Grace Days may not be the Saving Grace we Intended

Do you use grace days (aka skip days or slip days) in your classes? I think they have been in use for some time but really came to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic. Grace days (or whatever you choose to call them) are designated time frames, or a designed number of days, during which students can submit their assigned work without penalty and without the need to ask for an extension. The purpose of grace days is to provide flexibility for unforeseen circumstances (e.g. a death in the family, car accident, illness, etc.) to allow students to manage their workload(s) effectively while also reducing the burden (administrative burden and decision/adjudication fatigue) on instructors for handling all of the individual extension requests. Sounds great, right?

Interestingly, everyone seems to implement grace days slightly differently. For example, some instructors state something similar to: "everyone has a 3-day grace day period for all written assignments in this course. This means that you can submit up to 3-days late without penalty". Others, such as myself, have implemented a 5-day total grace day period. Students have 5 grace days to use towards the four written assignments in the course, and they choose how to distribute them. Maybe they use 2 grace days on assignment one, none on assignments two and three, and the remaining 3 grace days on assignment four. Maybe they use all 5 grace days on assignment one, meaning they have none left for remaining assignments. Maybe they don't use any at all. The choice is theirs - with the caveat that when they are gone, they're gone. Donezo.

The Pros of Grace Days - Student Perspective:

I've already alluded to this above but one of the major pros of implementing grace days is that it provides flexibility to students for those unforeseen circumstances. There are numerous pros to the implementation of grace days:

• Alleviation of stress and anxiety around deadlines when unexpected challenges or personal situations arise concurrently with said deadlines

• Students don't have to disclose personal information to their instructor about why they missed a deadline (and personally, I don't feel they should have to disclose this kind of information to us as the instructional team)

• Students don't have to endure the burden of attaining a VIF (verification of illness form) or other such forms (which can be very time consuming, and sometimes costly in terms of the monetary requirements for attaining some of these forms)

• Allow for an empathetic way, and maybe even a more realistic way, to address the impact of inequity in our classrooms (our students are more than students - they wear many hats such as child, sibling, parent, employee, maybe even employer, volunteer, caregiver, etc.) so this may help to reduce the inequity in barriers our students face

The Cons of Grace Days - Student Perspective:

While the benefits of grace days sound enticing (because they are!) there are some cons to their implementation as well. What I have noticed over the past few years are:

• Students don't use grace days 'appropriately' (many students use all 5 grace days early in the term and then don't have any left to use when they may really need them)

• Grace days do not instill the sense of meeting deadlines

• Personally, I am recognizing that they are actually doing a disservice to students by perpetuating procrastination, perfectionism and catastrophizing - traits that we know are on the rise in younger people

The last point here is the one that really sticks with me and causes a lot of internal turmoil when thinking of how to balance supporting students and acting with empathy with my own teaching philosophies around instilling a sense of ownership and accountability in learning. We know more young people (aka our students) have mood disorders such as depression and anxiety, and procrastination & perfectionism are traits related to said mood disorders. While grace days may help alleviate the symptoms, I'm not sure that this is teaching them, or giving them any tools, to learn to manage and deal with those issues; rather it perpetuates or allows students to perpetuate these components / bad habits.

The Pros of Grace Days - Instructor Perspective

In addition to the benefits that grace days afford to students, there are benefits for the instructor as well:

• A reduction in the number of extension request emails from students (in theory)

• A reduction in the administrative load on instructors for managing all the different extensions (in theory)

• Promotes student well-being in your course (if this is important to you)

• Potential for better student work & outcomes by reducing barriers to success

The Cons of Grace Days - Instructor Perspective

As we know all too well, there are two sides to every coin. There are numerous downsides to implementing grace days, which in my experience have included:

• It's not actually reducing the number of student emails; I still get numerous emails about extensions, asking if their situation is applicable to the use of grace days (they are a carte blanche system - you don't have to ask) or, even asking for more because they used them all early in the term.......sorry kid, but no

• The challenges of communicating what grace days are and how they work - especially in my online courses as I don't see them in-person; many students are familiar with the concept but many are not, so it leads to a lot of clarification emails and questions about them (despite me being as clear as I possibly can in the syllabus and course policy page in our LMS)

• The monitoring of number of grace days used and remaining has actually increased the administrative load on instructors and TAs rather than reducing it...

• The interaction of grace days with accommodation requests through accessibility, our Short-Term Absence (STA) declaration (a 48-hour, no questions asked, 'get out of jail free card'), and the VIF declaration makes determining grace day use and tracking difficult

Where Do We Go From Here?

So, where DO we go from here? I struggled with this a lot. I ended up creating a combination of a grace-day period / course specific short-term absence (that 48-hour, no questions asked, 'get out of jail free card' that my institution uses). Introducing - the Wild Card! In short, students get one 'Wild Card' to 'play' in the term - once they have 'played it' then it's done. They can use it for any one of the four assignments in the course, but not on either of the term tests. The Wild Card grants them a 72-hour, no questions asked, extension for that assignment. When they submit their assignment late, they have to type in the phrase "Wild Card" into the comment box that accompanies the submission of the assignment in the LMS. If they don't type it, they don't get the application of the wild card. The instructions (in part) that I use are below:

Each student is allotted one (1) "Wild Card" in the course. This Wild Card is a maximum 72-hour (3-day), no questions asked extension, providing up to 3 "extra" days that you have beyond the assignment deadline to submit your assignment during which no late penalty will be applied. However, you can only 'play' your Wild Card once; once you have used it, there are no more extra days to apply (similar to the 48-hour Short Term Absence rules). For example, if you only use 1 day (24-hours) as extra time to submit your assignment, you do not get to keep the unused days (in this example, the other two days, to apply elsewhere). Nothing carries over. Therefore, use your Wild Card only when you need to! 

If an assignment is submitted after the maximal 72-hour period of the Wild Card extra days, the submission is considered late, and the associated late penalty will apply for the days beyond the Wild Card it is late. 

I encourage students to plan their Wild Card use for a time during the semester when they know they have a variety of midterms and assignments due. 

I also have an item in the gradebook that is entitled "Wild Card." It is an ungraded item, and everyone starts off with a 1 in that column - all students have 1 Wild Card to play at the start of the term. When they use it, it changes to 0 (well, to be clear, I and / or the TAs manually change it to 0) and then no more extensions (unless of course through accessibility services, the STA, or the VIF systems - so still lots of opportunities for extensions) are permitted. My hope with this is that this approach 1) still helps to alleviate pressure points in the semester for students and removes barriers to academic success, while 2) also encouraging (forcing?) students to be more intentional and careful about when and how to apply extensions. Life happens - I get it - it has happened to me before too, but it doesn't mean that I am now immune to any and all responsibility. Like I noted earlier, I think grace days are a great way to support students and instructors, but they are not the be all end all tool to help students learn to manage procrastination, perfectionism and catastrophization issues (which I have a lot of thoughts on.... but that is for another time).

Will it work? I am cautiously optimistic. We just had our first assignment due and 22% of students (in a class of just under 400) used their Wild Card on the first assignment.... which is - pun absolutely intended - WILD in my mind, since it is still early in the semester. I suppose only time will tell.