January once again enters and brings its familiar gift of a new year. Professionally, for me, the New Year begins with e-mails filing in, committees forming, meetings being set, book reviews underway, and courses beginning. I feel the stress and excitement of launching a new semester with my students and genuinely look forward to getting to know each of them and working with them.
Week one is complete and as I go through assignments, grading, and sorting my e-mail on this snowy Sunday afternoon, my attention is drawn to one particular e-mail. One of my students writes, “I’m freaking out because I can’t get to Padlet! What do I do?!!” Well, yes. Considering the assignment was due Friday at midnight, and here we are on Sunday afternoon, I can understand the stress. Padlet’s decision to take a few hours on Sunday afternoon for maintenance updates must have come as a painful shock as the student tried to submit their assignment. I’m not going to spend too much time pointing out that the assignment’s due date has faded into the shadows of the past, nor will I mention if the assignment had been submitted on time, there would be no cause for freaking out. I will not stand on that discussion point, because, for some university students, due dates are not seen as necessarily “firm” and to point out the due date has passed causes real stress and triggers a string of reasons why they needed until Sunday to post their reflection.
Noticing some students are not fully prepared to encounter the academic rigors of university life, or emotionally prepared to encounter the necessary responsibilities of learning is a disquiet trend. (I’ll specifically remind you I used the word some in those last two sentences.) This is a growing conversation among my colleagues and one I hold as a genuine concern. Young adults who truly are wanting to grow and develop into a professional, wanting to enter into their adulthood with a degree and serve our communities, yet are not fully aware or prepared to understand the discipline required to achieve that goal is a reality on many campuses today.
Learning is complex. It is a multifaceted process with many subtle gradations that all weave together to create an understanding of larger interconnected quantities of information. It requires many variables to be in place within the learner, all functioning together, as they receive an increasing accumulation of information. Learning is self-driven and self-defined as well. As important as it is to have highly qualified teachers, professors, and facilitators in our learning experiences, it is equally important to be a willing self-participant who is wanting to engage in self-risk and self-uncertainty as new information is brought into an existing schema.
Due dates are an increasingly undesirable part of the paced learning process for those “some” students. Last year, I had two students, each in a different course, who at the end of an online course, wanted to submit all their missing assignments, (A.K.A. almost all of them) during the last week of the course. Not participating in the course flow, discussions, and assignments for the duration of the course, ignoring all reminders, and correspondence from me, and then, at the end, wanting to pull a marathon of effort to get it all in was, in each of their minds, a reasonable request. I’ll be honest, I’m not exactly fond of the idea that we can gain the complete benefit of a semester-long course in one week of magnificent effort.
The first argument that usually rises up as fellow professors discuss the topic of due dates is, “How on earth will they be able to handle due dates once they are in the field?” Well, to be honest, they are not in the field- yet. They are in university. And, as many reports are showing, stress and anxiety among students is a growing concern. So, what do we do? Universities across the board are working to create support for students as they navigate the academic rigors and personal demands of professional development. A massive effort is being put into supporting students, yet, suicide rates among 15 – 24-year-olds remain a clear and growing nationwide concern. Stress is real for our students, and, as simplistic as it sounds, due dates on assignments are stressful.
I have colleagues who have no leniency for late assignment submissions and others who are consistently providing extension dates on assignments. As a major fan of essential questions, I wonder what the correct question to ask is. “How can we best prepare students for university life?” or “How can we best prepare universities for our students?”