As a faculty member, how much of your time and energy is spent dealing with assessment due dates?  Think about all the steps you take to prompt students, including the reminders you send, plus the time you dedicate to handling issues, student questions, and extension requests.

Perhaps you find that your students are young, straight out of high school and unprepared for the rigors of balancing college, paid employment, caring for dependent family members, managing with personal issues and so on. The reasons that students ask for accommodations are varied, and even high achievers sometimes need additional time to do their best work.  

If you have considered any of these factors, or constraints for your students, flexible due dates might be the solution to some of these things! 

The science of learning shows that when educators are flexible with due dates, it can reduce stress, anxiety, and other issues for students, while also increasing the quality of their learning and work. The other benefit is that faculty can focus their time on more important and productive matters than handling extension inquiries, and submissions spread out over a short time can make marking more manageable. 

Not all assignments or courses lend themselves to flexible due dates, and this is not a one-size-fits-all solution. However, most faculty could (and even should) consider ways to increase flexibility, especially with the impacts and changes of the COVID-19 pandemic on our learners and education, remote delivery, and helping students transition to on-campus learning. Can you think of one assignment in a course you teach that may be suitable for flexible due dates? Start there! Many students want, need, and may expect it, and flexibility fits with Universal Design for Learning principles and best practices. Under UDL, the goal is to optimize the learning environment and reduce barriers to education for vulnerable and underrepresented populations, a key priority under Fleming’s Strategic and Academic plans.  

Like many things, there seems to be two extremes when it comes to flexible due dates. On one side we have fixed policies that state that all students must meet the specified deadline or receive 0. There may be a tiny bit of flexibility such as extensions to those who request it, extra time based on formal accommodation plans, late penalties, etc. The instructor or program sets the rules, and all students are to abide by the due date schedule…or else.  

On the other side, some courses (especially asynchronous online ones) can be organized so students go-at-their-own-pace. With complete control over deadlines; they can hand anything in at any time during the semester.  

Instead of the extremes, here are a few ideas that fall in the middle: 

• Providing a time period not a hard date for when students need to hand an assignment in. E.g., during Weeks 4 and 5 or between November 1 – 12. You might refer to this as a ‘window of submission’.
• Negotiating Due Dates – allow students a say at the start of a course for when assessments are due, and share power in the decision making. As a bonus, they practice important skills like negotiating, planning, scheduling, flexibility, and adaptability. 
• Building in an Automatic Grace Period  Set a suggested deadline but give students a few extra days to submit it if needed without penalty and without need to notify the instructor. E.g., Set quizzes in D2L to close 2 or 3 days after the posted due date; or if normal assignment due dates fall on Fridays, automatically give students till Monday. 
• Catch Up/Make Up Week: Students can submit any missed assignments during one scheduled and advertised week. E.g., during Week 8, students can submit any missed work from Weeks 1 – 7, to allow them the chance to get back on track. If applying a late penalty to all work handed in during this week it should be minimal/reasonable to encourage and not dissuade participation (e.g. 5-10%). 

If you want to learn more about the reasons and benefits for negotiating due dates as a class activity read:  

• Due Dates and the Value of Student Ownership

• Allowing Kids to Negotiate Due Dates is Good For Everyone

For individual student-determined deadlines read: 

• Practice Flexible Deadlines

For more ideas and to read about faculty experiences, check out: 

• Reflecting on Suggested Deadlines for Assignment
• Deadlines in the Real World

Lastly, whatever due date structure you decide on, make sure to widely promote it and do so repeatedly in the course outline/syllabus, in classes, and within D2L. Giving students a clear idea of what the expectations and policies are will resolve confusion or uncertainty among your population of learners. Adding some flexibility to due dates in your courses should be a win/win for you and your students, so try different ideas, tailor them to your courses, and see what works!  

If you are interested in learning more about flexible due dates, and seeing some examples of this, you can plan to attend LDS Team’s upcoming Teaching & Learning session on Flexible Assessment Design in Week 0 of the Winter 2022 academic term!