Goldilocks and the Three... Hundred and Seventy-Two Assignments

Question for you - what was the assignment structure and weighting distribution like in your courses when you were in undergrad?

Back in the olden days of yore... aka from 2003-2007 when I was doing my undergrad.... it was pretty common to have few assignments with high grade weightings. Many of my courses looked like the following:

1. Midterm at 25% and a Final Exam at 75%

2. Midterm at 50% and a Final Exam at 50%

3. Two Midterms at 25% each and a Final Exam at 50%

4. Two Midterms at 30% each and a Final Exam at 40%

5. Four Midterms at 25% each

For my courses with laboratory components, usually each of the 5 lab reports was 5% each (for a total of 25% of your course mark) interspersed with one or two midterms and a final exam. Other than the lab reports, I rarely had small, low stakes assignments in my courses.

Fast forward to 2025 and it seems like every course has a plethora of deliverables throughout the term. This shift in pedagogical approach didn't happen overnight. Slowly, having few, higher stakes assessments was starting to have negative effects on student mental health. And, yeah, it is scary to have a single assessment worth 75% of your final grade in a course! So, we (instructors) began moving towards including a few smaller, low stakes assignments to provide students a chance to learn, show what they know, and decrease the weighting (or stakes) of the other assessments. In short, we scaffolded assignments. Awesome.

Enter the Covid-19 pandemic. It was a stressful time - for the entire world - and we did what we thought would help. We (instructors, departments, and/or institutions) removed the traditional midterms and final exams, and went to weekly assessments within our courses, and in some cases, multiple deliverables per week within the same course. Great! I've done a good job at relieving student stress in my course by having multiple, low stakes assignments. Problem is - we all did the same thing, and what's more so, many of us have kept the same assessment structure as we did in the pandemic. This means that students have an abundance of tasks due each and every week for all of their courses. Instead of having periods of low, moderate, and high stress based on deliverables in a course, they just have high stress all the time. My personal opinion - the pendulum has swung too far the other way - from few, high stakes assignments to a multitude of low stakes assignments - meaning we haven't really mitigated student stress, we've just changed it. Worse, we maybe even increased it.

I made a graph to visualize this point. In the graph below we have the week within the term on the x-axis (from weeks 1-13 to include reading week) and student stress on the y-axis (from low to high). When we have few deliverables (the green line) we see that our students move through periods of low and high stress. Usually weeks 4-6 (just prior to reading week), sometime around week 9 (approximately 2/3 of the way through the term) and weeks 11-13 (just prior to final exams) are the most stressful as this is when most courses have assessments due for grading. But, at least in this case students are afforded the opportunity to 'ride the sine wave' (as I like to say) of periods of high and low stress. When we have a moderate number of deliverables (blue line) we still see some peaks and valleys around the same weeks, but the valleys aren't as sharp. And when we have a high number of deliverables (purple line) student stress increases rapidly (once they get all their syllabi and realize how much work they have this term) and stays high for the entirety of the semester. I have had all three categories peak right around the end of the term as many courses have a final, major assessment due here, regardless of their course having a final exam or not.

Figure 1: Student stress over the course of the semester as a function of the number of deliverables (low, moderate, and high).

What is the Goldilocks number of deliverables to have in a course? Obviously, there is no one specific answer here, only "it depends." It does require that we, as instructors, really examine the assessments we have so carefully designed and curated and ask ourselves if they are still relevant. Are there components that can be redeployed in a different manner? Are there components that can (or should) be removed? That discussion board that you love so much and believe is so important - take a good look at it. Are students really engaging with it the way you imagined or intended? Or are they just doing it for the sake of doing it because it is part of their grade? That written assignment (or maybe a few specific questions within an assignment) that you believe to be useful and think is so important - is it? What components of our assessments are truly necessary? What are the 'need to haves' and 'nice to haves'? Or maybe a different way to think about it is the 'truly need to have to achieve the learning objectives of the course' vs. 'need to have because I spent so much time on this and I think it is important/helpful'? I also say this like it is easy and it is not. It is so, incredibly, hard. This is something I do all the time. I'm constantly updating and tinkering with assessment ideas. And I always have to ask myself something to the effect of "Is this really necessary? Or is this your own idea of necessary?" Often times, it is the latter. It is also really helpful to ask other members of your instructional team - your teaching assistants (TAs). They put a lot of time and effort into reading and assessing student work - ask them what they are noticing, what thoughts they have, or what they might suggest doing differently. Trust me, they have a lot of thoughts - great thoughts in fact - but you have to be willing to put your own ego aside and ask. Lastly, what do your course evaluations have to say? Often there are questions about workload within the course - what trends have you noticed? Are students commenting at all about workload within your course?

Personally, I believe that reviewing course evaluations, having open discussions with your TAs, and some serious self-reflection are good places to start when examining the assessment structure of your course. This way we can help Goldilocks on her way from 'too few' to the 'too many' to finding that 'just right.'

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.

Is the Measure of a Man Merely Metrics?

I should clarify that by "man" I really mean "person", but I am a sucker for alliteration..... so, "man" it is.

I was in a meeting recently with some amazing academics, and the topic of conversation for the meeting itself was derailed in THE MOST GLORIOUS of ways to discuss the purpose of metrics, when to use them, and importantly, when we may not want to use them.

This really got me thinking (I'm sure you could smell the wood burning).

Two of my goals for the summer are to update my CV (always a good task to keep on top of) and to update, and possibly re-think, my Teaching Dossier. Good personal goals to set, but necessary professional goals for me as well - I am approximately halfway through my two-year contract at the time of writing this.

I asked an academic colleague if they were willing to share their CV with me, as I am always looking for ways to improve the organization of my CV, and to ensure that I am capturing everything on it that should be captured. This colleague kindly obliged and sent along a copy of their CV. After a quick perusal of their CV my first thought was "well, I'm never getting hired if this is the competition." To be clear, I do not view my colleague as competition - they are my colleague - and more importantly, they are excellent at what they do. I think the institution is very lucky to have them.

I then look back at my own CV and think "is this all I am?" You might do the same. But then I stop and think "no, I am actually so much more than this; this is merely a snapshot. Does it show what I have done in the past? Yes. Does it show what I am fully capable of? No. Not even close. It shows me in pieces, but it is not the whole."

"Comparison is the thief of joy"

Now, there are very reasonable reasons why this person's CV is stronger (different?) than mine. We completed our education at different institutions, and this means we were afforded different opportunities depending on the options available, and the governance of internal structures. I'll give an example. In the department in which I completed my PhD, it is pretty rare for a PhD student to get the chance to teach a course. Your opportunities to supervise an undergraduate research thesis also depends on interest to your supervisor's lab, and then the student's interest (or lack thereof) in your work.

When I look at my own CV, one thing I am VERY COGNIZANT of is that my teaching experience is almost entirely 100 level service courses; I have no experience teaching senior undergraduate or graduate level courses. This is not for lack of trying. I apply to sessional positions across Canada all the time. I have also reached out to connections to keep me apprised of any upcoming opportunities to continue to develop myself, so that I can demonstrate to a hiring committee that yes, I am in fact capable of doing the things I have not yet done - those all too glaring gaps in my own CV.

And this brings me back to that conversation I mentioned a moment ago. Metrics. As academics and scientists, we may not be "all about the Benjamine's" but we are definitely "all about the metrics" (someone should write a song). Give me the data - I can't just take your word for it.

How do you demonstrate competency for things that you've never done before? Can I competently teach a 4th year undergraduate course? Yes - absolutely. Based on my prior experiences and skillsets that I have developed, I know I can develop, design, and teach senior undergraduate and graduate courses despite not having done it - yet. Can I be an effective committee member on a graduate student's thesis? Yes - absolutely. Do I think that my first time serving on a thesis committee will present a steep learning curve? Yes - of course it will. One would hope that having gone through graduate school and having worked in academia would demonstrate to hiring committees the potential of the individual (in this case, myself) to take initiative, learn, grow, and develop competency over time. Where's the section for that on the CV?

I know that I have a positive impact on the students I teach, the colleagues I work with, and the institution I serve, just as they have all made a positive impact on me. I know this from conversations I have had, through statements that have made their way back to me through the grape vine (awesome CCR song by the way) and from other forms of communication I receive. However, none of these - the conversations, the emails, the thank you cards - are metrics that appear on my CV. Nor should they.

So, where does this leave us in terms of measuring our "worth" in metrics? Those all-too-important tangible metrics, that can be displayed, shared, and compared, to provide rationale for decisions made on behalf of us but without us (offers of employment, promotion, etc.). Honestly, I don't know. What I do know is that my worth is so much more than mere metrics.

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