A professor at UMW has decided to have deadlines for his students’ drafts, but no deadlines for final papers. He wants them to take as much time as necessary…
"You may revise as many times as you like until they are satisfied with
the paper (or the semester ends). Each draft you submit, I will read
carefully and provide detailed suggestions for improvement."
I wonder what the paper grading load will be like at the end of the semester. Is this a possibility for Upper School teachers? Should it be?
Yikes! What a scary idea. Actually, I have given extra time/opportunities for students to rewrite papers until the end of the marking period, those who need to show improvement. For some others, this would really become a time management problem. And then, a few others would work on and stress over their papers so much that other work would suffer-the perfectionists. I think that our curriculum and teachers are flexible enough to offer a version of this.
I guess that I am a bit “old school” and think that the teacher deserves to have a bit of control here. If all of the students choose to turn in their work on Oct 27th, the instructor would be quite challenged to get them feedback immediately, possibly making good planning time go by the wayside.