Some instructors I know are almost indignant: At a college level, an assignment is due when the assignment is due: “There’s no tolerance for late projects in the real world,” they crow.  Other instructors I know are at the opposite end of the spectrum: They allow students to hang on for a whole semester with minimal effort, and often end up paying the price themselves at the end of the semester by grading an avalanche of last-minute, hastily-thrown-together late assignments in weak attempts to save doomed grades.

You know that old adage: “No good deed goes unpunished?”  It sometimes applies here.

I think either extreme on late penalty policies, too hard or too soft, is problematic in a community college setting.  Having or enforcing no expectations for “on time work” isn’t disciplined enough, and in many ways penalizes those who turn their work in on time (why should they?).  Having a policy that is too strict and punitive can destroy a handful of beginning students prematurely:  Does that harsh of a penalty really fit the “crime”?

Regardless of what you do for late penalties (and everyone should have and apply a stated policy from the opening day of class), document your guidelines in the syllabus, let everyone know ahead of time, and be fair in the application of the rules.

I’ve come up with a late penalty system that I think hits middle ground and is effective for community college learners. Here are the main features of my late policy:

• If an assignment is late per the web time stamp or other, the penalty is 20% off the point value per calendar day (even if you don’t use Canvas for a full online class, you can still use it for assignment submittals – and you won’t have to carry around all that paper, either).
• Any assignment not handed in within five days of the deadline gets a zero.
• Any student that has three “zeros” is in danger of being dropped (note I didn’t say “will be” – there are a few exceptions — see below).

Some exceptions:

• Extra credit, because it is by definition “extra,” must be handed in on time, and cannot be handed in late.
• If a student has an extended illness or a planned medical procedure or a severe accident, I will consider an extension if they let me know before the assignment due date.
• Some assignments, like MGH Connect, are graded on participation and effort (in the case of Connect, by completion percentage). Here I grade at 25% completion and four-week intervals, and allow late submissions, but not for credit. Students must make the completion percentages on time to get participation credits. (With Connect, they cannot go forward without completing all previous exercises).
• Drafts are key assignments in the writing process – they represent a significant milestone, and I typically need to assign peer reviewers to drafts as soon as possible to give reviewers as much time as possible. Therefore, late drafts are accepted, but the penalty is more severe and the time is shorter: 50% off the point value IF the draft is handed in within 48 hours of the original due date – and, the student does NOT get to participate in peer reviews for credit.

To me these very practical late penalty measures represent a good balance between the discipline needed by students in their first couple years of college (where part of the learning is learning how to be a student), and the realities of (college student) life:

• They tell the student that they are accountable for their assignments.
• They tell the student that they are responsible for their overall grade.
• They distinguish between the important and the most-important assignments (not every thing in life is equally important, either).
• They are fair in the sense that (1) the policies are the same for everyone, (2) there are exceptions for extreme conditions, and (3) the penalty is based on a percent of the point value of the assignment (in short, equitable).
• They reward on-time delivery by the more mature/exceptional students.
• They virtually eliminate the grey and often emotional areas we all run into: Is an assignment late if it is 30 minutes late? Is it late if I was sick? If my mother died? If my dog ate my homework? Yes to all.
• They provide hope for the students that, as human beings, forget an assignment due date once in awhile – they are not destroyed by one or two late assignments, and can recover with a quick response and hard work.

State and apply a late assignment penalty system that is fair and equitable and fits the situation. Your students’ lives (and yours!) will be better for it.

I am an adjunct English instructor, so during any given semester, I am grading all the time.  My friends and family tease me about this often.  I usually shoot back at them with one of two retorts: “Quiet! I’m trying to go fast enough here to make $2 an hour!” Or, more often: “I haven’t found a way yet to teach people how to write better with a multiple choice test – until I do, I’m stuck grading papers!”

Much research has been conducted and much has been written and argued about evaluations – I won’t go into all that here, but the takeaway to me is that good evaluation of what actually needs to be learned and incorporated into the student’s “tool box” is very hard to do right or well.

Most “tests” and even essays simply don’t cut it.

So in my classes, I incorporate what I call a “Lessons Learned” essay at the end of each module.  I don’t call it a “self-evaluation,” or students probably wouldn’t do it.  But that is exactly what it is: A “reflection” essay on what the students learned about the writing process and/or about themselves in the last module we just spent several weeks of their lives on. In short, students review what they did to produce their latest final paper or project, ask themselves what worked for them and what didn’t, and then tell me whether or not they were “successful”– and support their answer.

In good essay form, of course.

I don’t limit the content (say, to peer review or prewriting or outlining or any other step) because, how do I know what they learned?  This keeps the evaluation open-ended and lets the students be “response-able,” i.e. able to respond to their fullest extent possible.

This is a sneaky way, perhaps, to get students to become critical thinkers, to turn their thoughts inward, to analyze what they did, to place some value on their actions, to decide which are important enough to include in a paper, and to present their ideas in a proven and tightly-controlled manner.

It works better than any test I could come up with, and it is more often than not very gratifying to watch them grow.

In addition to the “Lessons Learned” essay for each module, I also require a “Lessons Learned” essay for the course.   I assign a final exam from students using the same method as the “Lessons Learned” assignments for each module – the final requires more words (500 versus 250 minimum) and covers a longer time span (the length of the course versus module).  The final essay is again an open-topic essay, and students can use their books and/or any previous “Lessons Learned” essays they want.  Once more, students must take themselves through the process of brainstorming, listing, analyzing, choosing and prioritizing points to present in their essays.  And present them in good essay form.

In preparation for this final essay, I have students write their own “My Writing Process Today” essay in the first week or two of class, where they present (as honestly and openly as they can) the steps they go through when they are given an essay assignment – one that often entails panic, stress, tobacco products and junk food, but one that sometimes also includes  music and sharing with family and friends and otherwise getting themselves into a “good spot” to write.

Almost everybody at that point talks about procrastinating and doing the final work the day the assignment is due (tendencies we work to eliminate throughout the course).  Their final essays are often a comparison of their individual process in weeks 1-2 with their process in weeks 16-17.  They talk about such things as prewriting, outlining (who knew?!?!), peer reviews, and growing confidence in themselves as writers.

I’m not a research or educational scientist, and have no data on hand to prove this – but something tells me open-ended self-evaluations like these help students make the material presented and practiced in class their own, and that they’ll use those “lessons learned” themselves more readily in the future than those that take tests or simply write the required reports.

But if anyone has that multiple-choice test I’m looking for — the one that teaches people how to write better without actually doing any writing — please let me know.

I could use a break from all that grading!

Extra credit seems to me to be one of those “teacher taboos,” one of those things rarely talked about openly for fear of being shunned forever or banned from the faculty lounge.

I believe you can meet the course competencies and requirements in the allotted class time AND ALSO engage and reward students through extra credit opportunities – but it takes creativity, control and discipline.

And ok, a tiny little bit more grading.

What’s an extra credit opportunity look like? Here are a few I use:

• In composition courses, prewriting and invention are competencies, part of the writing process taught. But an extra credit opportunity BEFORE the prewriting assignment, where students share initial ideas about what they are going to write about with other students in a Canvas or other (safe and controlled) discussion forum, is an added (but useful) perk.
• Peer review is another composition competency. I use a “standard” Word form with ten questions about drafts that students must complete. If students complete the peer review forms correctly, sufficiently, and on time, they can also submit an MS Word “Track Changes” red-line review (i.e. direct electronic markup) on the same papers for extra credit (and learn/practice a new technical skill they’ll potentially use in their careers).
• F2F Creative Writing courses are often known for their “workshop” format, where writers openly analyze and discuss fellow student papers in a real-time circle.   In my online CRW courses, I have what I call “virtual workshops” at the end of each module: Students must complete the required writing process steps to participate — but the “virtual workshop” is a discussion forum at the end where they can (1) share their story with others in the class, and (2) get comments from/give comments to any other student in the class. Not every student MUST post their story, not every student MUST (or can) comment – but if they can and/or do, they get some extra credit points.
  • In my combined introductory and intermediate CRW courses, posting and commenting in the “Virtual Workshop” is optional for beginning students, but mandatory for advanced students. Look at all the cross-training and exposure that happens!

Where’s the “discipline” element in extra credit come in? You have to set up rules and regulations to make sure extra credit is actually a reward for good work and not an open path to grade inflation. Therefore, make your extra credit opportunities:

• Meaningful.
• Fairly difficult and/or challenging, above-and-beyond the expected norm.
• An added opportunity, not a replacement for required assignments.
• Not worth more than 5% of the total grade, so that extra credit alone can’t change a student’s letter grade.

For me, the most compelling reasons to use extra credit are:

• Extra credit is a great motivator – human beings fall all over themselves to do something if they think they are getting something free or “extra.”
• Extra credit soothes student fears and obsessions with grades – it helps them learn more “right stuff” more easily.
• Extra credit gives students hope. Students (and other humans?) need hope to continue. When their hope dies, so does their confidence, their self-esteem, their motivation, and usually any chance at a passing grade and a better life.
• Extra credit is a great way to judge initiative. In the last two weeks of a course, when students typically flood you with questions about what they can do to get a better grade, all you have to do is look back at the extra opportunities already given to see if they had the initiative and took advantage of what was already offered.  Makes it clear they, not you, are accountable.
• Extra credit balances out all that extra work we instructors do to help struggling students that are performing below expectations — by rewarding those Type A students capable of and wanting to excel above and beyond.  “Catch people doing something right — and tell them.”
  

Extra credit? Let’s bring it out in the open and talk it over, exchange ideas. I’ll be in the faculty lounge, munching down cookies.

EXTRA (HAH! Gotcha): How do you do extra credit in Canvas? Set the extra credit assignment up like you would any other assignment (title, details, due date). But assign a point value of “zero.” That way, the points earned in the extra credit (specify the value in assignment details so students know and you don’t forget) is mathematically “extra” as well and computes correctly into the total course point percentage as “extra.”

At first glance, nothing seems quite as boring to talk about than assignment scheduling, right?  But the way you set assignments up says a lot about your attitude toward your students and your philosophy of education.

For a time I taught online for a Midwestern university where the policy was that all assignments were due Sunday midnight – no exceptions, because the program appealed to working adults.

While I adhered to the Sunday-midnight rule (of course!), I was relieved to come to Glendale and have more flexibility in my assignment scheduling.  While the “one-night” rule is perhaps convenient for student schedules, in reality it doesn’t work very well for overall assignment scheduling or learning:

• When all assignments are due one night a week, some assignments are sitting in the submission “queue” a day or two or three while other assignments are sitting there more or less days.
• The same thing happens in reverse on Sunday midnight: I consider myself a good instructor, but I still can’t grade all assignments from all my classes instantaneously – or usually even all assignments from any ONE class in one day.
• So again, some assignments sit longer than others in my “grading” queue.
• Now think about what all these delays look like to the students, who ALSO don’t do all assignments instantaneously or at once – how long has it been since they submitted their first assignment until they get feedback and a grade on it?

In manufacturing and computing, this “do it all at once” phenomenon is called “batch” processing.

So what is the better solution?  The answer is to maintain a regular schedule for assignments, but spread it out and do a little at a time versus one big “batch” each week.  I set up a 2x assignment schedule for my three classes as an adjunct.  It looks something like this (note that assignments are due at midnight — a student preference, I asked):

Class A:  Assignments due Monday and Thursday midnight

Class B: Assignments due Tuesday and Friday midnight

Class C: Assignments due Wednesday and Sunday midnight

No assignments due on Saturday (instructor gets Sunday “off” – yeah!)

What does a 2x, spread-out schedule do?

• Students still have a regular assignment date – but now it is “dates,” i.e. twice a week, a schedule they can count on and get into a rhythm with
• Students get more timely feedback from the instructor
• Students are less likely to struggle or be confused long
• Students get feedback on work done before more assignments are due
• Instructors grade a little bit each day versus one grading “marathon” once a week
  • And probably do a better job
• Instructors know almost immediately if a particular assignment is problematic or confusing to students, and can adjust as needed and more quickly.
• The instructor and students now have twice the “touch” points – times when they are communicating with one another, providing feedback and reactions and questions and responses (essential in any online class)

One other thing to note about assignment scheduling: When I have a hybrid or FTF class, I do NOT have any assignments due from that class the day class meets.  Why not?  Because I want students to focus on the lesson, be engaged in our (short) time together, and not be so concerned about that assignment or wiped out from an all-nighter the day before.  I also want to go over that assignment with them before they do it – they do better and I get more of what I am looking for – which makes my grading easier as well.

The amount of work you do as an instructor in a 1x  or 2x assignment schedule is ultimately the same – but by making assignments due twice a week, you will give your students more timely feedback and a much better chance to succeed – and most of them will appreciate it.

You might even like the “every day but Sunday” regular schedule better yourself.