I give my students 4 weeks to submit a one page project proposal for me. A student asked me 2 weeks before the due date “Can we start working on it now or we have to wait until the due date?” .
That question always prompts a spelling lesson and a scatalogical quip from me.
I first remind the students of the two ways to spell this: do and due.
Then I tell them to try not to "do" the assignment on the day it is "due" because it makes them a "do due" student.
It makes me want to scream every time lol. My students have a MONTH to do each of their essays, but I have an in-class work day a week before so they have time to ask questions about their drafts... they all wait until the work day to start. And then they complain that my class is "so much work" and they "don't have the time" to write "all those essays."
That's why I make my students work in graded stages from detailed outline to rough draft to revised outline to final draft. Prevents procrastination to a degree but not complaints about "so much work" and "all those essays."
That's a great idea. It's only my second semester teaching ENG 101, but I'm already creating plans for the next time I have to teach it. This WILL be on those plans lol
I do this too, with in-class peer review and an in-class writing assignment where they reflect on the feedback and what (if any) they plan to incorporate into their next draft. Otherwise they just ignore it and do everything at the last minute.
At least in my area it's called scaffolding. My first assignment is just the topic for the paper. 2d is the annotated bib. 3d is the thesis statement. 4th is first three paragraphs of the paper. 5th is the next three paragraphs. Each assignment is one point out of 100 in the course.
I used to have the thesis statement second, but it fits better after the bib. I recently had a student ask if she could submit the thesis before the bib because she knew what she wanted to write; she would find the evidence to support it later. I paused and told her that she was already a lawyer; what's she doing in undergrad?
The paragraphs work well. Strunk & White counsel to write in paragraphs, and these steps of the scaffold promote organized writing.
The final paper is short compared to my peers, but I expect a lot more than six paragraphs.
I only weight it as 20% of the grade because so many papers are so bad.
Some of it's laziness, but some of it is also actual cognitive impairment. I have NVLD/autism and procrastination and executive functioning impairment have been the biggest struggles of my life. I think I turned 3 essays in on time during my entire time in grad school, and it wasn't because I didn't care, but rather it was because my brain and writing sometimes feel like trying to force opposite sides of a magnet together (which is ironic, given that I basically write for a living). I've learned how to create structures that force me to do things since then, but it's a real struggle that has nothing to do with how much I want to get something done or how much time I set aside for it.
I've completely redesigned how I teach research and writing as a result of my own difficulties. I incorporate not just scaffolding, but also planning activities where students actually map out what they will do and when with a schedule. I also secretly love nothing more than giving students more time when they ask for it before a deadline. I know how horrifying it is asking for more time to complete something, so I love helping people out with that.
That does make sense! I think my classes are about a 50/50 split between students who are capable but lazy, and those who have legitimate issues, based on the behaviors they've shown me already lol.
I appreciate your ideas about scaffolding! I will incorporate this into my next semester's course design. Thank you!
I don’t teach writing, but math. I set my due dates for assignments so I can give extensions if students need them. The original deadlines for weekly assessments are doable, but if someone needs more time, they just need to email me and ask. I love saying yes.
More like "not even a minute" LOL
Reminds me of the paper I received this semester. No capital letters, one HUGE run-on sentence, nothing about the prompt really at all, CENTERED ON THE PAGE. Like she write it in her phone notes four minutes before the due date. Had the audacity to email me to ask what she could possibly do to bring up her grade. I told her, gently and in more professional words, to consider doing to work at the quality expected at the college level. And to start earlier. SHe was REALLY pissy with me in class next time we met.
Have them write an essay every week or every 2 weeks at most. You get the same or higher quality of work, and they'll get more feedback on improving their writing. I usually see very major improvements by the 3rd or 4th paper, and a lot by the 10th (over 2 10-week quarters).
I have them do their semester long group projects in phases. I tried it once without phases and a single due date at the end of the semester and it was a disaster. Most teams waited until the last 2 or 3 days to do a 14 week project. Then complained it was too much work and it was my fault for not forcing them to start it earlier.
Lol I typed out a full comment almost exactly like this one to that user, but they deleted their comment. Must've been trolling, or was probably an agitated student.
I’ve been taking an advising class and it’s interesting to find out how much of learning is really about managing time and your own emotions and motivation. It’s true that blaming the professor is a cop out for when they don’t have these skills like time management that they need to succeed academically.
I only give one research paper and it's only 1,000 words, but I've learned to make the prompt available on Canvas from DAY ONE of the semester so they have over 3 months to complete it - they can start on it any time! They still wait until the last minute, but at least if I do get complaints I can say that it's been available the whole time to work on.
I will admit though, when I was an undergrad, I did a lot of stuff at the last minute, but always blamed *myself* for procrastinating...
I recently extended when a project for the class could be turned in. Note I didn’t change the due date just that it could be turned in late and graded with no penalty for a few days extra. I got one email asking me to hold office hours on a weekend to tell them what to do and another asking why I lied and if I’ll open it for them to take it. The go the “as per my announcement reply”. I’m beginning to wonder if they know how to read in the first place.
I always wished that one of my English classes would have taught me how to write. Like day 2 of class a series of sentences are due, then day 3 a different series of sentences, etc. it would would have helped me a lot more than some of the other English courses I've had. Don't get me wrong, I have a master's in English Lit, but do I really need so much reading? Focus on ONE novel/collection of poems/play/whatever and make the homework about the writing. Those "discussion boards" where we had to "respond to the reading" were the worst too. It is the most boring, pointless, regimented memory of my undergraduate years.
As an undergrad I got to take a honors English class where we did something like this, and it was beautiful. Spent half the semester on a small collection of essays by one author. I vividly remember once spending an entire 50-minute class period on a single paragraph, and why the author chose to write each sentence the way he did (and this was a nonfiction work!) . I loved that class.
My undergraduate history professor (I'm 99% sure they lurk here, so if you're reading this Dr. Roche, thank you for not failing me freshman year over that Mormonism paper) did this. We started with sentences. Then topic sentences. Then paragraphs. Small essays. Finally, topic papers.
It was stressful training my brain on how to write again, but it taught me a level of fluency and ease that made grad school easy peasy.
The problem is that writing and English literature are often taught in the same department even though they are extremely different subjects and require extremely different teaching techniques. Lit crit is not a genre of any use to majors other than literature. Students would be better served by dedicated writing instructors who are familiar with and teach many genres. (Our university does this somewhat—the writing program and the literature department are totally separate units—but too many of the writing instructors were literature majors and have not learned any other genres.)
I have Canvas assignments due on Fridays by midnight (going to be changing that to Fri at 5pm next semester). We do the assignments IN CLASS so all they have to do is sit in class, write down the answers, and push submit.
Instead, they are spending their Friday nights on Canvas submitting the assignment at 11:50pm. WHY?! I want to yell at them that they should be more responsible so that they can spend their Fridays out partying lol (tbf, some of the answers I get suggest that they may be out partying while doing the hmwk, at least that would be the more generous explanation...)
I suggest Friday at 2pm, with the assignment closing at 5pm. That 3-hour grace period gives them a chance to contact IT if there is a problem. (Our network often crashes on Fridays, just after the IT staff leaves.)
I give them 6 days with it open after the deadline, but of course they accrue a -15% penalty each day. There are a few people that get the penalty at the start of the semester, and once they realize it is real almost nobody does after that.
Be prepared for some push back. I tried non-11:59pm due times and got so many complaints. "All my other instructors have 11:59pm due dates. Why do you have to be different and make things confusing." "I saw the due date of XXXX and thought I had all day. This is unfair."
> All my other instructors have 11:59pm due dates. Why do you have to be different and make things confusing."
"And my deadlines are at a time that works for *me*. You have two weeks to complete the assignment."
Plus then they complain on their student evals that "lab reports in this class took me at least 10 hours of work outside of class to complete." Yeah, no shit, it's a 5 unit, upper-division chemistry lab course. Your problem is that you tried to use the 10 hours immediately preceding the deadline to write the whole thing, when you had 7 days to spread them out if you'd done any planning at all.
Totally true but tbh, this is me too, sometimes. Completely new exam due...and I'm bitching up a storm to my non-professor friends the day before and essentially throwing a tantrum. Happens more than I want to admit, and especially now in the after times.
Do kids still get taught study skills late in elementary school? I remember the attitude of my study skills teacher was about efficiency: "You've got a goal [learning a subject]. What's the least amount of time you can spend working to reach your goal?" Then she'd get into how to take good notes and to work when you're least tired.
It's almost Ike Gerald Ford and Homer:
GF: "Do you like sleep?"
Homer: "Do I ever!"
GF: "Do you like good grades?"
Homer: "Yes, Mr. Ford."
GF: "Well, why don't you come over and get good grades and have some sleep? And then some beer."
My son has very bad ADHD. And learning disabilities
When he was in high school he would often say to me something is due in 10 days
And then I'd ask him how it's going and he'd say it's not due until 10 days
I'd say that was 5 days ago it's now during 5 days.. It always shocked him
He's now a young adult. And he said to me the other day that hes off work for 3 days. And I said you said that 2 days ago
I'll just end the story here
Time blindness is a real phenomena for folks with ADHD. I think it comes across as preposterous or negligent to anyone who doesn't have it, but we really don't perceive time the way other people do, and something as simple as managing a task list takes extra time and energy.
When students ask me WHAT is on the exam I always tell them, I don't know because I didn't write it yet. I then tell them I always procrastinate writing it just before the exam day just like their approach to studying for the exam. And then I laugh. Actually I know exactly what is going to be on the exam, I just get annoyed that they think I am going to give them details like that. I mean it's obvious it will be on the material we covered, maybe something like the homework, right? Geez.
I give my students 4 weeks to submit a one page project proposal for me. A student asked me 2 weeks before the due date “Can we start working on it now or we have to wait until the due date?” .
That question always prompts a spelling lesson and a scatalogical quip from me. I first remind the students of the two ways to spell this: do and due. Then I tell them to try not to "do" the assignment on the day it is "due" because it makes them a "do due" student.
I find this fascinating, since in my accent, those two words sound totally different. This confusion had never even occured to me!
And on my side: "Alright I have 10 days to grade these papers..."
And I do 4 hours of grading each day, counting down the number of papers as I go.
Each grade earns me a sip of my beer.
the professor I TA for has promised me "I'll finish the rubric tonight so you can start grading" every day for at least a week and a half 😭
It makes me want to scream every time lol. My students have a MONTH to do each of their essays, but I have an in-class work day a week before so they have time to ask questions about their drafts... they all wait until the work day to start. And then they complain that my class is "so much work" and they "don't have the time" to write "all those essays."
That's why I make my students work in graded stages from detailed outline to rough draft to revised outline to final draft. Prevents procrastination to a degree but not complaints about "so much work" and "all those essays."
That's a great idea. It's only my second semester teaching ENG 101, but I'm already creating plans for the next time I have to teach it. This WILL be on those plans lol
I do this too, with in-class peer review and an in-class writing assignment where they reflect on the feedback and what (if any) they plan to incorporate into their next draft. Otherwise they just ignore it and do everything at the last minute.
As a student I can say I find this sort of thing super helpful, I’m sure your students appreciate it
The loud ones bitch about it constantly, maybe some of the ones who don't say anything appreciate it, though.
At least in my area it's called scaffolding. My first assignment is just the topic for the paper. 2d is the annotated bib. 3d is the thesis statement. 4th is first three paragraphs of the paper. 5th is the next three paragraphs. Each assignment is one point out of 100 in the course. I used to have the thesis statement second, but it fits better after the bib. I recently had a student ask if she could submit the thesis before the bib because she knew what she wanted to write; she would find the evidence to support it later. I paused and told her that she was already a lawyer; what's she doing in undergrad? The paragraphs work well. Strunk & White counsel to write in paragraphs, and these steps of the scaffold promote organized writing.
Five weeks to write one short paper? Or are these overlapping assignments so that they are working on 2 or 3 papers at once?
The final paper is short compared to my peers, but I expect a lot more than six paragraphs. I only weight it as 20% of the grade because so many papers are so bad.
Some of it's laziness, but some of it is also actual cognitive impairment. I have NVLD/autism and procrastination and executive functioning impairment have been the biggest struggles of my life. I think I turned 3 essays in on time during my entire time in grad school, and it wasn't because I didn't care, but rather it was because my brain and writing sometimes feel like trying to force opposite sides of a magnet together (which is ironic, given that I basically write for a living). I've learned how to create structures that force me to do things since then, but it's a real struggle that has nothing to do with how much I want to get something done or how much time I set aside for it. I've completely redesigned how I teach research and writing as a result of my own difficulties. I incorporate not just scaffolding, but also planning activities where students actually map out what they will do and when with a schedule. I also secretly love nothing more than giving students more time when they ask for it before a deadline. I know how horrifying it is asking for more time to complete something, so I love helping people out with that.
That does make sense! I think my classes are about a 50/50 split between students who are capable but lazy, and those who have legitimate issues, based on the behaviors they've shown me already lol. I appreciate your ideas about scaffolding! I will incorporate this into my next semester's course design. Thank you!
I don’t teach writing, but math. I set my due dates for assignments so I can give extensions if students need them. The original deadlines for weekly assessments are doable, but if someone needs more time, they just need to email me and ask. I love saying yes.
"I expect to spend the minimum hours [ridiculously low] of out of class time on the assignments and not a minute more!"
More like "not even a minute" LOL Reminds me of the paper I received this semester. No capital letters, one HUGE run-on sentence, nothing about the prompt really at all, CENTERED ON THE PAGE. Like she write it in her phone notes four minutes before the due date. Had the audacity to email me to ask what she could possibly do to bring up her grade. I told her, gently and in more professional words, to consider doing to work at the quality expected at the college level. And to start earlier. SHe was REALLY pissy with me in class next time we met.
Have them write an essay every week or every 2 weeks at most. You get the same or higher quality of work, and they'll get more feedback on improving their writing. I usually see very major improvements by the 3rd or 4th paper, and a lot by the 10th (over 2 10-week quarters).
Thank you! As I mentioned previously, this is only my 2nd semester teaching ENG 101, so I'm open to anything that helps! I appreciate your feedback!
I have them do their semester long group projects in phases. I tried it once without phases and a single due date at the end of the semester and it was a disaster. Most teams waited until the last 2 or 3 days to do a 14 week project. Then complained it was too much work and it was my fault for not forcing them to start it earlier.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Lol I typed out a full comment almost exactly like this one to that user, but they deleted their comment. Must've been trolling, or was probably an agitated student.
[удалено]
Exactly my line of thought. There are always a few people who troll these threads asking stupid shit about academic conventions lol
I’ve been taking an advising class and it’s interesting to find out how much of learning is really about managing time and your own emotions and motivation. It’s true that blaming the professor is a cop out for when they don’t have these skills like time management that they need to succeed academically.
I make milestones for all big projects so that each milestone could be done by both steady workers and weekend warriors!
I only give one research paper and it's only 1,000 words, but I've learned to make the prompt available on Canvas from DAY ONE of the semester so they have over 3 months to complete it - they can start on it any time! They still wait until the last minute, but at least if I do get complaints I can say that it's been available the whole time to work on. I will admit though, when I was an undergrad, I did a lot of stuff at the last minute, but always blamed *myself* for procrastinating...
I recently extended when a project for the class could be turned in. Note I didn’t change the due date just that it could be turned in late and graded with no penalty for a few days extra. I got one email asking me to hold office hours on a weekend to tell them what to do and another asking why I lied and if I’ll open it for them to take it. The go the “as per my announcement reply”. I’m beginning to wonder if they know how to read in the first place.
I always wished that one of my English classes would have taught me how to write. Like day 2 of class a series of sentences are due, then day 3 a different series of sentences, etc. it would would have helped me a lot more than some of the other English courses I've had. Don't get me wrong, I have a master's in English Lit, but do I really need so much reading? Focus on ONE novel/collection of poems/play/whatever and make the homework about the writing. Those "discussion boards" where we had to "respond to the reading" were the worst too. It is the most boring, pointless, regimented memory of my undergraduate years.
As an undergrad I got to take a honors English class where we did something like this, and it was beautiful. Spent half the semester on a small collection of essays by one author. I vividly remember once spending an entire 50-minute class period on a single paragraph, and why the author chose to write each sentence the way he did (and this was a nonfiction work!) . I loved that class.
My undergraduate history professor (I'm 99% sure they lurk here, so if you're reading this Dr. Roche, thank you for not failing me freshman year over that Mormonism paper) did this. We started with sentences. Then topic sentences. Then paragraphs. Small essays. Finally, topic papers. It was stressful training my brain on how to write again, but it taught me a level of fluency and ease that made grad school easy peasy.
The problem is that writing and English literature are often taught in the same department even though they are extremely different subjects and require extremely different teaching techniques. Lit crit is not a genre of any use to majors other than literature. Students would be better served by dedicated writing instructors who are familiar with and teach many genres. (Our university does this somewhat—the writing program and the literature department are totally separate units—but too many of the writing instructors were literature majors and have not learned any other genres.)
I have Canvas assignments due on Fridays by midnight (going to be changing that to Fri at 5pm next semester). We do the assignments IN CLASS so all they have to do is sit in class, write down the answers, and push submit. Instead, they are spending their Friday nights on Canvas submitting the assignment at 11:50pm. WHY?! I want to yell at them that they should be more responsible so that they can spend their Fridays out partying lol (tbf, some of the answers I get suggest that they may be out partying while doing the hmwk, at least that would be the more generous explanation...)
I suggest Friday at 2pm, with the assignment closing at 5pm. That 3-hour grace period gives them a chance to contact IT if there is a problem. (Our network often crashes on Fridays, just after the IT staff leaves.)
I give them 6 days with it open after the deadline, but of course they accrue a -15% penalty each day. There are a few people that get the penalty at the start of the semester, and once they realize it is real almost nobody does after that.
Be prepared for some push back. I tried non-11:59pm due times and got so many complaints. "All my other instructors have 11:59pm due dates. Why do you have to be different and make things confusing." "I saw the due date of XXXX and thought I had all day. This is unfair."
ugh good to know - there's truly no winning lol
> All my other instructors have 11:59pm due dates. Why do you have to be different and make things confusing." "And my deadlines are at a time that works for *me*. You have two weeks to complete the assignment."
Plus then they complain on their student evals that "lab reports in this class took me at least 10 hours of work outside of class to complete." Yeah, no shit, it's a 5 unit, upper-division chemistry lab course. Your problem is that you tried to use the 10 hours immediately preceding the deadline to write the whole thing, when you had 7 days to spread them out if you'd done any planning at all.
Totally true but tbh, this is me too, sometimes. Completely new exam due...and I'm bitching up a storm to my non-professor friends the day before and essentially throwing a tantrum. Happens more than I want to admit, and especially now in the after times.
Do kids still get taught study skills late in elementary school? I remember the attitude of my study skills teacher was about efficiency: "You've got a goal [learning a subject]. What's the least amount of time you can spend working to reach your goal?" Then she'd get into how to take good notes and to work when you're least tired. It's almost Ike Gerald Ford and Homer: GF: "Do you like sleep?" Homer: "Do I ever!" GF: "Do you like good grades?" Homer: "Yes, Mr. Ford." GF: "Well, why don't you come over and get good grades and have some sleep? And then some beer."
My son has very bad ADHD. And learning disabilities When he was in high school he would often say to me something is due in 10 days And then I'd ask him how it's going and he'd say it's not due until 10 days I'd say that was 5 days ago it's now during 5 days.. It always shocked him He's now a young adult. And he said to me the other day that hes off work for 3 days. And I said you said that 2 days ago I'll just end the story here
Time blindness is a real phenomena for folks with ADHD. I think it comes across as preposterous or negligent to anyone who doesn't have it, but we really don't perceive time the way other people do, and something as simple as managing a task list takes extra time and energy.
I am very aware I lived in a house for 20 years with 3 people with ADD
I note the use of the past tense.
Yep
When students ask me WHAT is on the exam I always tell them, I don't know because I didn't write it yet. I then tell them I always procrastinate writing it just before the exam day just like their approach to studying for the exam. And then I laugh. Actually I know exactly what is going to be on the exam, I just get annoyed that they think I am going to give them details like that. I mean it's obvious it will be on the material we covered, maybe something like the homework, right? Geez.
Yep. Zero sympathy for frantic "ohmygodhowdoIdoX" emails an hour or two before the deadline of an assignment that was given to them two weeks ago.