Deadlines as Metaphors
One of the ways to help students learn to take responsibility for their actions, consider the consequences of various actions and organize their work priorities involves establishing deadlines. In fact, setting deadlines for assignments helps both students and faculty members organize the semester, but it also plays a role in simulating real life for students. Therefore, consider your deadlines as opportunities to help students learn to set priorities, manage conflicting priorities, deliver products on time and improve their skills in meeting deadlines. Each kitchen and dining room has numerous deadlines that patrons expect us to meet.

Coming to class on time and in uniform, prepared to listen or cook or set up a dining room, are important skills for students to learn. Meeting deadlines for papers, reports and tests are practice sessions in learning to meet those professional obligations. One strategy we can use as teachers is to remind students of deadlines. At the beginning of each class session, I review the schedule of topics and deadlines for the next five weeks. It helps the students keep deadlines in the front of their minds and encourage procrastinators to get to work.

The Value of Setting Priorities and Granting Extensions
Many students have difficulty meeting deadlines, sometimes due to juggling outside work, managing a number of family priorities or coping with the overlap of simultaneous school deadlines during midterms and final periods. Sometimes, it is just a difficulty created by a pattern of procrastination. While all of these dynamics are real, as faculty members we carry different responsibilities in helping students learn from these various situations. When students have an honest dilemma of too many things happening at the same time, helping them think through their deadline and giving them suggestions for how to sort high from low priorities can be a very helpful strategy. That may involve giving an extension or not.

The other context in which you might want to grant an extension is when students get really involved in a project or paper assignment and need a bit more time to complete it successfully. In that case, you are rewarding and supporting their commitment to quality. In these situations, when students ask for extensions, I ask them how long they need so that they have to decide, and I give them extensions without any penalty. Granting them an extension—without penalty—can be helpful as long as they are honestly trying to meet the deadline. It also supports their commitment to quality work, another aspect of good professionalism.

Students who just procrastinate, however, learn more if the deadlines are not extended or if there are penalties, such as lowered grades for late papers and projects. In most of these cases, I do not give extensions because they have not been high-performing students. These students may learn more from living up to established expectations. Some faculty members grant extensions with penalties—a lowered grade—for these students. Either strategy can help them learn professional behavior in our educational institutions.

Summary
Helping students learn to set deadlines for themselves and granting extensions when appropriate can be just as powerful a learning experience as holding them accountable to meet specific deadlines. Either way, remember that your strategies can make a significant contribution to their professional development if you think of them from this perspective.

If you have other ideas or suggestions for teaching accountability in your classes, let me know and I will share them in future Mayo’s Clinics.

Fred Mayo is a clinical professor at New York University and a frequent presenter at CAFÉ events nationwide. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..