[cinderly]

Originally Posted by cannoda

Bear in mind that most universities would NOT have a standard method of grading. There are two many differences across disciplines and even within a department/discipine, the tenets of academic freedom gives instuctors great flexibility.

To a lesser extent this is also true for feedback on assignement. The grade is the feedback. I can tell you that at many institutions, a dean wouldn't necessarily be able to tell a tenured instructor how much additional feedback to provide. The Independent Study Department? Not a chance. Their only available option is to not assign students to an instructor in the future.

This is the opposite of my experience with the four other institutions I've done business with (UAA, BYU, EC, and UN Lincoln.) In my experience, the grade may be the record but the instructor provides additional feedback. Of course, the instructors I've dealt with at the other institutions have still been interested in helping students learn rather than expecting to collect a paycheck for minimal effort.

A standard rubric may not apply across an entire institution, but there are generally department-level standards. Even tenured instructors report to a Department Head and/or a School Dean. Or has that changed, as well?

Whether traditional univerisities want to recognize it or not, post-secondary education is a business transaction. I am paying LSU for a service that I am not receiving. I am not paying $229 per course for someone to tell me which books to read -- I can collect information for the cost of books, alone. I am paying for instruction, including feedback and clarification of my understanding.

If LSU is uninterested in providing the service I hired them for, there's little I can do to change their behavior. It's the first institution I've encountered where a request for feedback and clarification of an instructor's expectations was responded to as if it were unreasonable. As a consumer of distance education services, I find this response unacceptable and will choose other vendors in the future.

I chose to take courses through LSU because of the singularly positive feedback I read here and on other distance learning forums. It was because of this positive reputation that I continued to try to resolve the issue with the university. I am disappointed in the outcome, but, since LSU already has my money, I have little recourse but to withold future funds.

I would have appreciated knowing of others' less-than-stellar experiences prior to forking over my hard-earned cash.