Students sometimes wait to the last minute to turn in work, and often assignments are all due at the end of a lengthy unit. Unfortunately, this leads to teachers getting anxious as the last days roll out and their gradebooks are still empty. It’s ok to make the work due at the end of a unit, but another approach that is effective is to create a quick unit pacing guide with ’soft deadlines’ so students know what they should be doing throughout the unit on what days. This is especially effective, because it gives teachers ground to stand on when they write “According to the calendar, you should be about halfway through the unit…” as opposed to “I know there’s no real ‘due dates,’ but I’d like you to not do all the work from two weeks in the last hour and a half of the unit.” Below is a tutorial on how to embed a google calendar into your blackboard course. If every teacher teaching a certain section was in agreement on the same pace, they could all paste the same calendar, collaborate to create the same calendar, and save a ton of time! Enjoy,
Shu