text:
Instructor listening in secretly in simulated intake assignment -- allowed? Ethical?
I am in an online, accredited, public, post-baccalaureate degree program.  I think it's the first time my instructor is teaching a university course -- at least at this institution.
The instructor said he had found someone to play the part of a potential client.  We were supposed to have a simulated phone intake call with this person.  She would give us her basic demographic information and the reason she was seeking legal and advocacy services, and we were supposed to probe for more information about the problem she was seeking help with, because the pretend client had been instructed not to volunteer all the important information on her own.  We were to fill out an Excel template and then write a letter to the client.
The instructor provided feedback for my homework. When I read his response, I eventually came to understand that he had listened in secretly to the phone intake call.  He had not made clear in the instructions that he would be listening in.
This made me uncomfortable.  But I don't know if my reaction is reasonable.  Are there any typical institutional guidelines, or ethical considerations, that would help me figure this out?  I'm not sure whether this is something to let the program chair know about, or whether I need to adjust my own expectations.
I did let the instructor know a polite version of how I felt: "I hope that for future semesters you'll make clear that you'll be listening in on the call.  I, for one, would be more comfortable knowing this ahead of time."  The response: "I don't find this necessary.  It should be presumed I am listening in on the assignment I provided so I can accurately grade."  Note, I don't know why he didn't just play the part of the potential client himself....
Further clarification:

The school is in New York State (part of the SUNY system).  From the exchange we had, I'm confident he only listened, and didn't record.
I thought we would be evaluated and graded on the written submission (spreadsheet plus letter) only.
I am asking about what's generally allowed or considered ethical by university policy or relevant professional organizations. Less interested in quasi-legal advice.
I checked with a classmate.  He didn't realize the instructor would be listening in either.  He himself wasn't bothered but understood why I was.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I have to side with your professor here. You did not have a private phone conversation. You had a simulated conversation with a person you knew to be a fake client with the purpose of evaluating your skill. If the professor listens in to the conversation that means he will evaluate you himself instead of relying on the person he got to play the potential client. This is good for you.
I honestly don't see what the problem is, you did something that you knew to be a test, so your professor gets to see/hear it to evaluate you. If instead of doing this over the phone this would have been a live interview, would you feel different about your professor listining in?

The last sentence of the answer is misleading. It’s obvious that OP’s problem is not with the instructor listening in, but with the instructor listening in without the students being informed of that happening.

What Dan said fits.  Also note, there were written things to hand in.  I thought the evaluation would be based on the written work.

@aparente001 Just for curiosity, if you are graded for a phone call with an actor, would you expect the actor to hand notes to the professor? If yes, how detailed? What about the actor transcribing the conversation?If the evaluation would be based only on the written works, then what would be the point of the phone call?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Leaving the representative examples above.

(-1) The fact that you know that there is an exam doesn't mean you shouldn't know what exact mode the exam will have. And while I don't feel bad about a prof. listening in, I do feel differently with a professor who refuses to be transparent about their exam procedures compared to one who is transparent.

This is bizarre and unorthodox to say the least. It also raises some pretty serious legal issues. Specifically, if you live in one of the eleven “two-party consent states”, what the instructor did was illegal. According to this article (emphasis added):

In the context of recording conversations, the states in our country are divided as either “one party consent” states or “two party consent” states. A “one party consent” state a makes it a crime to record or eavesdrop on an in-person or telephone conversation unless one party to the conversation consents. A “two party consent” state makes it a crime to record or eavesdrop on a conversation, including a private in-person communication or telephone call, without the consent of all parties to the conversation. Most states, like New Jersey, New York and Texas are “one party consent” states. Eleven states, including California, Massachusetts, Florida and Pennsylvania are “two party consent” states.

This link seems to have a list of the eleven states. Unlike the first article I quoted, it only talks about recording a conversation rather than eavesdropping/listening in, so I’d rather not quote the list and risk misleading people. Also, for some of the states it seems like there are further distinctions depending on the manner in which the recording was made and perhaps other details.
Now, if the phone conversation took place in a “one-party consent state” then what the instructor did was likely not illegal. Nonetheless, from a university instructor one can expect a much higher standard of behavior and ethics than the minimum required by law. It seems to me that given that this stunt would be illegal in much of the country, you would be quite reasonable to complain about the instructor’s behavior. Even if he is not found to have violated any policies (probably because no one had ever even imagined that such a policy was necessary), once the behavior is scrutinized I would fully expect him to be forbidden from ever pulling such a trick again.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and cannot vouch for the accuracy of the legal information in the articles I linked to.

Edit: some people are saying in comments and other answers that OP should have had no “expectation of privacy” during the call, that they don’t see “a meaningful ethical distinction” between listening in and getting a report from the actor, and that they “honestly don’t see what the problem is”. Fine; I have no strong disagreement with any of these statements, and actually started drafting an answer saying some similar things before posting the current answer. But I’m amazed that so many people are ignoring the very serious legal issues here. OP seems to live in New York, a one-party consent state, so the instructor might have escaped an accusation of outright breaking the law (to be precise, committing a crime) in this situation. But what if OP happened to be visiting a friend in nearby Massachusetts while they were making the phone call? The instructor’s behavior might (IANAL) instantly turn into a crime.
Imagine you are a university administrator considering OP’s complaint regarding the instructor’s behavior. Knowing that the instructor is treading on some dangerous legal ground, would you really think even for a second that the legal risk and potential liabilities he is putting your university in are acceptable? (Not to mention in a situation when there is no discernible academic benefit that comes from this surreptitious phone call eavesdropping strategy.) Yes, the instructor might come up with some arguments in defense of his behavior involving expectation of privacy or whatnot. But seriously, who wants to have to even go there? Isn’t it much easier to just inform the students of what’s going on instead of having to plan how you will argue your way out of this messy legal situation if someone decides to make a fuss?
Note that I didn’t say the instructor was behaving unethically - he may or may not have been, I haven’t really thought deeply about that question. But the legal issues make it unnecessary to even consider that aspect of the question. No sane university would allow an instructor to adopt such legally fraught assessment methods. It’s highly inappropriate and needlessly risky. I’m not saying they should punish the instructor or anything. OP should report their concerns and point out the legal issues as well as the fact that they were made to feel uncomfortable by the incident. My guess is the practice would be discontinued quietly, and everyone will move on with their lives.

Mm... for once, I have to disagree with you. Given that the phone call is implicitly part of the assignment and that the potential client is actually an instructor's collaborator, I don't see how this can be considered unorthodox or bizarre. In fact, the instructor might have not even eavesdropped the conversation, just obtained a report from the collaborator.

I don't think the "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer lets you off the hook here.  It's a complicated situation where one party was an evaluator, and the other party knew they were being evaluated.  It's a question for law.se, and not appropriate for lay people to hash over.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this (mostly legal) conversation has been moved to chat.

Thanks to comments made by Daniel and Nick, I found some better google search terms.  Here's what I found.  Even though my course wasn't remotely in the field of psychology, this does seem helpful: The American Psychological Association's "Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct," which states:

7.06 Assessing Student and Supervisee Performance (a) In academic and supervisory relationships, psychologists establish a timely and
  specific process for providing feedback to students and supervisees.
  Information regarding the process is provided to the student at the
  beginning of supervision.
(b) Psychologists evaluate students and supervisees on the basis of
  their actual performance on relevant and established program
  requirements.

I found an ethics explanation of that section in "ETHICS ROUNDS: The supervisor as gatekeeper: Reflections on Ethical Standards 7.02, 7.04, 7.05, 7.06 and 10.01" by Dr. Stephen Behnke, APA Ethics Director:

Ethical Standard 7.06 gives supervisors both the discretion to determine how best to assess a supervisee's performance, and the responsibility to make clear to the supervisee how the "timely and specific" process of assessment will work.

Dan's use of the word surreptitious also enriched my internet searching.  Here's something about ethics -- again, in the field of psychology:  "Statement on Third Party Observers in Psychological Testing and Assessment:
A Framework for Decision Making," Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessment
American Psychological Association:

Although
  surreptitious observation and recording (in which the
  examinee is unaware of the observation) may minimize the examinee’s reactivity to observation, surreptitious surveillance may also raise ethical (e.g., APA,
  2002; AERA, APA, NCME, 1999) and legal issues
  regarding the psychologist’s obligation to disclose to
  the examinee the fact that the session is being observed
  or recorded and the identity of individuals who may
  have access to the observation or recording.

Glad you found that. I think this could be improved as an answer if you tie it up with a conclusion and/or thesis statement.

Note that "psychological testing and assessment" in your third quote does not refer to testing and assessment in a classroom, it refers to evaluation of patients or subjects in a research context.

@BryanKrause - Oh shoot.  There's a million hits about that.  But it's not so relevant to the trainee situation.  Shall I take it out?

@aparente001 It might be relevant still in terms of setting up expectations of what some of the boundaries are, but I think it needs to be framed appropriately (that is, make explicit that it isn't talking about a classroom setting) or otherwise removed.

I think what bothers us most perhaps is that the instant case is so similar to the usual case, wherein there is a real client on a normal phone call and there IS a reasonable expectation of privacy and listening in like this would be illegal - especially as it is apropos seeking legal advice and thus would be covered by attorney-client privilege.  Also, we’re so used to receiving notice that a call is being recorded or monitored (as at the start of most customer service calls) that when one is monitored or recorded without notice it feels like it must be have been illegal.
So I think the OP is right to be bothered, but what the professor is doing is OK, legally AND ethically. But it takes a lot of thought/ analysis to see this. And the upsides of adding a standard “this call may be monitored or recorded for quality analysis purposes” announcement at the start of each call far outweigh the downsides. (It seems he’s after realism since he’s not pretending to be the client himself and such an announcement would just add to that realism. )
To support my legal claims, let’s look at the
California law , which states in part:

(c) For the purposes of this section, “confidential communication”
means any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably
indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined
to the parties thereto, but excludes a communication made in a public
gathering or in any legislative, judicial, executive, or
administrative proceeding open to the public, or in any other
circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably
expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.

Only listening in on or recording “confidential communication” is barred.

(d) Except as proof in an action or prosecution for violation of this
section, evidence obtained as a result of eavesdropping upon or
recording a confidential communication in violation of this section is
not admissible in any judicial, administrative, legislative, or other
proceeding.
Section d is OT, but interesting.

There’s another reason I quote California law in the first place. Because the currently second highest rated answer incorrectly states this:
Specifically, if you live in one of the eleven “two-party consent states”, what the instructor did was illegal.
I think what the prof did is not illegal for students in California or other two party US states. Why? Because under these very specific circumstances (including because it’s a test, with fake info, and not a normal call) I don’t think there was a reasonable expectation of privacy, even though it was an actual phone call over the highly regulated POTS.  (I recall a shocking MINORITY SCOTUS opinion that claimed an extremely narrow definition of expectation of privacy, apropos listening in to a cordless phone conversation ... but it was only minority a opinion*)
*excerpt:

CALLAHAN, J., dissenting: I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion. I do not believe that the broadcast of radio waves into public airspace constitutes a "wire communication". ... wiretap statutes, that the radio wave segment of cordless telephone communications cover all communications that, at some point, are carried over telephone lines.

It's shocking and frightening because in it, a SCOTUS Justice is doing what I see justices so often do: make claims that clearly conflict with the plain language of statute.  In this case: "DEFINITIONS. The following words and phrases, as used in this chapter, shall have the following meanings, unless the context otherwise requires: "(1) `Wire communication' means any communication made in whole or in part through the use of facilities for the transmission of communications by the aid of telephone or telegraph between the point of origin and the point of reception furnished or operated by any person engaged as a common carrier in providing or operating such facilities for the transmission of intrastate, interstate or foreign communications."

Is California law pertinent when the incident was in New York?  Though I don’t know where the actor was.  And whether New York treats listening the same as recording.

@WGroleau - I'd rather not focus so much on the legal aspect -- which is why I didn't post at Law.SE.  I'm interested in university policies, professional organization standards, and ethics.  However, my view about the legality of two-party vs one-party is that a university that accepts out of state registrations might be smart to go with the least common denominator, and go with the more stringent rule (two-party consent).  But really, I'd rather not split hairs over the legal aspects.

Good questions/comments. I could pull my answer, given where on SE this is, but instead i’m going to revise/ add a bunch about ethics - sth new - and explain why I provided the law I did.

@aparente001: but you yourself said "simulated phone intake". How on earth could any legal restrictions, one-party, two-party or a hundred apply to this case? I can't possibly see. It wasn't a phone conversation. It was a simulation.

At [the upvoters of] WGroleau: In addition to the reasons I added to the A since you asked: Note word 5 of the Q: "online". And CA has the largest population.
Gabor: It was a real phone call via a common carrier over POTS, putting it squarely within the scope of the regulation. But anyway, again, this is in Academia, not Law.  So please stop debating law any further.

I'd like to tackle a point of view that IMHO hasn't gotten the attention it deserves so far.

Leaving legal aspects aside, IMHO transparency about exam procedure is very important for a good and healthy student - teacher relationship.
The lack of transparency, but even more importantly refusing to announce the exam mode in future IMHO seriously undermines the possibility of a trusting relationship.
I'd certainly expect any kind of bad surprise in future dealings with such an examiner, and in my mind mark them as sneaky, underhand and potentially backstabbing.
(My culture has a reputation of being blunt and rude [we call it direct and truthful] - and we sometimes judge behaviour as backstabbing that is considered a polite white lie in other places. However, I utterly fail to see any polite intentions here - whereas I can usually see the politeness aspect with the white lies)
Also, "should be presumed" sounds to me like a recipe for disaster in any kind of consulting I'm familiar with. So in this particular case, it is a bad role model for the situation that is examined.
It is not obvious to me that listening in is to be expected as several modes of exam are thinkable, including a mode where the actual call simulation is graded indirectly at best (just as in a written exam text understanding is only indirectly graded).

The exam could be formulated in a way that a pre-specified set of important points which you are supposed to extract and write down is compared with your notes, and you get marks for the correctly retrieved information.
Sure, that would leave no possibility to grade whether you guess right or did in fact ask, but the student is not responsible for bad design of the exam, and many exams in fact do not distinguish whether the answer guessed right or concluded right.
The grading could be done in two parts: the notes by the professor and the phone call by the "actor".
Professor grades your notes and takes also the actor's notes into account.
Again, not so good due to possible chinese whisper losses.
As it happened, by the professor listening in.

IMHO the actual mode of the exam should be clearly announced in any case. Sure a student may realize the situation is ambiguous beforehand and ask, but I'd say that as less intrusive exam modes are perferctly thinkable (1st option) and deviation should be clearly announced.
I really don't think this is different from announcing that the written exam will be 3 hours and books are allowed.
There are situations (scientific studies) where the subject being influenced by knowing in which way they are studied can influence the result. I.e. there is a trade-off between transparency to the subject and reliability of the results. For such studies, a review by an ethical committee is anyways needed so the subject can rely on a third party having checked that the procedure is ethical.
In the case of the exam, no such 3rd party check has been done, and without being a psychologist I'expect that the main reasons for changed behaviour in those psychological studies are similar or related to "being examined". In the case of an exam, you know that you are examined. It's hard to argue that not telling you how exactly you are examined will make you act more naturally in this situation.
I therefore don't see any drawback to being transparent about what, how and by whom the grading is done.

Further thoughts about the situation.

My cultural background: here, not only recording without everyone's consent but also listening into a phone call is plain illegal, even if the phone call is between two neighbor rooms of the same institute.
If you put the phone into speakerphone mode, it is customary here to announce this to the other side even if there's noone around to listen in.
I've once met a situation where we weren't told when exactly we wrote the exam. However, we were told in advance:

That we'd write the exam without knowing as it would just look like the usual in-class excercises, and
that the reason for this was that the teacher had the experience that knowing "this is the exam" made people nervous and caused more mistakes (this was an eving course on touch typing with many attendees not being used to exams any more since they had finished school long ago - but the results were important for their job prospects).
I'm sure that had anyone requested to know when they have their exam, they'd have been offered a separate, announced occasion for their exam.

While I never had a simulated phone call exam, when I had oral exams and if anyone else in addition to the examiner was around, the thing started with a formal introduction of the 3rd party "This is XY, who is going to write the protocol." I also had: "This is XY, who is  going to start writing the protocol. At some point I'll take over the protocol and XY is going to ask - this is part of XY's preparation for becoming a professor."
Also, there was never a secret who did the grading: "Please leave the room for a few minutes while we decide on your mark. We'll then call you in."
I'd say this very clear transparency also has the purpose to lower the examinee's nervousness (if possible): it communicates "I am clear and open, I will not spring surprises at you, you can trust me." After all, the purpose of the exam is grade your proficiency with the subject matter, not your grasp on yourself wrt. exam psychology.

Because of the situation, normal (legal) rules do not apply to this, no matter what State you're in.  At all.  This call, in no way, would be considered a private call, and the instructor has every right to listen-in, whether you've been notified or not.  If you inform the dept. Chair he/she will tell you the same.

Are you a lawyer? If not, how do you know the normal legal rules do not apply?

Steve, thanks for your point of view.  Part of me agrees with you.  What would be really helpful would be if you could document your answer.  I noticed you're new to Academia.SE.  A good way to strengthen one's answer here is by including quotes, links, recounting of specific experience, etc.

@DanRomik By your own admission, you are not a lawyer and yet you've seen it fit to write "It also raises some pretty serious legal issues." in your answer. It seems fair to ask you then, how do you know the normal legal rules do apply?

@JBentley I don’t (and yes, it’s absolutely fair for you to ask that). That’s why I took care to mention that I’m not a lawyer and provide links. I am asking the writer of this answer to do the same, so that people will know how much credibility to assign this answer.

You haven't really defended any of your claims. Do you have any evidence for this, or are you expecting us to just "take your word for it"?

It doesn't surprise me.  This was a simulation where the professor is evaluating you.  How would you expect them to evaluate you if they weren't listening in?
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in college.  The school I went to has access to everything.  Your school calendar/email.  They use the InterviewStream system and administrators can access everything you do on there.  When you apply for a job through them they can see that.  When you scan your student id to enter a building they can see that.  Even the software you download from them is connected to their systems.  They spy on everything you do.
They control every process.  They're always testing and evaluating you.  They determine who succeeds and who fails.  They control the registration process.  If you're deemed unworthy and someone wants you to fail they can ensure your failure by giving you an 'impossible task' or in this case an impossible course load.  It's not just about grades.
You're gonna have a hard time when you get into the workforce because employers pull tricks like this all the time.  If you work in a call center environment there's always somebody listening in or recording the calls for 'quality assurance'.  Even before they hire you they'll spy on you using electronic resources, applicant tracking, social media, spyware, hacking or they'll send someone into your current place of employment.  That's the 'background check' especially when nothing shows up in a records check.  It feels sketchy but hiring is risky business and the company has a reputation to uphold.  They gotta protect themselves and make sure everyone they hire is on their best behavior.
Wouldn't you do the same if that were your company or you were managing the department?  The most successful companies and managers do.  If you want to be successful you gotta be ruthless and unforgiving.  Drain the swamp.  Get rid of the people who are yelling, picking fights, arguing with customers, being rude and providing extremely poor customer service and replace them with better people.

Who said I have an impossible course load?  (Or were you referring to yourself?  In which case, I hope you can lower it!) // At work, I've had supervisors listening live to calls, or listening to recordings of calls.  I knew to expect that.  This felt different -- but I'm still trying to figure out whether it's reasonable to expect the instructor to make it explicit. // Wait, swamp?  Are you talking about someone's perception that US government was corrupt?  I never did understand what the supposed corruption was that Trump was complaining about in the 2016 presidential election.

At work, most companies are quite careful to ensure that employees and customers know that “calls may be monitored for quality assurance and training.”

@WGroleau this is precisely because of the wiretapping laws I was discussing in my answer.

What? You believe administrators at your university can read your school email? I would need some more citations about that, or at least to know what country you’re in. No aspect of this answer reflects any experience of mine in various universities in three countries.

Universities also typically hold themselves to a much higher ethical standard than public businesses (and, seeing as you're bringing draining the swamp into it, often those in public offices). When universities do such things, they are explicit about it. It is almost always presented to you in writing. There is a great deal of privacy you give up by attending a university, but it's privacy you've agreed to give up and are notified of beforehand. When you are only notified of an action such as this ex post facto then that is an ethical breach.

The the school has access to the things you mention is different from having "access to everything" and does not mean you have no privacy in university. Nor does it mean that they really spy on you.


text:
How to handle students who try to negotiate away penalties for late submission of coursework?
I'm teaching a course where coursework is submitted online.
Recently, an important group project assignment was due.
The students are required to submit a project report,
which contains a link to a video produced by the students,
usually uploaded onto a site such as YouTube, Google Drive or Dropbox.
We had announced that for every day that an assignment is late,
students will lose 10% of their score for that assignment.
As you might have predicted,
there were several student groups who submitted their assignments late.
The problem is that some of these students
have sent me e-mails begging me
not to impose the penalty for late submission.
They gave reasons such as:

The original PDF file which we submitted was corrupted,
so after the deadline, we had to submit the PDF again
There were some technical problems with the original video link,
such that it is not possible for the video to be viewed at that link,
so we had to upload a new video and are now sending you the new link
The project was due at 9 PM, and we submitted it at 9 PM
(see our screenshot!) but the system marked it as late

Initially, I told them that
they will be penalized as specified in the policy,
in order to be fair to the students who did submit their work on time.
However, the students continued to say that
I should be more considerate or fair.
In my mind, I want to say to these students,
"Stop wasting my time arguing for marks!"
But this doesn't seem to be
the right way for me to respond to the students.
How should I respond to these students
who keep on asking me not to penalize them
when the penalty is deserved?

If the penalty is observed then surely just explain why it is deserved: The assignment must be submitted in full by 9PM on the system.

The students who submitted on time will include some who traded out an opportunity for e.g. another polishing pass over their writing in order to get it in early enough to be sure of being on time. They might have made a different decision given different rules.

It's worth pointing out that there is a trick involved with deliberately submitting "corrupted files" to try to buy some extra time. If you still have access to the old files and a Linux machine you can commonly pass them through the utility file and it might tell you what sort of file it really is. You can then say "Oh? I found a way to recover the original file you sent, so I'll let you choose: either I grade that file with the 20% penalty for turning in two days late, or I grade with 0% penalty this very high-resolution image of your dog you submitted on-time. The choice is up to you."

I am using rules like "the lowest 2 of your pset scores will be dropped at the end of the term" in order to avoid this precise issue (and any excused late submissions, too).

@CRDrost If you can proof that the "corrupted" version was not a corrupted version but, say, the picture of a dog, then I would interpret this as a cheating attempt and act accordingly. Probably the university has some general rules what should happen to cheating students. This might seem like overkill, but lying to try and get a better grade should really be punished in my opinion.

It's not a waste of time to argue over something that matters: either the marks/penalties don't matter, in which case why are you even bothering?; or they do matter, in which case it's (somewhat) reasonable to argue it. Your frustration shouldn't be with arguing about grading, it should be with attempting to use blatantly spurious arguments to do so. (That's what's wasting your time: nonsense arguments, not the arguing per se.) Solution? Provide a concise, non-equivocal reason why their argument is blatantly spurious. (ie briefly explain why the penalty is deserved, even in their case.)

On the PDF line:  That would mean they knowingly uploaded a corrupt PDF the first time.....

If you want to reduce the time wasted on bargaining for points you can include something in the syllabus like: Assignments submitted close to the deadline risk being marked as late, submit your work early. Corrupted files will not be graded, you are responsible for checking your file thoroughly before uploading. Screenshots will not be accepted as proof. If you are penalized for submitting late you can recover these points with an extra assignment at the end of the course. You'll need to mark an extra assignment, but most students will suddenly be fine with accepting the penalty anyway.

I have had exactly the issue mentioned by CR Drost happen when I was grading a midterm exam once. And file did indeed reveal it was a picture, not a corrupted PDF.

Just tell them: They have to solve their technical problems on time and therefore this argument doesn't count. However if they have a screenshot of submitting at 9pm and the system marked it as late but only mere seconds, I would show some grace. The 10% penalty per day surely wasn't meant for that. A five minute grace period is probably the right thing (but indicating that they are not hard 5 minutes - just tell them a few minutes (1-2) later the system will close and that is the decision).

I wanted to ask for clarification: On the second excuse, did the students submit the homework on time, then re-submit with new link? If that is so, maybe it really went down and it might not be their fault. Was the video content part of their work or some reference?

@TomášZato One component of the assignment is that they are supposed to submit a video link which we will view to grade their project. In fact, the majority of their project grade comes from the video.

@CRDrost This is EVIL! I like that.

"The students are required to submit a project report, which contains a link to a video produced by the students, usually uploaded onto a site such as YouTube, Google Drive or Dropbox." side point IMO if you are expecting students to submit video you should have a proper mechanism in place that doesn't rely on the students uploading it to a "free but no gaurantees" online service and hoping it stays online until it's needed for marking.

In classes I've taught, we've used a "zeroth" assignment which is really just a test run of the submission and feedback system and is not graded.  After than, problems with the process of making a submission are not grounds for reducing scheduled penalties.  In one section I did waive a penalty on the "first" assignment for a student who showed me that when he logged in to view his grades my feedback on the "zeroth" assignment was not shown, so he verifiably didn't know about a problem with that submission.

I fear the nagging is encouraged from the design of late-submissions with grade-deductions. The choice of submission is not binary, as a student may (theoretically) benefit from purposely submitting late for the extra time and allows a mindset of not treating the deadline as a deadline at all. As a result, the submission-time arguing becomes an actual part of grade optimization.

the most important question is, out of all groups, what does "several" mean? 25%? 30%? 75%? did they have enough time?   was the submitting date reasonable? ( 9pm on a worker week day ( mon-fri) is not only unreasonable, it's a perfectly valid riot cause where i'm from).

@Bakuriu Thin becomes even more interesting as a student when the deadline is a Friday and the lateness penalty is calculated using "working days" (historically due to requiring physical submission to on office not manned 24/7).

The system the Open University uses in the UK seems to work well: all online submission deadlines are officially noon BUT there is a grace period of 12 hours. Effectively this means the deadline is midnight but you can ignore complaints from submissions at 5 minutes past midnight as the deadline was noon.

Another point to consider would be that if the group from your third example thought they had submitted it on time, why are they taking screenshots anyway? Sure there could be some legitimate reasons, but given the situation, it seems likely that they knew they did a bad and needed some ground to argue from.

"Sorry, but the rules will be applied in your case as originally explained to you". No need to explain more beyond that. You don't have to argue your case. What these students need is essentially a valuable life-lesson that leaving things until the last minute gives them no contingency. Maybe mention that to them in advance in future.

On the corrupted PDF: some students will open their unfinished report as text, delete a random chunk, and submit. If you manage to recover a piece, it will indeed be the report they have to submit.

It's sad that even common sense or work etiquette needed to be mentioned in the syllabus. People should know that deadline is deadline, and it's their own responsibility, and they should not burden the grader with their annoying negotiation.

Adhere to the guidelines and syllabus you posted. If students can get around consequences of late submission by arguing, you have set a precedent, and they (and future generations of students) will argue again the next time. Don't go there. Consciously cultivate a reputation that pointless arguments don't work with you.
Next time, make it clear that "normal" IT problems like corrupted files or network lag is not your responsibility, and encourage students to upload their work sufficiently early so they won't run afoul of such problems. If possible, allow students to change their submissions, so they can upload whatever they have a week before the deadline, and keep on uploading polished versions, with the last successful submission before the deadline counting for the grade. This is the way most MOOC sites do it.
(Of course, if the university servers went down, you should take this into account.)
This earlier question seems to be similar: How to deal with failing a student? (And I gave the same recommendation there.)

I agree, but think that things like "if the university servers went down" should be emphasized more. As a student I've encountered too many buggy software systems likely built by a teaching assistant in a few hours. Also if the wording is bad, the deadline could possibly be interpreted as "clicking the submit button by that time" and the university should then have server logs showing when exactly that button was clicked (respectively when the the file transfer was started) and count by that time and not by the time when the transfer finished.

@Nobody: good points. But make sure that button clicks are logged with timestamps before putting that in the syllabus...

@Nobody: I don't really agree with the button thing. It should be well known that uploads take some time and, at least for me, it is obvious that I have to start such an upload early enough that it is finished before the deadline (besides, it would make the upload system overly complicated). Also if I don't plan enough time to be able to check if the uploaded file is okay and maybe reupload it, this is just my fault.
If students do not do that... well, they learned their lesson for the next time.

@luator I don't think such a system would be a good idea, I just meant that if the deadline is worded poorly the students might claim they understood it like that although it was not meant like this. And if it's not completely clear then you can't hold it against them. By that reasoning, all the rules start being worded like laws (complicated but hopefully unambiguous), but that's how it is. If you are trying to rely on good sense you get just the arguing the OP is trying to avoid because that's something everyone has individually (and can stretch individually in their own favour).

@Nobody I also don't understand the button thing. It's like arguing that a work that is to be delivered as a physical email is not late if you sent it  before deadline. Obviously, you have to send it before deadline so that it arrives on time...

@TomášZato Yes exactly, and for physical mail you are told whether the deadline is for sending (post stamp date) or arriving. I've encountered both. And the same also holds for electronic mail. So you might say "...has to be submitted to the system by xxx. Submitted means fully and successfully transmitted onto our system." and ideally go on with something like "If you encounter IT problems yyy before the deadline, contact @@@, after that time but still before the deadline hand your submission in personally at our office zzz." That's the standard procedure for important things where I study.

@Nobody There's a secondary problem with sent by X. If a mail deadline is for sending, I can just forge the sent timestamp (of course, by no more than ten minutes).

@TomášZato  The way I understood the OP, they were talking about web forms, so there would be the time when the POST request first arrives on the server which should be close enough. But really, I'm not saying anyone should use a system like this! What I wanted to say is make sure the rules are clear, but if they are not clear you can't interpret them against the student.

1000 other students and I had a large assignment due on October the 3rd, of this year. On the Friday before, the printer network went down. On Monday, it took 20+ minutes to log in to a computer. Thankfully, they allowed us an extension into the next day, but without that a lot of students would have been stuck...

Compare it to a job situation, if they were a contractor they just broke the terms of their contract (have work done by X). A good contractor will make sure it's working before this time anyway, and leave time for 'issues' to arised.
My dissertation was finished, and bound 2 weeks before submission date - I still remember the queues (and some crying students) who were waiting to get theirs bound on submission day. If you know the date and time, you have no excuse for missing it due to difficulties which you couldn't of highlighted prior to submission time.

Having provided service for, maintained and worked on systems such as these I caution playing too fast with specific times in light of a potential problem. However, in nearly every case your IT will be able to determine if there was an appropriate attempt to submit the files at the right time and in the correct manner. What I usually recommended to faculty was to make sure work could always be submitted, allowing for legitimate problems (as can be verified by IT), and to provide an out in the form of additional work to make up points (errant students rarely do additional work).

Avoid scheduling submission deadlines during busy hours. Consider when you would prefer Windows Update to reboot your PC, then use that time as deadline.

I saw a case of instructor disclaiming loss of test answers from network problems when it turned out the instructor's software was so badly designed that it was the primary cause of the data loss. When implementing on http, it takes a special kind of ignorance to fall over completely on momentary drop. The default behavior is to recover.

The above ignores the purpose of a deadline: to give students (roughly) equal time to complete, after which additional work is considered an unfair advantage over other students. In which case, the the moment when work stops and the submission is sent is important, not when it arrived. Normally we're counting in seconds but, to take it to the extreme, consider work sent via an email which takes three days to arrive - do you grade according to the sent date/time, or the received date/time?

How should I respond to these students who keep on asking me not to penalize them when the penalty is deserved?

I would say that your "Stop wasting my time arguing for marks!" just needs a slightly different phrasing. So if students keep bugging you with basically the same unfounded reason to grant some exception, I would finally write something like
"I did consider your inquiry and your arguments throughly. Based on the announced rules, the present facts and the points you raised, I formed the decision that the deduction of 10% does apply in this case. My decision will not be altered after further inquiries."
I feel that it often helps to acknowledge the inquiry and state that you considered the points.
In case you are discussing with the students in person, I would go for "inquiries on grade changes have to made in written form" (paper better than email), see my answer here.

If I received such a cold reply from a teacher, I'd never dare to email them ever again :)

How about "Your arguments are not good enough, you should have taken random issues into account and submitted earlier. Please email me only if you have any better arguments. I will only cancel the penalty if the delay is my own or university's fault." to make you sound more like a human. :)

@TomášZato Which would indeed help the OP with their problem.

@user31389 Indeed sounds more nice, but invites follow-ups and I figured that the OP wanted to avoid that. To tone the thing down a bit, one could drop my last sentence, though.

What this lacks is the actual reason. Without the actual reason, I would understand this paragraph as "I would tell you to fuck off, but sadly I'm only allowed to use polite words." and would write back a carefully considered answer in the same style, highly polite, with the gist of  "I will pester you until you give me a fucking reason" (profanities for illustration). Of course I would also only complain if I thought my reasoning was rock solid and I was willing to defend it.

@Nobody Sure - if there is something more concrete, I would replace "your inquiry" with that. Also, if wrote that email under the premise that the f*king reason has been given in a previous email. Finally, if the inquiry has been rock solid, I would for sure have granted some exception in the first place.

I would go with a simple "The course policies clearly state that late work will not be accepted for any reason."  And this is why my course policies clearly state that late work will not be accepted for any reason.

@JeffE - truly any reason? We had a student who is a mother have an emergency with her child (she volunteered documentation) and couldn't submit her assignment until the next day. We waived our usual late penalty (10%/day) in this case.

@ArnoldF I also have a liberal policy of forgiving work in cases of illness, injury, or similar extreme circumstances; childbirth would certainly qualify.  To first approximation, if you're too sick to do the work on time, I'm not going to make you do the work at all.

I have tried many methods, to varying degrees of success. Here are some that work.

Check the wording in the syllabus to make sure it's impeccable. For example, "due by 9pm" can be revised to more specific as "due by 9pm, based on the indicated time of submission on [whatever online platform]."
Allow for 15 minutes technical mayhem leniency. If it's due by 9pm and there is a technical issue, and the students failed to notify the instructor about the technical issue by 9:15pm through e-mail, it's considered as late. You may consider adding this term to the syllabus.
Consider a low-risk mock submission. For instance, insert a few smaller assignments or projects into the course so that the students can get to make a pdf, create a video link, and try the submission platform. This would help reducing their anxiety and also provide them a chance to identify possible technical issues.
Slightly evil approach: If you're indeed correct that they were late. And they just want "no late penalty." That's fine. Remember you still have control over bonus. So don't take any penalty, give them what they deserve. It's 10% penalty, which means their score should have been multiplied by 0.9. Now go and divide all other on-time assignment scores by 0.9 to grant other people's an on-time bonus, about 11%. I usually tell them "Now this is technically and validly late. I understand you don't want a late penalty and I am happy to retract that. Do know that I will apply a bonus to other students for being on time." I have also used this at students asking for bonus points or extra credits. I used the same method to them. Thus far, out of about 5 incidences in the last 6 years, no one went for what I proposed. (And it's funny that none of them took it even I switched to absolute grading from relative grading; somehow people cannot accept a scheme that benefit more than just themselves.)

I will not recommend allowing the on-time students another chance to revise for a higher grade. They have done their due diligence to plan their academic life and now would be coerced to spend more time on it. I don't think that's fair.

. I also put my deadlines when most students should be sleeping — 3 or 4am — so the work tends to be very clearly on time or late to avoid the "but I was so close!" (and even then I do about a five minute soft extension to account for clock differences, they can't see our server's internal clock after all), but since I switched the deadline time, that's not really come up

+1 for point 2. I do think it is fair to give a bit of 'leeway', and teaching students to keep you in the loop if there are technical problems that they are presumably furiously working to overcome also seems fair.  Also +1 for @Penguin_Knight's last paragraph noting that making it 'fair' by giving the on-time students another chance to revise project isn't necessarily so great an opportunity in the big picture.

I don't understand people's reactions to 4. Do you have relative grading system? Because if not, they still gain one point and what other people gain/lose has no effect on it...

@TomášZato, I know, isn't that weird. I was using relative grading, but 3 semesters ago shifted to absolute. My guess is most students didn't read my syllabus and assumed it's relative. Or it could be a manifestation of some interesting competition-related psychology.

The easiest way is to give way more "technical leniency": Just set the official deadline to "1 PM" - and say that the system may accept submissions some time later, but if you submit after 1 PM there will be no guarantee. Then set the actual deadline to the next day. No one will argue about a submission more than 24 hours late.

@guifa: A variation: Set the official deadline to 4am. Set the inofficial deadline to "must be there when I arrive at the office in the morning". This makes arguing about it near impossible - any sane person would have submitted by 1am or 2am. And anyone who had problems submitting at the time of the deadline still had four hours to sort the problems out.

+1 for point 2 but perhaps relaxed, so any submission within 15 minutes after the deadline being on-time by default; importantly not known by the students, however.

@gnasher729 Students do not behave sanely at deadlines. Your scheme would lead to groups working all night and posting a lookout to submit at the last possible moment.

@guifa: "I also put my deadlines when most students should be sleeping — 3 or 4am" In which fantasy land do you live

@TheMathemagician: And if they miss the inofficial deadline by two seconds they have not the slightest chance to complain, because they missed the official deadline by four hours. And that's the point of the OP: He or she doesn't want any stupid arguments about the deadline.

Combination of bullet-proof written penalty text, and very lax actual timing:
Official text: The submission system guarantees acceptance until 31. Nov 1pm. The submission system will close after the deadline and late submissions will not be eligible to any points.
Then configure the system to close down 24 hours later. Anyone who has not submitted by then will be more than 24 hours late and have no grounds to argue. - Anyone a few hours late will thank god for his luck that submissions were still accepted. You don't have any hassle.

Hmmm. 31st of November? :-)

Easy way to recognise the ones clearly trying to "cheat" - they're the ones who swear they submitted it on the 31st :-P

Nope.  "I thought on the 30th that I had one day left; then next thing I knew it was the 1st of December".

The problem with this is that people who missed the secret deadline can legitimately complain that you allowed other submissions after the published deadline. Others who rushed to submit in time can legitimately complain that they could have done better if they'd known they had more time.

@RobinBennett this is why the official text is worded like this. The only guarantee we give is submissions before the deadline are valid, and submissions after the deadline my be rejected without further explanation. - the system is still fair

My advice on the specific case is similar to the other answers, but I want to add a general point on such penalties. I have found time-dependent penalties useful -- immediately after the deadline, the submitter starts losing marks based on how late they are, up to a maximum (which could be the entire assignment if you're evil).
This penalty model has the advantage that submissions that are only a few seconds or minutes late will be penalized by only a small amount, and students won't feel treated unfairly for network lag and bother you. People submitting really late however will be penalized more harshly.
You can have non-linear penalties to teach them about exponential growth at the same time. A penalty of 1% after 30 minutes is not much and allows for network lag, computer problems, corrupted files, etc. But 50% after an hour should encourage submissions that are roughly within the deadline!

If I've a meeting with 'Huge company' and am a few minutes late, do they 1. go 'Oh well maybe he was stuck in the lift' OR
2. go 'Well this guy sucks, we won't be using him'.
Submit early, confirm it's correct and if somethings gone wrong you leave your self time to fix it. As long as the goal posts haven't moved, the students don't have a leg to stand on.

@djsmiley2k, most 90% of the time they are late!   Therefore you being a few minutes late is unlikely to have an effect.

Then the one on time can be happy that they get the full reward for being on time @Ian !

@djsmiley2k Sure, but there's a difference between being a minute late and 30 minutes late. Even "huge company" won't make much of a fuss if you're a minute late.

@djsmiley2k I hate comparisons of education to a job. (I assume college) A student is paying huge sums of money to the college/professor, not the other way around. Nobody is paying the student for this, don't pretend like that's the case/model. I'll take a JOBS 101 class if i wanted to learn all about job stuff.

I think instead of writing bulletproof rules for submissions, what you really need is to put a reminder above the deadline rules:

It is recommended that students account for possible technical issues on their and their network's side by submitting early enough so they can check their results!

After all, all the problems you have mentioned were on their side:

They submitted broken PDF. It's not exactly their fault, but it's fault of the software they're using.
They did not check the video link.1
They obviously did not account for network lag.

I think all this should be obvious to average person, but well, a friendly reminder won't hurt anybody.
Remember however, that if your evaluation script is broken, that's not a problem on student's side. Your system should first record time of submission, then handle the homework data.
1 I see one exception here: If they submitted the homework on time, then the link went down, it's really not their fault and you should accept that. It's not clear from your post if it's the case.

When e.g. a youtube link goes down, there's a placeholder page saying the video was there but was taken down for some reason. That's easy to check.

@DmitryGrigoryjev that's like one video service and one particular reason of ehat taken down can mean. Not mentioning that I    - of course - assumed that link is the only change students can re-submit in that case.

(1) I didn't mention any particular reason, and I'm pretty sure Dropbox and Google drive don't just shred your files without any notification and (2) I'm really struggling with your sentence link is the only change students can re-submit

"They submitted broken PDF. It's not exactly their fault, but it's fault of the software they're using." It's still their responsibility. This is a crucial lesson for your students to learn.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit Well, that's exactly what I was saying. Is it unclear? Should I formulate it differently?

No I'm just re-inforcing what you're saying in my own words, and adding the part about it being an important lesson. Too many "kids these days" blame everything and everyone else for their problems. Something doesn't have to be your fault to be your responsibility.

I found this useful to prevent students begging: Explicitly state that your decision is final and it will not be changed no matter what they claim. You could also follow with telling them they are wasting their time by arguing with you.
Edit: As explained in other answers, you should not budge from your decision. If you give an inch, next time a yard will be in question.

It will surely scare them away, but it might not raise their opinion nor does it fix much of the underlying causes. OP mentioned students are saying he is not considerate or fair. If OP doesn't really bother about it, then this is the way to go.

Well, consider this as partial answer. Instead of saying them don't waste my time, this will do nicely without being rude.

Well, as someone who always submits assignments on time, if not for extraordinary circumstances, I would feel a professor who let's people discuss away late penalties isn't fair. I wouldn't complain about that to the professor, but in conversations with other students it would obviously come up.

Extraordinary circumstances can be understood, but nothing can be done about them. The problem is there are no distinct labels. If a professor allows a well behaving student to bring his/her project late because of a valid reason; tomorrow another student will use this as a precedent and will ask for an extension for a reason that is probably a lie.

@Trilarion The task is to "have the work uploaded on the server". Having the work done is a part of the task.

@Crowley I guess so. Not sure what you want to say.

@Crowley If I do the task and never submit it, should I be entitled for a grade?

Stick to your guns.
If the submissions are late, then they are late, and the deduction applies. This is a crucial learning opportunity to gear up students for life in both academia and the 'real' world: deadlines matter. Make a point to emphasize this to the students, in class, along the lines of

a post-deadline bid on a contract, or a late submission of a grant application, will most often result in the application not being considered.

Enforcing strict submissions deadlines is simply a reasonable model of life, and if students are playing brinksmanship by seeing how close to the deadline they can submit then that will also get them in trouble later on.

After having a number of problems with group projects not being submitted on time and repeatedly hearing something like "It was Jack's job to upload the file." I came up with the following strategy that helps prevent excuses like "corrupted file" and finger pointing...

Students will work in assigned teams which will create a Powerpoint file as described below. This file must be uploaded to the class DropBox no later than 09:00 a.m. on __________. EACH STUDENT will be responsible for INDIVIDUALLY uploading a separate copy of their project file with the filename is to be your team name and your student email name and the Powerpoint extension (example: superwinners_jsmith32.pptx). The Powerpoint project is a team effort and all members of the same team must upload the same file contents. The project will be graded on the team's results HOWEVER individuals will have points deducted for uploading their individual copy of the work late. On the other hand, if ALL team members submit their copy of the project file at least 6 hours before the deadline the whole team will earn extra points on the project submitted.

This approach is carrot & stick, with bonus points awarded for improved teamwork. Additionally it seems to help decrease the "let one guy do all the work" attitude that sometimes plagues group projects, since everyone wants the file on time for their own sake. The final deadline is hard, but the early deadline is a bit softer since I am trying to reward the effort to work together and to submit early.
Point out verbally that it is in everyone's best interest to work together on the project and help each other get the file uploaded early.

Use services that backs up all changes and logs events.
Set deadline for upload and deadline to verify succesful upload. (say one hour)
If students encounter any problem, they shall inform you. (Server is down, what should I do?)
Set the rule, that after deadline student will lose 10% per day.
Count it as -0.007*[minutes].
Add false-complaint penalty of another [significant ammount].

Cancel the penalty only if the student proves that the hour-long delay was caused by university servers malfunction (brakedowns shall be logged) and that the work was done before the deadline (timestamp).
If they cannot prove their statements then apply both delay and false-complaint penalties.
You can make submission more bulletproof when using multiple services and the work must be uploaded to all services on time. Probability of all services corrupted is much lower than probability of one service corrupted.

Or you can reject their complaints saying:

You were expected to upload your work and verify its validity before the deadline and proper plannig was part of the task. Your complains were raised late and will be ignored. Take it as a lesson for your further work.

In real life, companies are losing fortune per day if the work is delayed, no matter the circumstances. Students are about to lose couple of points. Take it to acount as well. :)

In real life, students have engaged in enough e-commerce to know that if a package from Amazon is a day late from when they were told it would come, Amazon doesn't really care. Or if an item from Kickstarter is a year late. They've read Internet horror stories about managers demanding a report on Monday at all costs, and then the manager not reading it by Friday. The students are probably familiar enough with real life to not be impressed that everything is a fortune a day matter.

@prosfilaes Amazon is strong enough to not care. But if your payment to Amazon is delayed, they will press charges. Boss (Client) from Hell is another [censored]. Do you really want to teach students that rules are for dumb losers?

In addition to agreeing with the general don't negotiate view of other responders, I always make it a point to remind students that my university has an appeals process that allows them to lodge an academic appeal if they believe that they have been unfairly treated or discriminated against. Some of my colleagues don't like me mentioning appeals but my own view is that it is simply part of my adherence to formal processes. Some students are already aware of the availability of an appeals process and it strikes me as being, in some ways, discriminatory not to mention the (often foreign) students who are not familiar with the idea. One of the things positive things I have noticed, however, is that a student will rarely persist with their attempts at negotiating/bullying ... and only very very rarely will one appeal.

Since the issue here seems to be that you want to be slightly lenient without giving in to frivolous requests, here is another simple solution. Apply all deadlines strictly but give graded work that has total credit more than 100%. For instance you could easily have graded work that totals to 120%. It is especially useful if the extra 20% is more difficult, and you may even wish to label them as optional assignments or for bonus credit. People who are on time will have no need to do the extra work, but people who are late will have to earn the extra credit to cover their lateness.
The benefits of such schemes are obvious:

Students have an avenue to make amendments for their lateness.
Leniency with respect to lateness is not free and must be earned.
Not just the good students are encouraged to learn more.

Require a proof of the assignment existence at the given date
We all know that we should take upload time into account, but it is very easy to face unexpected delays when submitting near to the deadline: from the not accepting the , the generated pdf file being quite big (all those photographs looked very nice when preparing the document), the university server giving a timeout for the large assignment file, the teaching platform being slow when many files are being submitted at once, or simply the upload link being quite slower than expected.
However, an email simply saying "We are having issues sending the assignment foo of sha256 cb2730cb4d47b879f6f1a5627e0e94d8261065052375b5dd76abb44e1838008e" won't hit any size limit. They can even hand it out physically the next day in a DVD/USB.
By giving the cryptographic hash, they are committing to the exact file they will be handing out, thus you can verify there were no changes after the deadline. Explain to the students how to generate them on the first day, after the usual talk on "take into account upload time". You may even encourage them to email that (or post it into the forum for your lecture) on normal submissions (no screenshots showing the upload).
Having an official procedure will (a) make students more confident about what to do when genuinely getting computer issues handing out a work they performed on time and (b) give you an argument to disregard claims for students that did not follow the given procedure in case of upload problems.

I would like to introduce randomness into the late submission penalty process, mimicking the situation in later life that you often do not know what the outcome of not finishing something by a deadline will be.
It would probably work better in the old days of having to physically hand in work, but I imagine a process where if you submit the work in late, for any reason whatsoever, I pull out a 20-sided die, and invite you to roll. Roll a 1, you get 0 for the work. Roll a 20, no penalty. 2-10, 10% per day pro-rated to the minute, 11-19, 10% per day, not pro-rated. After the first day, 20 also becomes a 0 zero mark, i.e. 10% chance of getting 0 marks, which should be somewhat motivating to not submit late. Obviously, there is no negotiation with a d20.

This is amusing, but far too complicated.  A slightly less complex variant would be to multiply the score by (d20-roll / 20) once for each day (or portion of a day) the submission is late.  So a submission 2 days plus 0.1 seconds after the deadline would get three die rolls, with an expected penalty of 87.5%.

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text:
Is it reasonable to require students to bring a laptop to every lecture?
In the next academic year,
I'll be teaching a class on how to use a statistical software package
(the R programming language).
I foresee that each class will have two parts:
a lecture and software demonstration,
and time for the students to get their hands dirty
by trying the software themselves.
I now have to decide what type of classroom to request.
Option 1: Computer laboratory
If I hold the class in a computer laboratory,
the advantage is that every student will have a computer
with the software already installed.
The disadvantage is that the classroom layout
is optimized for students to use the computers,
so it is difficult to lecture.
I foresee that it would be difficult for students sitting in the corners
to see the projector screen when I am speaking.
Option 2: Lecture theater
If I hold the class in a lecture theater,
the advantage is that every student will be able to see the projector screen when I am lecturing and demonstrating the software.
The disadvantage is that students would have to
bring their own laptops once a week.
Although I estimate that at least 98% of students own a laptop,
I don't want to embarrass or cause difficulties to any students who do not.
So bearing these two options in mind,
which type of classroom should I request?
Is it reasonable for me to request the lecture theater,
knowing that this will be inconvenient for students
who don't normally bring their laptops to university?
Edits
There will be around 90 students in the class.
My plan is to ask the students to form groups of 3-4 students,
so that they will help one another as they do coding and data analysis.
I will probably have a TA to help to run the lab session
given that there are many students in the class.
I've attached a floor plan of the only computer lab in my university
which is able to accommodate 90 students.
As you can see, if I am trying to give a lecture in this lab,
it can be very hard for me to have eye contact with the students,
and to perceive any confusion or uncertainty in their minds.

What I decided to do
After considering the input provided by the various answers and comments,
I decided to adopt a hybrid approach,
i.e., 1 hour of lecture followed immediately by 2 hours of computer lab time.
During the lecture time,
I will be showing the students how to use the software
and how to estimate and interpret statistical models.
During the computer lab time,
students will apply what I taught in the lecture to a different data set.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I actually think you've got an XY problem here.  From my experience of learning software languages, this doesn't feel like the most practical way of running it.
In general for learning a programming language, there should be a lot of practical time and a relatively small amount of lecture time.  More than that, the practical time needs to be rather free-form and allow scope for better students to complete exercises quickly and slower students to take much longer over it.  Simply dividing your class into two halves cannot ever cope with this  - either it wastes time or holds back quicker students, or it prevents slower students completing exercises.
When I was at uni, the better solution was one lecture in a classroom, followed (same day, different day, doesn't matter) with an entire afternoon in a computer lab.  For the computer lab session, the lecturer often wasn't there, but one or more teaching assistants were always on hand to answer questions, review code, and generally point people in the right direction.  After that fixed time, the lecturer and teaching assistants left, but students who hadn't finished could naturally keep working on their own.  Most students didn't have laptops at the time (this was the mid 90s!) but there was nothing in principle to stop people bringing in their own machines.
Edit based on your changes to the question:  With your new information, it makes it even clearer that your original proposal simply won't work, and two separate exercises is the way to solve it.  Getting information to 90 people is a lecture theatre job.  Even dividing this into 4 sessions, you cannot make that work in a computer lab, and the lecturing component will take four times as much of your time.  Anything other than a lecture theatre will fail, waste your time, and waste your students' time.  Conversely, on the practical side there's no other option than dividing the group up so that they all get a guaranteed seat in the computer lab at some point.

My experience learning software languages is that lecture is essentially useless and you're better off just reading the language reference. In my experience the lecturer usually gets many things wrong, omits information about critical language features, and generally teaches poor code style. Even my FPGA class, I found the verilog compiler spec easier to learn from than the lectures.

My best programming classes all were either a 15-30 minute lecture with the rest involving individual or small group practical work or projects (more industry) or the lecture then practical in lab alternating schedule that you suggest (math/statistical programming which have longer lessons to show the connection of concepts). I try and do this when I teach now as I've found working in these smaller groups or having this practical side makes it much easier for students to understand concepts and practices.

@AJMansfield If all you need to learn is the syntax, that's not unreasonable.  But if you need to learn structured programming, design for test, how to go about writing a good FPGA testbench, the change of headset which is functional programming, or anything like that, then the lecture session (with coding which is up to best-practise standards) is really the best way to go.

@AJMansfield: While my perception of software language classes is generally the same as yours, I found this to usually be the result of "those who can, do -- those who cannot, teach". As a counterexample, I've had two excellent lecturers that were well worth listening to closely, and incidentially, both these courses had nearly no practical time. (It was expected that the students would experiment on their own, but that was not part of the course.) It's funny how much attention you start paying when expected to solve C++ assignments on paper (i.e. no edit / compile / test cycle)...

What is an XY problem? Perhaps a hyperlink would be useful here.

@ILiketoCode XY Problem. I'll not take the liberty of editing this into the answer, but Graham may like to.

@TRiG Enderland already did the edit.  Which is cool, because it improves the answer - thanks for the suggestion, ILikeToCode.

I would go with the computer room option. There are several issues with getting everyone to bring a laptop:

As you mention, a few students may not have one, and this could cause embarrassment.
People are using different operating systems, and may have different versions of the software installed. This increases the chance of code working on some computers but not others, which is always tricky to deal with as the lecturer.
High chance that at least a few students will forget their laptops, or their power supplies.

To deal with the issue of the computer room being poorly laid out for lecturing purposes, I would suggest providing all the materials (powerpoint, code scripts, etc) to the students electronically. This way they can have everything displayed on their screens and can follow along even if they don't have a good view of the projector screen.

Also, how many laptops can be plugged in at a given time could be a concern.  What happens when your ratio of dead batteries to outlets gets off?

@DavidStarkey This! A thousand times this! I once took a class where the professor was denied a computer lab, and we all had to use our laptops. The biggest problem was always outlets. I got into the habit of bringing a power strip and extension cord to all of my classes for this reason.

As for the operating system problem, and/or different versions installed, this was another major problem with that same class. Many of the early classes of the term were bogged down by technical issues: trying to get the various software to work on students' various platforms.

The update to the question shows that the lab has 108 seats for "around 90" students. The OP could leave a note on each of the 18 seats with the worst view warning of the need to see a screen.

There's also a matter of usability.  While I can work on a bare laptop, I'd guess I'm at least 2-3 times slower than with a regular keyboard, mouse, and decent size/resolution display.

@guenthmonstr I've taken a powerstrip with me anywhere I take a computer ever since I went to my first airport where all the outlets were taken. Now I can just plug in my power strip and then plug in their device to it and hooray, power for everybody!

@WayneWerner That's just what I started doing! Then everybody wanted to sit next to me just so they could get some juice.

Screen sharing software may also be an option for allowing students to bring up the projector on their own machine.

The power strip is not an option in Germany, where fire safety rules are quite strict. Cables must not be in any exit path. Since there are only few outlets in a lecture theater, it is virtually impossible to supply everyone with power.

@jamesqf Strangely enough, such matters of usability do not concern most of the students. We were teaching programming classes in a computer laboratory, many students still preferred bringing their own tiny laptops. Using those tiny keyboard and touchpads trying to assist them hurt me almost physically, but they themselves didn't seem to have any such problems.

@Headcrab: Maybe that's why I usually got my assignments done faster than the rest of the class.  Here I spent all this time convinced it was because I was smarter, and it turns out I was just lazy :-)

@Headcrab As a student, I usually prefered to use my own laptop over the lab computers provided by the school when possible. Having immediate access to all my files, notes, and development tools is a much bigger convenience than having a mouse and larger keyboard is; especially when the smaller keyboard and touchpad is on a device I use every day, and am therefore already accustomed to dealing with.

@Ajedi32 I understand that, I was doing the same thing, although my laptop was huge and I was always bringing a mouse along with it. Would plug in an extra monitor, too, if the monitors in the lab had HDMI input.

It is only reasonable to require a laptop if it is specified in the class or course requirements
It is not reasonable to expect students to have their own laptops unless this was specified at the time they signed up to the class or, alternatively, it is required for the course overall (or the course provides them). Otherwise you are springing an additional, and expensive, requirement on students who may not expect this.
Even then, this is a necessary condition not a sufficient one. You cannot avoid excluding students who cannot afford a laptop, for example, and you're requiring students to lug heavy equipment around with them for a single class.

I would say it had to have been know to all students before they decided on the university to study at.    Not just before the choose a given course,  e.g. a policy that all students in department XX must have their own laptop, including the spec and software etc.

I agree with @Ian. If you say "you must have a laptop to take this course" that amounts to discriminating against some students on non-academic basis, and may cause friction with university policy.

My university lets you check laptops out of the library (and gives everyone a network drive), so this wouldn't be an issue. Does your school do something similar, OP?

@MissMonicaE What would your library think of say 50 students turning up at the same time, all saying the MUST have use of a laptop at the same time.....

@Ian I don't know! But maybe a prof could put a hold on a certain number in advance? I'd be surprised if that many students don't have their own laptops, though.

@MissMonicaE That may be true at a large, wealthy university, but we don't know what sort of students the OP teaches, it could be a community college with much poorer students (for example).

@Azor-Ahai sure, of course. I mostly meant the OP could look into it as an alternative.

Generally speaking, this request does not sound like a good idea. Laptops can be a significant cost for a student. Some may not have a laptop. Some may have a device that they already use for portable computing needs, but which is unsuitable for development (like a tablet). These people will then be forced to purchase a laptop just for your class - students already balk at paying $100-200 for "required" textbooks, how do you think $1000 for a laptop will go over?
The exception is if your school provides laptops to the students. But consider that cost is not the only factor. When I started college, I was very excited that I could finally bring my laptop to class and take notes more effectively, as we were not allowed to use devices in high school. After two days of carrying the heavy laptop around campus, my back was in excruciating pain. I never brought a laptop to school ever again unless I really had to. Keep in mind that I am healthy and have a strong back - what about students who have injury or chronic back pain and cannot carry heavy bags at all?
You could of course demand laptops regardless, and I doubt there would be repercussions even if it is unreasonable. But it is virtually guaranteed that with 90 people, you will have some sort of issue like those I describe above, it will not be as simple as asking everyone to bring one.

By way of suggesting a solution, I think Option 1 sounds great. You have astutely stated the key advantages. I will add that some lecture halls have small tables which make working with a laptop clumsy and unergonomic. Also, not only do students have to set up the software, it has to be compatible with their system - by using lab computers you get around this problem.
Your main objection to this appears to be the projector screen. First of all, most students will see it to begin with. For those who can't see and can't sit at a better location, you can distribute a PDF of your slides. You can also distribute paper handouts. If you are worried about paper wastage, you can print only a few copies for those who ask for them. If you print them one sided students can also recycle the handouts and use the back as scratch paper or for note taking.
If you decide to do Option 2, you should modify your policy and say laptops are strongly encouraged but not required, and explain why you believe having the laptop is helpful. However your lecture should be designed such that it is possible for anyone to follow without a laptop. If the demonstrations are essential, it should be possible for the student to take notes and then do the demonstrations at home.
Most of your students will probably be able and willing to bring the laptop. The rest can take notes and follow up in their own time at home or a library computer.

Another suggestion since you intend to teach R: Rstudio has a Server version, where the R code lives on a central machine and users interact with it through a webpage. This way users need only a JS-capable browser, no installation necessary. The web interface looks very similar to Rstudio, so when the students are done with the class they can figure out how to get R set up on their machine, and practically all that they learned in your class from the webapp will transfer.

+1 for RStudio Server, but $1000 for a laptop is a huge exaggeration, at least if you're talking about USD.

How do you take notes more effectively with a laptop?  Maybe plain text is comparable, but I can do figures & equations a heck of a lot faster with paper & pencil.

@jamesqf I type and edit faster, but you are correct that it only makes sense for plaintext.

You can get a pretty good laptop only a generation or two behind for $100-150. Just search for 'refurbished' and 'c grade' for business-class laptops that are a few years old and being taken out of service at companies.

Would it be possible to have classes split between them?  So say two a week in the classroom with one working as a tutorial in the computer lab.  This was how most of my own coding courses were split as the theory could be given in a classroom environment with examples being done by the lecturer in the in class computer/lecturer's laptop.
Then the tutorial was essentially a designated practice session were students worked on preassigned problems/class projects.  A lecturer or a grad student would walk around the lab occasionally checking on how people were doing and helping anyone who wanted it in a one on one fashion.  The lecturer only really spoke to the entire class if something came up that they thought might be an issue for the majority of the class (if several people were making the same mistake etc.)
Personally I would not have them figure out solutions in front of the entire class, the lab style class where everyone has their own computer to pay attention to works better for supervised practice I have found.

I'm going to post the IT answer here.  Go with the computer lab so you can spend class time getting things done and not supporting installation issues.
Forget displaying your slides on a projector, use some type of collab software to display your slides on every computer that is sitting in front of the students.
Don't have them use their computer because they probably have chat programs and facebook to distract them.  Provide the gear, lessen the distractions and leave tech support to the lab guys.
All that said, the answer by @Roland has some real promise in getting the group working as a group instead of as a bunch of individuals.  The only problem I see is that the slower ones are going to seriously frustrate the best and brightest and conversely the slower kids are going to feel like they've been dragged behind the bus if one of the smarter kids is doing the typing.
Never underestimate pair programming in this case where the brightest can help the slowest without it becoming too excruciating.

I have supported colleagues teaching R and a requirement was that students would bring their own laptops to use.  These were postgraduate students studying for professional development (ecologists and environmental managers etc).
This was under the following conditions:

The requirement for a laptop was made clear upfront prior to enrolment on the course.
Minimum IT requirements for the course (including links to the R community site) were given upfront.
No technical support was available from the university (other than supporting students in accessing Wi-Fi networks).  This too was made clear upfront.
Prior teaching, guidance for installing the R programming environment was provided together with some orientation activities (I vaguely recall the community site having this - but might be wrong).
The teaching room was booked nearby to a PC room (which was booked as well) in case issues meant we needed to relocate.
Two or three university laptops were booked just in case some students had issues (we didn't tell them this upfront).

The pedagogical advantage of this approach was that we were teaching students how to use software on their own systems, which would be the systems they'd use at home/work.  Hence, users were empowered to troubleshoot issues in an environment that they would encounter again and again.
They were also adults paying their own fees, so were grown-up enough to turn off distractions.  Also, as professionals they'd want to check email during breaks.
The class size was up to 25 students with one instructor and two facilitators (lucky them!).
In practice there were invariably students who didn't do the pre-work, brought sub-spec machines (I recall a beaten up XP laptop from 2005 raising some eyebrows) etc this was mitigated by university laptops and PCs.
My advice is:

Be very clear up about all requirements upfront.
Have a rationale for students to use their own laptops.
Have a back-up plan.

Ultimately, if a student fails to take responsibility for ensuring they meet the IT requirements as specified by the course, it is likely they won't be able to learn and the tutors shouldn't be expected to make special provision for them.

I only taught one course with heavy computer use in a computer lab. Luckily in this lab there were hexagonal tables with 6 computers each, so after a short time people started to work together, which was really beneficial. In most labs you have computers in long rows next to each other, discouraging people from collaborating. So if you allow groups of 2-3 students working together, they might learn faster (apart from the few that just let themselves get dragged through), you have an easy way of monitoring their work (just stand nextby and listen to them), and the chance that among 3 people nobody can get hold of a laptop is probably negligible.

We solved this problem by creating hybrids.
You can remove some workstations from a lab and create room for laptops. You can add workstations to a lecture hall. Then the students can do what works for them.
The best answer is to give students options not dictate their needs.

Ideally the classroom should already be set up with everything needed for the lectures, however this is not always possible.   If the classroom isn't already set up for laptop usage (as with most campuses built before about y2k), often times these classes are split into a lecture and a lab.  For scheduling purposes, this way can be extremely beneficial to students trying to graduate within a fixed time frame and minimize their student debt because they can usually fit one of the labs into a packed schedule.  This works well in large departments with plenty of graduate assistants to run the labs, so if that option is available, take advantage of it.
That being said, there are pros and cons to having laptops in the classroom.  If their usage is limited to course related material (not including note taking), then it is generally good for learning.
So long as you set aside a time for in-class work (it may take several minutes for some systems to come up) and allow for partnering or group collaboration (unless laptops are mandatory for the class or department) then it shouldn't be a problem.  Even if laptops are required, the group interaction can help shy or new students meet the person/people who will be their future study partner(s).
I hinted that note taking on a device can be counterproductive, so if you can make lectures and notes available, it will allow greater concentration.  If the lectures are not already available, they can be divided among the class members to transcribe.  When I was an undergrad in nuclear engineering, we organized this on our own and it worked so well that the group list became a sort of reply-all mailing list to correct any misconceptions.

Go for the lab.
It is undeniable that a computer laboratory was built to teach stuff on computers. I'd recommend that everyone brings their own USB drive to store files or even bring their own computer, in which case you are sure to have proper power outlets for everyone.
The lab is only a nuisance if your IT department can't keep the stations in working order or if they are too old even for a simple class.

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text:
Is it a red flag if a faculty offer is rescinded during negotiations, then reinstated when I agree to accept it on the spot?
Shortly after interviewing for a tenure-track Assistant Prof. position at a public R1 university, the Dept. Chair called to inform me that they were planning to make me an offer. After 4-5 email exchanges over 2 days in the form of negotiations, he wrote to me essentially saying that they had decided to move on to other candidates, and wishing me the best for the future.
I quickly replied, essentially apologizing for negotiating, after which he reinstated (his intent to make) the offer, should I immediately confirm my acceptance of his terms, which I did. I have now received the formal offer letter.
About the negotiations: I was never rude, and never suggested that any of my declined requests were dealbreakers for me. However I did ask politely for numerous standard things, including a higher salary, an additional teaching release, and additional startup and relocation funds. I did this in steps: for example, when a higher academic salary was partially declined (a small increment was indeed approved), I asked for a month of summer salary for the first two years. This was also declined.
I am trying to understand if this is alarming, and if so, how alarming it is. Personally, I feel terrified, but R1 TT offers are not easy to come by.
My question is whether all this is very unusual & alarming, as something I should factor when considering the written offer.

It sounds like the chair is bad at negotiating.  What is your question?

Sounds like: the chair had no extra money to provide, but then--when you kept asking for more--he decided you were unobtainable.

This is a Q&A site. You do not seem to have a question in your post.

@AnonymousPhysicist: wouldn't it be that he's very good at negotiating, since I ended up dropping my requests so as not to lose the offer? My question is about if this is alarming, as something I should factor when considering the written offer.

@MoisheKohan: updated post to ask a question. It does ask for an opinion, but that is unavoidable...

Ok: unless you receive a competing job offer with a better deal, you do not have any real alternatives. While the situation is indeed unusual, there is nothing you can do about it.

@VelvetGhost No, that's not true.

It's common for applicants who want more time to secure a better offer to look for ways to delay their decision about an earlier offer.  Because you kept asking for additional adjustments in the deal, it may have appeared that your negotiation was actually a delaying tactic.  The chair's insistence that you immediately accept the final offer makes this seem likely.

The fact that you apologized for negotiating and then immediately accepted the original offer suggests that you didn't really have any leverage to negotiate with, in the sense that you weren't actually willing to walk away from this if your conditions weren't met. You were essentially called on your bluff.

@FilipMilovanović: I know very well that I didn't have leverage. I did not pretend to have other offers, or threaten that I would decline the offer, so there was no "bluff" here. Many candidates who do not have leverage in the form of alternate offers, still do negotiate. They make it clear that they want to accept, but are requesting extra stuff for specific reasons. The question is whether it's ethical to revoke an offer as a negotiation tool. As others have suggested, I could have instead been given a "take it or leave it" choice.

You miss my point - if the stuff you negotiate for is important to you, then you should be prepared to walk away, nothing wrong with that. Maybe that's how they saw it. Maybe it initially appeared to them that "take it or leave it" was not an option because of how you presented your case. Even if you did explicitly say that you are willing to go with the original offer, maybe they missed that. The only reason their actions can be seen as a "negotiation tactic" is because you called them back. So, was rescinding the offer unethical? I'm not sure there's compelling evidence to think that.

I understand, but even if they felt I would decline the offer, I don't see why giving me a short time (even 1 day) to formally accept or decline, was not an option. After all, their eventual reinstatement of the offer proves that even while revoking the offer, they had NOT decided that they could absolutely not hire and work with me me under any circumstances.

I am trying to understand if this is alarming

It may be alarming, but it’s worth considering that your own behavior might have been perceived as alarming from the department’s point of view. Specifically, you said that you asked for several things “in steps”. It’s hard to say how problematic this is based on the details you provide, but if you mean that you repeatedly presented new requests after your earlier requests were answered (either positively or negatively), then this might be a form of moving the goalposts or negotiating in bad faith, which are not standard or particularly accepted practices in negotiations. This or other things may have been interpreted by the chair as a signal that you are an unreasonable person or someone who would be difficult to work with.
The bottom line is, rescinding an offer is indeed unusual, but there are times when it actually makes sense when a hiring prospect behaves in a way that reflects poorly on them. I can’t say if your situation is of this type. If you’re going to get upset about the chair’s behavior, you may want to make sure first that your own behavior was reasonable and didn’t give the chair some good reasons to behave the way they did.

Interesting, thanks. I was never rude and never implied that I might decline the offer. I provided reasonable reasons for every (reasonable) request, and was not negotiating in bad faith. I did indeed do a bit of "goalpost moving", but only when previous requests were declined. I was trying to present them with alternatives that they could/would accept. It seems a stretch to conclude I would be a bad colleague, based on just my negotiations. And again, the offer was reinstated after all, contradicting even that conclusion.

My question is whether all this is very unusual & alarming

After 4-5 email exchanges over 2 days in the form of negotiations, he wrote to me essentially saying that they had decided to move on to other candidates, and wishing me the best for the future.

Yes, that's unusual and alarming.  You would not "move on" unless it was obvious an agreement will not be reached.  Five emails is not much in a negotiation.

something I should factor when considering the written offer.

No, the competence of the chair at negotiating should not be an important consideration for you when deciding on the final offer.  (possible exception: The chair is a professor in a business school.)
When you negotiate, sometimes you are negotiating with a fool.  The fool thinks they are right and you are wrong, so they do not realize they are in a situation where negotiation is appropriate.  I have met several fools who are professors.  Blue-collar workers are usually smarter at negotiating.
If you find yourself in the chair's place, say:

I am sorry, but the dean is not going to approve any of the things you have requested.  Will you accept the offer we are able to make?

Do ask the dean for the things before refusing to give them.

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