examity BHSc system test, and other exams, on the same computer and browser; I have never encountered a technical issue before. After this exam I tried other practice exams and system tests, and I could not reproduce the problem. In my correspondence with the course TA, Dr Nicol appears to be arguing that I am at fault for the technical problem and that this precludes me from any resolution. I do not believe I have done anything erroneous or unusual to create this problem, and I have had good academic conduct and performance up until this point. Even with an argument against me for not optimizing technology, I think a resolution is still reasonable on the grounds that this exam attempt was not an accurate assessment of my performance because I did not finish due to less time. However, I will briefly make counter arguments to the assessment that I am at-fault for the technical problem: (1) Google Chrome is recommended by technical support but not required, is not explicitly requested in exam instructions for PATH 310, and when entering Examity via Edge, a pop-up is displayed that states Examity will work on the Edge browser. This makes the recommendation appear to be preference based, and the popup appears to conflict with technical support recommendations. (2) It was recommended in PATH 310 that students take the “practice test”, but it was not indicated that this was a system test to confirm proper exam performance. I have since completed this practice test, which was a system test, with the same computer and browser (as well as many exams in the past), so I do not believe this would have resolved my problem before it occurred.

For resolutions, I have suggested re-weighting my exams so the mid-term is weighted less and reallocated to the final exam or that the unfinished questions (the last two short answers, I believe) be removed from the grading of the mid-term.