According to the American Psychological Association (APA), anywhere from “80 percent to 95 percent of college students procrastinate, particularly when it comes to doing their coursework.” Even at its conservative end, this estimate range is shocking, representing at an absolute minimum, four out of every five students in college.
In a 2017 article by Maryellen Weimer, she describes the assignment features and details which researchers thought might be related to procrastination (based in part on some previously published conceptual work). They include fear (worry that the student wasn’t going to do well on the assignment); norms (work on the assignment was started early/late by everyone else in the class); deadline pressure (lots of assignments due before this one); rewards (incentives for getting started early); interdependence (other work in the course couldn’t be done until the assignment or parts of it were finished); interest (assignment was something the student wanted to do); skill variety (assignment required a variety of skills); scope of the task (assignment was time consuming); difficulty (it was a hard assignment); clarity (did not understand assignment requirements); propensity to procrastinate (usually waiting until the last minute before starting assignments).
Lolita Paff, Associate Professor of Business Economics, and Interim Division Head, at Penn State University, described a few techniques were described that can help students who are trying to manage procrastination in a 2015 talk. They included:
Prep work for homework assignment
As often as possible allow time for students to start the assignment or hold students accountable for some type of prep work in class. Rationale: a blank sheet paper or screen feeds into the “I don’t even know where to begin this…” mantra. When a project is started in class, students can ask question to determine whether they are on the right track. The opportunity for some feedback helps to quell those objections and makes the assignment more easily tackled.
Assigning a student created project plan as part of major assignments such as a mid-term or final project can be helpful.
One of the first parts of the projects can be for them to submit a plan that describes how they plan tackle this project and provide bench marked dates for when they will be able to complete each section of the assignments. This will also help students develop and practice their project planning and time management skills.
Managing Perfectionism
Some students may need help managing perfectionism. How we establish our expectations, how we grade, and how we speak about work in our courses, either sends a signal that either the product is important or that the process AND the product are important. Valuing the process helps students who are somewhat perfectionistic from feeling overwhelmed and unable to even start a project because they don’t want to mess it up and don’t know where to start. If learning is a process, and it is, emphasizing this idea helps students to get started and reduces the risk of procrastination.
Additional approaches include:
Help students recognize the smaller task within a big project through instructions.
Big projects can be overwhelming at the outset. Label sections of the project into manageable parts such as research, writing, and editing, for example, if possible. Then, the student can view how to tackle each task step by step until the project is done. This will also help students develop and practice their project planning and time management skills.
Reminders
We all benefit from reminders. Students usually express appreciation for them. Reminders can help them stay on track as well. You can schedule Announcements in Canvas to go out as reminders based on when assignments are listed as due in your syllabus.
Requiring office hours or help sessions:
Emphasize to your students that you (or your UI/TA/AI) are available for office hours if they need help or have questions. You can also require students (or student groups) to check-in at significant points during the semester via office hours if feasible.
Leave a Reply