As we’ve learned this past year, building community is an important part of an online course. An aspect of building community is projecting care and support. A quick way to do this is to build in opportunities for students to have deadline extensions without having to ask you permission for them. Build in “oops tokens” or “no questions asked deadline extensions” that students can use for a 24-hour extension once a semester. If you’ve used a technique like this before, how did it work?
Source: Darby and Lang (2019) Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes.
This approach has been a feature of my courses for the last 10 years. Students may choose to take advantage of a 48-hour, no questions asked, deadline extension twice a semester. These extensions have been used responsibly and students appreciate this aspect of the course. It alleviates a lot of stress. It also respects students’ privacy as they don’t need to ask for an extension for a particular reason – -illness, feeling overwhelmed, etc., but rather places responsibility within the students’ hands. Part of this approach is explaining that deadlines are established to help students manage their workload. Providing these extensions help students do that as well.
Hi Deb, thanks for sharing your experience with this technique! I appreciate you highlighting that this can help respect students’ privacy (which I imagine could build trust between you and students).
How have students responded when you have the conversation about why instructors establish deadlines? I think a lot of us take that for granted and don’t have those conversations enough!