Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

University staff common room

This board is for university-based professionals. Find discussions about A Levels and universities on our Further education forum.

Rule against assignments submitted in folders etc

18 replies

GameofPhones · 19/02/2022 10:46

Can any academics explain the reason for this rule about submitting assignments?

"Do not submit the assignment with fancy bindings, folders or plastic envelopes"

OP posts:
RiskyReels · 19/02/2022 10:49

To save the marker time? Imagine having to remove and replace paper sheets from complicated bindings to add feedback comments, x 100 assignments it could add hours of work

HelloDulling · 19/02/2022 10:51

The person marking will have to carry the essays. Dozens of folders/bindings will make them much, much heavier.

HelloDulling · 19/02/2022 10:52

Also, they might end up separated, and then they are unable to know which one belongs to which student.

boogiewithasuitcase · 19/02/2022 10:54

Fancy bindings are unlikely to be in the assessment criteria. As Risky said, the marker will want to get down to marking immediately without having to faff about with, or be distracted by, extraneous bits of plastic.

aridapricot · 19/02/2022 10:56

Could it be because of anonymity concerns? E.g. if the assignments were handed in directly to the lecturer, and a student handed in a particularly fancy folder or envelope the lecturer was likely to remember. (Tbf doesn't make sense with us, we do all submissions online).

OpheliaThrupps · 19/02/2022 11:03

To save you wasting money and time! The binding will have no impact on your mark whatsoever, but if students start to think it might there will be escalating competitive binding wars. Before long people will be spending £200 submitting things in hand-tooled leather "just in case".

Scottishflower65 · 19/02/2022 11:08

Also environmental reasons.

GameofPhones · 19/02/2022 11:14

All good reasons, but why does the submission have to be removed from the binder for marking?

OP posts:
OpheliaThrupps · 19/02/2022 11:15

@GameofPhones

All good reasons, but why does the submission have to be removed from the binder for marking?
It depends on the binding, but usually there's not room to write in the margin adjoining the binding.
TheHoleNineYards · 19/02/2022 11:17

To save time and faff. They’d have to be removed from the binder to be annotated.

Even as a secondary school teacher I ask pupils to hand their books in open to the page I want to mark. It saves so much time.

If you want to put your essays into fancy binders, do so after it’s been returned to you.

marcopront · 19/02/2022 11:24

Turn the question around.

Why do you want to submit it with fancy binding?

Chemenger · 20/02/2022 16:46

A pile of coursework all in different shiny folders and bindings is a nightmare to stack on a desk or carry around for marking. We used to have a spiral binding machine for student reports but now everything is electronic, I can’t remember the last time I saw a physical submission.

BravoWhiskey · 20/02/2022 16:49

Are some students still submitting paper assignments? Everything is electronic at our place.

GameofPhones · 20/02/2022 17:21

I remembered this rule from my time in academia. In course of sending docs by post to solicitor, I wondered if folders (to separate them by category) would be irritating or time-wasting. Paper clips can get caught up on each other.

OP posts:
LaChanticleer · 21/02/2022 23:12

Oh god I used to hate all the fancy folders. I always took essays out of them, stapled them at the top left hand corner and chucked the folders away, or dumped them in the office.

I could never write comments in the margins and the folders would take up about three times the space, and slither around. And that isn’t counting the extra time it took to get essays out of folders etc.

When we marked paper submissions, I used to specify that essays were handed in sans folders, bindings, or those go isn’t plastic sleeves or envelopes. And that they stapled the pages together securely at the top left hand corner. But still essays came in folders or simply paper clipped together.

Crikey this is making me vaguely in favour of electronic submission! And I pretty much hate marking electronically because of the damage to my eyes.

RollaCola84 · 21/02/2022 23:54

Our essays (MA) are all double marked so if work was submitted on paper - which I'm not sure we're even allowed to do - I guess it would have to be taken out of a folder to be copied for multiple markers.

OchonAgusOchonOh · 22/02/2022 00:09

I'm currently correcting a pile of first year assignments. I would be grateful if they used a staple...

I got 30 assignments, 5 unstapled with 4 in polypockets and 1 completely loose and just folded in half.

MostIneptThatEverStepped · 22/02/2022 00:36

I used to work in n office where we collected all the paper submissions.
Thousands of essays take up a lot of room, fancy folders make them 2 or 3 times as big. You also can't see at a glance who handed them in without opening then up which makes the task of alphabetising and ticking them off a list much lengthier.

Then when the academic comes to collect them for marking they have a big unwieldy pile instead of a nice neat uniform one that they can carry off easily.

Simple plastic wallets are nice but make essays very slippery.

A staple and a cover sheet is all you need.

I'm very glad I don't have to collect paper submissions any more.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread