Online Course Assignment Due Dates!

[HigherEd7]

What is the best practice for due dates for weekly online assignments? Some teachers have everything due by Sunday at midnight and some have different assignments due at different times of the week. I have also heard some teachers assigned different due dates to make sure their students log in more than just one day a week to finish assignments. Thoughts?

[mamselle]

Plan as you need to plan to enhance student learning.

Don't focus on manipulating students to "do" this or that.

Your powers do not extend to student manipulation, nor should they.

Create opportunities for education, not 'gotcha' traps.

M.

[marshwiggle]

This being the first term for me of having online labs, I have due dates Thursday evening at 11:30 p.m. In future, I may change this because of the pile of emails in my inbox Friday morning from people who waited until Thursday evening (apparently) to start, even though they can start as early as Tuesday morning.

What I realize is most needed is some way to make it *absolutely clear when the last opportunity is for students to ask me questions and get a reply before the window closes.

*(Yeah, as if anything will be "absolutely clear" to the willfully clueless.....)

[HigherEd7]

Question: When teaching online I have read here on the forum that your students have to log in so many times a week etc...You bring you a great point, I do not think for the most part teachers are out to get students. I think they want students to participate in online learning and to be engaged other than one day a week. Thoughts?

Plan as you need to plan to enhance student learning.

Don't focus on manipulating students to "do" this or that.

Your powers do not extend to student manipulation, nor should they.

Create opportunities for education, not 'gotcha' traps.

M.

[Caracal]

Plan as you need to plan to enhance student learning.

Don't focus on manipulating students to "do" this or that.

Your powers do not extend to student manipulation, nor should they.

Create opportunities for education, not 'gotcha' traps.

M.

I've realized this with some early assignments for my summer course. If I think something won't work well unless students do it earlier, I need to find a way to break up the assignment so part of it can be do earlier. I had students split into groups where they were supposed to be discussing documents and choosing one to look at more for a subsequent assignment. The problem was that I could see the problem coming, which was that if they were supposed to make a joint decision by the the end of the day Sunday, yet many of them hadn't even discussed their document yet, which meant everybody else couldn't weigh in-which was going to be a problem for people who couldn't be up at 11 on Sunday night. I ended up having to extend it and it was still sort of a mess.

Really, though, my fault, not theirs. If I need them to do some part of the assignment before the deadline to get the thing to work, then there should be separate deadlines for the two different parts.

[Caracal]

Question: When teaching online I have read here on the forum that your students have to log in so many times a week etc...You bring you a great point, I do not think for the most part teachers are out to get students. I think they want students to participate in online learning and to be engaged other than one day a week. Thoughts?

If you think it will help students to engage in the course more often, you should have more assignments throughout the week. Log ins seem like a weird thing to require. All a student has to do is click on the course shell and then close the tab.

[arcturus]

I have assignments due on different days of the week to spread out the work load for both the students and myself. Most of my assignments are due at the end of *my* work day, so that I am available for questions up until the assignment is due. Frankly, I despise the fact that my LMS assumes that assignments are due at 11:59pm. I should not be required to be available in the evenings. I make it clear to my students that if they prefer midnight deadlines, they can set their own deadline to be midnight of the day before, as all of my assignments are available for at least a week in advance. YMMV.

Question: When teaching online I have read here on the forum that your students have to log in so many times a week etc...

You appear to be mis-reading the wealth of advice you have been given on this forum. Others have stated that they require multiple posts in a discussion forum, and thus require the first posting to be made by, for example, the middle of the week, so that everyone has something to reply to by the end of the week. This is an educational goal that requires students to log in multiple times in the week, not an arbitrary requirement for students to be present in the course multiple times.

I also think it is important to provide structure for students (online or face-to-face). Make the due dates similar for similar assignments. If you have reading questions, have them due the same date/time each week. If you have required discussion posts, make certain they are structured and have regularized due dates.

[Caracal]

I have assignments due on different days of the week to spread out the work load for both the students and myself. Most of my assignments are due at the end of *my* work day, so that I am available for questions up until the assignment is due. Frankly, I despise the fact that my LMS assumes that assignments are due at 11:59pm. I should not be required to be available in the evenings. I make it clear to my students that if they prefer midnight deadlines, they can set their own deadline to be midnight of the day before, as all of my assignments are available for at least a week in advance. YMMV.

Yeah, I think this is one of those things that is mostly dependent on what you find irritating. I tend to just make things due by the end of the day, but tell students that I'm not necessarily going to be available. They still write, and often I respond, but I don't change anything about my life to make sure I'm available at night.

[kiana]

In both online and F2F math classes (levels below calculus) I schedule assignments due 3x/week. Students who want to only work one day a week or only work on weekends can if they choose; they need to complete the next 3 days' worth of assignments.

IME the kind of student who CAN be successful working once a week is exactly the type of student who WILL work ahead.

I go through pedagogical reasons for this as well with them.

I do not schedule due dates at midnight. In f2f classes they are set at the beginning of class time, and once we went online I made them all 5pm (to emphasize that this was the end of the workday). They can also turn assignments in one day late for a minor penalty, so they often miss the first very low stakes assignment because they assume it's midnight, but after that they are with the program.

[the_geneticist]

I make due dates during "normal business hours" because I do not answer emails after 5:00pm.  I don't want to deal with endless rounds of "but I emailed you about the assignment before the deadline!  It's not fair you didn't write back!". 
Make assignments due at days and times that make sense for the materials.  I make quizzes available for 24 hours before the start of class.  They choose which 15 minutes they want to use for the quiz. Due date is the start of class (I actually set the time to 5 minutes past the start to give a bit of wiggle room for slow internet, but don't tell that to the students).  Lab worksheets are due 96 hours after the end of lab.  I could have made them due at the end of lab (like we do for in-person), but decided to be generous with time since it's the first time online and to give them more time to ask questions.
Students that are doing very well are the ones that finish the lab worksheet during lab.  Students that are doing poorly are ones that don't bother to even start the worksheet until right before the deadline.
Choose a policy that works for you, put it in the syllabus, and be consistent.

[AvidReader]

Question: When teaching online I have read here on the forum that your students have to log in so many times a week etc...You bring you a great point, I do not think for the most part teachers are out to get students. I think they want students to participate in online learning and to be engaged other than one day a week. Thoughts?

I have taught at one school that required students to log in a set number of times each week for attendance purposes. For an online class, this seems bizarre to me; if students want to do all the course work on Tuesdays, that should be fine. Flexibility is one reason students take online courses, after all!

Unless your school requires this same frequency of logins (in which case you should make that very clear to the students), you should (as others have said) set the deadlines at times that work for your course objectives and your own grading and availability preferences.

AR.

[Bonnie]

My weekly modules officially run Monday to Sunday. The only time they are required to participate earlier than Sunday is to participate in discussion forums, which I do not have every week. Everything else is due midnight Sunday. I do give my students a suggested order of activities to complete, and about 2/3 of students tend to turn things in throughout the week in the order I suggest. I appreciate that because it allows me to grade a bit each day of the week. Then when I can release grades for multiple homework activities on Monday afternoon, they think I'm magical. :)

[theblackbox]

In both online and F2F math classes (levels below calculus) I schedule assignments due 3x/week. Students who want to only work one day a week or only work on weekends can if they choose; they need to complete the next 3 days' worth of assignments.

IME the kind of student who CAN be successful working once a week is exactly the type of student who WILL work ahead.

I go through pedagogical reasons for this as well with them.

I do not schedule due dates at midnight. In f2f classes they are set at the beginning of class time, and once we went online I made them all 5pm (to emphasize that this was the end of the workday). They can also turn assignments in one day late for a minor penalty, so they often miss the first very low stakes assignment because they assume it's midnight, but after that they are with the program.

This has also been my strategy. For my current online course, I have something due everyone MWF at 10am. I send an email on Sunday morning (can set it up to auto-send if you want to write it on Friday) that shows the weekly schedule in bullet point format (e.g., Mon @ 10am - Discussion Post due, Wed @ 10am - Quiz 3 due, Fri @ 10am - Article Response due) and then has more detailed paragraph descriptions below that. I had a really good success rate with students getting things done on time; a few would work ahead for the week, but most did their work the day before or the morning of. I check in around 8am usually, and there's still time for me to respond to any issues + time for them to adjust and get it in by the 10am deadline. I like to think I'm doing them a bit of a favor having things due mid morning rather than midday or afternoon because it requires earlier rising and then we get the best of their brain before they're past capacity from the day.

I've had zero complaints about the schedule setup. Regular contact = paced learning rather than trying to cram/drink from a fire hose at the month's end.

[mamselle]

Ha! Liked your last image...

   http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1991/fire_hydrant/

M.

[Aster]

Best Practices for this:
1. Being consistent with deadlines (e.g. selecting the same day and time, every time or most every time). Changing up your due dates is just begging for students to not keep up, or give students a convenient excuse to pretend to not keep up.
2. Communicating your deadlines frequently and repeatedly, over multiple avenues (e.g. email, CMS, in-class announcements, syllabus).