Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I am appealing to drop the course FILM240 for the of Fall 2015. On my transcript my grade for the online course is an 'F'. I would like to appeal to drop the course because I worked hard to prevent my failure and that my efforts do not result in a failing grade. At the very minimum I hope to have this course's grade be removed from my transcript.

The outcome of the Film 240 midterm exam, which took place online on October 28th 2015 at 5:00 PM, was disappointing to me to say the least. In hopes to counteract the weight of this mark, I planned and took the proper steps in preparation for the execution of an exemplary assignment next time. I submitted the Infographic to the assignment forum on Moodle on time (November 12th at 5:00 PM) with confidence in my hard work and time put into it. My assignment looked polished in compared to a lot of other assignments that I saw and had concrete ideas supporting my argument of how the beauty standards set by the media have a negative impact on the self esteem of adolescent females. In my pursuit of producing the best assignment possible using a keen eye and fine tooth comb, I must have missed an extra statistic I wanted to include from course readings and therefore came up one source short for the minimum amount. Upon receiving a failing grade I immediately was puzzled by the lack of comment, inquiry and feedback on my assignment and sent Professor Matrix an email voicing these concerns (December 1st at 2:39PM). Her reply stated that since I failed to include the minimum number of reading sources, even though mistakenly, that it did not meet minimum requirements for the assignment and was assigned a 49. She also suggested to complete bonus assignments. However they were already past due or due that day. Since I dedicated my time to other courses as well and that had equally heavily weighted assignments due in the same time period I found it difficult to prioritize the completion of the bonus assignments over other course work. I feel that my failure in this assignment is not fair: even though I produced a great assignment, but made a sourcing error in the efforts of being overly precise with high standards for my assignment, that one source should carry such a massive weight on the entire project, and in turn the course. In my opinion the produced assignment surpassed expectations in other respects. However feeling badly about my mistake, but still feeling frustrated with the result, I decided to, again, just have to do better and to be more organized for the final exam.

I studied very hard for the final exam and had been feeling confident, but still nervous due to the shear importance of doing well in order to earn the course units. The night prior to the online final exam for FILM240 I did not sleep and studied at the library in the early morning hours leading up to the 9:00 AM exam time. Having had the exam home page open and accessible for the 15 minutes prior to the exam prepared myself to forego any glitches I would have had accessing it. However, due to servers issues, my efforts proved futile. Ten minutes late into the exam, only then was I able to gain access through opening a 'Wi-Fi hotspot' using my cell phone. I had made progress on the exam and was results were looking promising with respect to both time and grade. At question 45 out of 60, I was returned to the course homepage and told the exam had been cancelled. One would think that in an online course about media that all the necessary precautions to prevent any problems with the exam would be taken. For instance, a second exam to replace the original one if anything were to occur, which did. It is not the fault of the student that there is not a second exam or that technical difficulties were experienced, and in turn they should not be punished for events beyond control. Immediately following the news of the cancellation there was discussion among peers (see attached 'Letter to SEM re Final Exam') that indeed were in the same position as me, extremely anxious if whether or not the exam would be rescheduled or a place mark would replace the final exams weight. Upon learning that the final exam would not exist and the weight of the other assignments would be increased, I emailed my vocal thoughts about how poorly this was managed to Professor Matrix on December 17th. Being patient and waiting for a reply over the break, sympathetic to the idea of vacation, I have yet to receive one and find this very disrespectful and unhelpful on a professional level that Professor did not feel obligated to reply briefly with any sort of comment or feedback. As a student, I feel responsible for my mistakes, however they cumulatively did not result in be deserving a failure in this course.