2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Since the return to in-person classes after our COVID-19 lockdown semesters, we have implemented a policy of “lightly-flexible” deadlines in three required undergraduate courses in our chemical engineering curriculum. Under this policy, example solutions and rubrics are not posted immediately when assessments are due, but instead posted 48-72 hours later (the exact timing depends on the class). Students are permitted to upload their work to our Learning Management System (LMS) without penalty up until the time the solutions and rubrics are made available, and after this point, no credit is earned. This policy has helped to alleviate some student issues and complaints about inflexibility, especially if a technical glitch prevented an upload to the LMS from meeting the deadline, but also in situations when a student has a temporary setback like minor illness or a bad day. From the instructor standpoint, the policy also prevents a considerable number of “judgment calls” about what is or is not a valid excuse for submitting assessments late, and more broadly, a reduction in students attempting to "trauma-dump" or otherwise emotionally manipulate instructors into making special exceptions.
It is observed in the literature that procrastination often correlates with both lower student performance and higher levels of student stress. Having deadlines that are too flexible can lead to students never taking the time to demonstrate the learning outcomes associated with the course by the end of the semester. The results from our students confirm in part the correlation between procrastination and student performance. While some students of all levels of performance have made use of the “lightly-flexible” deadline policy, we observe that students who earn C, D, and F grades in these courses make use of the policy on average two to three times more often than those earning A and B grades. Further, a higher proportion of students with A grades never make use of the policy at all. The data also reveals differences between class levels: in our junior-level course, an average of 0.5 slight extensions per student have been granted, versus on average 1.0 extensions per student among the sophomores and 3.0 extensions per student among the first-years.