Discuss how many days students should have to complete assignments

[joelostblom]

Joel:
The dates are chosen so that each assignment is due on Monday the following week. Is this enough time if we hand out assignments during the Thursday lecture? I chose Monday since it would give us some time to briefly go over most of the assignments before the next class and briefly repeat general concepts if many students struggled with the same problem.

Thinking about it a little more, I believe a due date on Tuesday, might be better. This gives students a chance to ask questions before and after class regarding the assignment, before they hand it in. It would fit particularly well if we make Tuesdays our office hours. It would also give us an additional day (wednesday) to go over the assignments and bring up and key concept on the following Thursday lecture. I will change to this in the next iteration unless there are opposing views.

lwjohnst86 a day ago Owner
I like this idea a lot

mbonsma a day ago Owner
So they would typically have five days to do the assignments? I think it should be a week and five days, unless they're quick.

joelostblom a day ago Member
I like the idea of a quick turn around (5 days) better, but let's discuss in person after we have a clearer idea of how involved the assignments will be.

joelostblom a minute ago Member
We talked briefly about this today. We agree that the due date should be on the same day that we have office hours so that student's can come and ask last minute questions.

We largely agreed that it would be better if students had 8 days rather than 3 days (excluding weekends) to hand in the assignment, especially since around 10 days seems to be standard and we don't want to scare students away by making them work on the weekends right away... The drawback of this is that it would be harder to follow up promptly if there are particular concepts that many students don't understand. We could remedy this with a socrates online quiz at the beginning of the following lecture (maybe during the break?), and repeat any concept that are unclear for many students. We just don't want to add to much overhead...

[joelostblom]

This issue was moved to UofTCoders/rcourse#19