Doing Homework All Weekend
Roseanne Gennett
I used to do it all on either Saturday or Sunday(usually Sunday). I am thinkig of doing a new method where I space it where I do some Saturday and Some Sunday, and some Friday(I have no class that day) if I cannot do it some on both saturday and Sunday. DAE do this method? I think it may be a better method so I am not spending all of my afternoon on Sunday working on my homework and studying.
Teachers and students have different opinions about homework. Saying it is not fair is the usual argument, but being fair is not the issue. It is about students being prepared. Daily homework assignments can be difficult, and weekends homework assignments are worse. Students operate best when they are well-rested and ready to go. A weekend with no homework would help them to be fresh and ready on Monday morning. Weekend assignments tend to be longer and more difficult.
The students have a difficult day with classes, practices, and going to school. By Friday, (test day) they are near exhaustion. Most tests are given on Fridays. Homework on Monday-Thursday is time-consuming. Some weekends will include assignments in more than 1 class. Those who go to Mount Carmel are near the end of their rope by 2:40 PM on Friday. I have had other discussions with the senior class and we all feel pretty tired at the end of the day at 2:40 PM. A free weekend helps to get prepared for the next grind to start. No homework weekends assures better sleep cycles and a body that has recovered and refreshed. Weekends include chores around the house and family commitments. This plus weekends assignments lead to a lack of sleep. This means Monday will have a positive attitude. No homework on weekends also means more family time. This is a bonus.
Etta Kralovec and John Buell in their book How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, And Limits Learning assert that homework contributes to a corporate style, competitive U.S. culture that overvalued work to the detriment of personal and familial well being. They go on to call for an end to homework, but to extend the school day.
No homework on weekends is not just a wish, but it is supported by all of these educators and authors. They all champion limiting homework are totally opposed to homework assignments. Educators and students agree that no homework on weekends is a good idea. Meaningful homework, a longer school day, and discussion of homework are what these educators and authors encourage.
You are concerned about encouraging your students to do work on the weekends. Consider that many students have customer service jobs that require them to work on the weekends (retail, restaurants, etc). They might work nights or swing shifts. They might have children to care for at certain times. You have no way of knowing if doing homework on a Saturday or Sunday is convenient for them or not.
Don't arbitrarily pick a deadline based on what you perceive to be best for them. Give your students a full week to work on assignments if you can, because they might only have small chunks of time available to do homework. Make it due when it really needs to be done, such as when the next class starts.
For example, I worked 10 PM to 7 AM Thursday through Sunday for my first couple of years in college. I often worked on homework during my lunch breaks, which could be at 2 AM on Monday morning. I'm sure all of my instructors assumed I would/should be sleeping at 2 AM, but it was actually a perfect opportunity to finish up homework.
Since there will always be students that procrastinate, and some percentage will inevitably have an emergency at the last moment, you may want to make it clear at the beginning of the course that you are not able to grant any extensions for any reason, because the deadline is already at the last possible moment. Also give the reason why that's the case, whether it's because you will review it in class, or there will be a quiz on it they need to be prepared for, or whatever the reason is. Be clear that since you are already giving extra time, you expect them to manage that time properly, so that an unexpected difficulty does not make their homework late.
However, one of the things I despise most as a student is when the instructor doesn't finish covering the material needed for the assignment until shortly before it's due. So if, for example, you have a Friday lecture that contains information pertinent to the assignment (other than to answer clarifying questions and such for those who've waited that long), making the assignment due Sunday almost certainly eliminates the possibility of a free weekend.
It's absolutely valid to set deadlines on Sunday evening. You do not force the students to work on weekends. This is their own responsibility to manage their workload. They are still allowed to hand in their results on Friday and then they can have a free weekend. One may even argue that a deadline on the weekend gives even greater freedom to the students as they have two additional days.
It is reasonable to set deadlines on Sunday night or the like. I've had midnight Sunday deadlines for quizzes and assignments (in math & computing) for about 8 years now; the last lecture each week occurs on Wednesday or Thursday. I've only had one or two student complaints in that time (those from students also holding a full-time job through the weekend). I almost always manage to grade them all in the 10 PM - 1 AM zone Sunday night, so I can turnaround with feedback immediately at the start of Monday. Works well for me.
The students who choose to leave each assignment until just before its deadline are not your problem. They are adults making a sub-optimal choice. Look after the students who are doing their best with time management, but may not have a free hour until Saturday afternoon.
Leaving the assignment at the last minute, especially in order to enjoy the weekend, sounds more like a choice than an obligation. I don't think it's your responsibility to do time and goal management for your students, especially if they are adults.
the times over the weekend may be inconsistent, disrupting regular schedules for some students. In particular this will affect students who have significant work or family commitments while studying that they cannot just "time management" away. This can be avoided by setting every assignment to the same time every time e.g. Sunday at 1700 local.
Students who are ready earlier can submit earlier or improve their work over the weekend. Students who are not ready earlier will appreciate an educator who doesn't respond to issues in the learner's life with "too bad, you should have been perfect like I want to pretend I was".
It seems that your options are to either set a deadline on Friday evening or over the weekend. Let's turn the question around. Suppose you enforced the Friday deadline. Would you actually mark the submitted work over the weekend, or would you wait until Monday?
If the answer is that you'd take the weekend off and start marking on Monday, then it's the Friday deadline that's unreasonable. Why would you demand that students hand in work so that you can ignore it for two full days? Set the deadline for Sunday night (or even early Monday morning) and let the students manage their own time. If keeping the weekend work-free is important to them, they'll make sure their work is finished by Friday.
As a student I hated nothing more than deadlines before midnight. I would be happy with a deadline on either Sunday 11:59pm or Friday 11:59pm, Sunday would better because that means two more days to do work where I don't have lectures to exhaust me. Trust me when I say that to a student free weekends don't exist anyways/
So, at least from the students, it seems there are no objections. Moreover, you are not "forcing" them to work during the weekend, but, by setting a weekend-deadline, you know that many of them will choose to. However, when you set the deadline does not affect the total amount of work: if they choose to work on the assignment during the weekend, they have more time off during the week.
The common argument is that you are simply giving students a choice; if a student is still working on Sunday, that's their choice. While this argument certainly has some validity, taking it to its logical conclusion, if a sporting event were to allow steroids, then they are simply offering a choice, and if anyone takes steroids, that is simply their choice. Clearly, anyone competing against people using steroids would not feel that they have a "choice" whether to use steroids or not. Similarly, a student whose work is going to be evaluated in comparison to someone who worked the whole weekend may not feel that they have a "choice" whether to work the weekend as well. A central issue is how much of an impact extra time has on the result. The more sharply the assignment runs into diminishing returns with additional time spent, the less of an issue this is. (Note that if your assignments do offer a significant advantage to those who spend a lot of time on them, you should be taking a serious look at whether you can design the assignments differently and reduce time without reducing academic value; students should be evaluated on how well they understand the material, not how much time they're willing to spend on assignments. Sometimes spending a lot of time on assignments is necessary, but as an instructor, one of your obligations is to work towards optimizing the value received/time spent ratio.)
Another argument is that you should not be doing time management for your students. While time management is primarily the student's obligation, that doesn't mean that instructors shouldn't consider it. Instructors should design their courses to support student learning, and that means taking students' challenges into account. There seems to be an undercurrent to this argument that procrastination is a form of mental weakness, and making accommodations for it is coddling students. However, procrastination is quite often a result of anxiety or other conditions that should be taken seriously, and not dismissed as merely being character flaws. There are going to be some people for whom dashing off a paper on Friday and turning it in knowing that they did the best they could because that's when the deadline is, is significantly less stressful than having a Sunday deadline and spending the weekend feeling like they "should" be spending the time polishing the paper and worrying whether there's some flaw that they could fix if they just spent more time on it.
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