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[changinggears]

I've slowly switched over to having my f2f students submit everything electronically.  I've discovered that establishing the deadline the night before class meant that students are no longer waiting until the morning of class to try to finish a paper and then running into problems and giving up or not showing up to class because they think that because they were absent, I'll accept the paper late (I won't, which they'd know if they'd RTFS).

I've fiddled with the timing of the deadline and have finally settled on midnight, as this seems to be a universal deadline in online courses.  Of course, students still wait until the last minute to submit the work, but as long as it's submitted by midnight, it's no skin off of my teeth.  But now I'm planning my hybrid course for the fall and I'm rethinking my deadline for several reasons: we're switching to BB 9.0 and with new technology comes new problems and if my students are trying to submit something at midnight and something goes wrong, I will not be awake or online, so I foresee much wailing and gnashing of teeth and late submissions.  Also, the students have to read and comment on each other's writing and I have had some students complain about having to wait up until midnight for their peers to post their work (I'm doing a trial run on this set-up this semester to see how things go and this has, so far, been the only problem). 

So, I'd like some feedback from those wiser and more experienced.  What have your experiences been in terms of the best deadline for online/hybrid courses that require some type of collaboration?

Also, everything that I've read has suggested that having consistent deadlines is a best practice.  I'm thinking of having all writing assignments due on the day when we don't meet f2f (which is the same day every week for consistency's sake).  Most weeks, that's no biggie.  But some weeks are more crunched in terms of f2f work than others (like the week of Labor Day and the weeks during which we're working on the research project) and having the final draft due on the non-f2f day will mean students will have to start work on the assignment early (I shudder to suggest such a thing) and will have to submit it for peer review as homework on a f2f meeting day (we'd normally do peer review in class that day, but will be doing something else in order to fit in necessary material).

So, I'm struggling between tweaking the calendar and having a few weeks when the final draft is due on some day other than our non-f2f day or being consistent in terms of due dates and them carrying a bit of a heavier load during two or three weeks of the semester.  Which do you think would be best?

[burnie]

I used to set my deadlines at 2am (the thinking was most profs use midnight so this buys them a couple of hours for my class). The problem I ran into was that the local bars close at 1 so they were writing and submitting papers while obviously lubricated (and, as you mention if there were tech issues I wasn't online to help).   Deadlines are now 6pm because a) the help desk closes at 6 or 6:30 depending on the day of the week and b) pitcher specials start at 7 so I get papers BEFORE their evening exploits.

Also, I've added the phone number, email and hours for the Help Desk to my syllabus and all BB assignments.   They are told that if they have a problem with BB they have to call the HD first, start a help ticket and list my email as one of the "reply-to's." When the problem has been resolved I then get a copy of the closed ticket that explains the problem and resolution. Our HD is pretty blunt so if it's a trumped up problem to buy time the ticket will say so.  If it's a real issue with BB or the server the HD will send out an outage alert.

[spork]

[. . .]

 if my students are trying to submit something at midnight and something goes wrong, I will not be awake or online

[. . .]

Tech support is IT's job, not yours, especially since it was IT's decision to go with Blackboard 9.

Keep due dates on the same day of the week for the whole semester, unless it's Thanksgiving week or something similar (and for that kind of week, don't have a major assignment due).

[phydeaux]

Keep due dates on the same day of the week for the whole semester, unless it's Thanksgiving week or something similar (and for that kind of week, don't have a major assignment due).

+1. In my online classes, the first round of discussion posts is due every Wednesday, with follow-ups/comments/replies due by Sunday. That helps the students develop a rhythm and routine, and helps head off changinggears' issue of students getting close to the deadline and not having any other posts to comment on.