One concern with flexible deadlines is that in the absence of late work penalties, students will wait until the absolute last, last, last, last, LAST possible moment to turn in their assignments. The fear is that this will create a ton of extra work for the teacher, and that students will not develop time management skills since there are no consequences of a lower grade/reduced points)…because all students in traditional points-based grading systems turn in ALL of their assignments on time, right? And then they graduate and become college students who continue to turn in ALL of their assignments on time, right? And then they graduate and become employees who complete ALL of their tasks on time while being adults who get done ALL of their errands on time, right? All because of low grades and reduced points in school…right? This belief has prevailed despite the lack of empirical evidence to support it. Granted, the fear does seem to play out in some cases when flexible deadlines are misused, or there is some other assessment policy getting in the way. Nonetheless, for any change to take place, this belief must be addressed…

In their 2022 article, Hills & Peacock report findings from a study that Hills conducted with 43 participants in her own undergrad biology course. On the syllabus, she listed every assignment dated with its deadline plus its extension, usually of one week. Of the total 301 opportunities for students to use extensions over the semester, just 54 (18%) were used. Furthermore, 40% of students used extensions on low-stakes assignments just once, and 35% did not use them at all. This shows that students used extensions only as-needed, and how that need varied from student to student. Oh, and students also said that using the extensions helped manage their time better!

I like these findings for two reasons.

First, they add to the body of evidence debunking the myth that students will abuse a well-designed version of the system. Second, they contradict the myth that students will not learn how to meet deadlines in a spectacular plot twist showing that the extensions, themselves, helped students develop time management skills!

Another benefit of extensions comes from the teacher perspective, also debunking the myth that flexible deadlines create more work for the teacher. Hills reports that most assignments would come in on the deadline, and then the rest would come in the following week. This helped spread out her work of reviewing and providing feedback. After all, she was not going to finish all the assignments by the next class, anyway, so the extension policy actually reflected the reality of the professor’s practice. That is, fixed deadlines reflect an imagined reality whenever the teacher does not provide IMMEDIATE feedback to ALL students, which is pretty much all the time. Even a day or two extension likely changes nothing in terms of when most teachers get feedback-rich work back to students! Hills also mentions the benefit of no longer getting any more emails about extension requests. Her extensions were unconditional, providing space and confidentiality to students, and saving her from unnecessary correspondence.

Flexible Deadlines ≠ “No Deadlines”
When stakeholders are concerned about flexible deadlines, they usually think “no deadlines.” Unfortunately, this belief might be the result of experiences with questionable assessment practices more than anything floating around in the ether. For example, the “no deadline” interpretation seems to play out when students have an entirely empty gradebook for months, receive zero feedback, suddenly complete assignments at the last second, and the teacher somehow uses that learning evidence to determine an end-of-term grade. There are a few different problems with this.

First, an empty gradebook and no feedback is no good. This is a feedback problem, not a problem with flexible deadlines. Teachers need systems that allow for continuous feedback loops, grading way, way less, and providing feedback way, way more.

Second, grading lots of assignments is no good. When teachers assign fixed due dates to assignments because they use them as graded summative assessments, the gradebook takes these scores and <beep><boop><beep> calculates a course grade. This means that ALL assignments are used to report achievement regardless of where students are in their learning. In other words, many assessments that SHOULD be formative are being graded, thus turning them into summatives. This is an assessment problem, not a problem with flexible deadlines. Teachers need systems that keep formatives true formatives, and limit summatives to only when they’re necessary (i.e., at the end of the grading term).

Third, we should be highly suspicious if last-minute assignments can be crammed and teachers use that as valid learning evidence. More often than not, those assignments are simple completion-based assessments measuring lower-order thinking skills that teachers think count as students understanding content. This is an assessment problem, not a problem with flexible deadlines. Bottom line is that teachers need better measurement tools, and possibly better standards! For example, if students CAN cram for lower-order thinking skills and those skills are the standards, those standards are no good. No wonder students can meet expectations within such little time! After establishing meaningful standards, next is getting into some parameters for extensions, and NOT confusing giving extensions with reassessing.

Extensions vs. Reassessing
In a traditional points-based grading system, individual assignments with fixed deadlines are treated summatively (i.e., they are graded). In something like a standards-based assignments are used formatively (i.e., not graded) instead. When those assignments show that students meet expectations, the standards grade is updated. Or, when teachers (or students) look at the collection of assignments in a portfolio—once at the end of the term—the standards grade is updated. When those assignments show that students are still in the process of learning, the teacher provides feedback, perhaps more instruction, and does NOT update the grade (because that would be a summative, which we don’t need until the end of the grading term). When teachers identify students still in the learning process, they will need to reassess before updating the grade.

Whereas extensions are the teacher saying “I need this to provide feedback,” reassessment is the teacher saying “this student is still in the learning process, so I need more evidence before updating the grade.” That is, extensions are about feedback, and reassessments are about reporting achievement.

Rather than combining these ideas and having all summatives all the time, it would be more helpful to distinguish between them. This is done by providing extensions for assignments, and moving summative assessments to after students have learned content/skills. In practice, this means assignment extensions would be limited (e.g., a week or two), yet reassessment opportunities for students would be unlimited to the extent possible throughout the year. This all tracks with what we know about human development and different learning rates.

So, what are your questions about how extensions, and reassessment relate to flexible deadlines?

Reference
Hills, M., & Peacock, K. (2022). Replacing Power with Flexible Structure: Implementing Flexible Deadlines to Improve Student Learning Experiences. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 10. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.10.26