The practice of setting hard deadlines, sometime
s with stiff penalties for late submissions
has been the norm in many CS departments for
as long as most can remember. This paper
will examine the notion of submission deadlines as applied to programming assignments,
in particular in the freshman year of a
four-year computer science program. A brief
outline of the common practices and the effect on novice students will be presented,
followed by an alternative strategy that was implemented in a relatively small (i.e. 30
students) class in September 2005. Some initial student reactions are outlined along with
known research from education
which supports a more flexible approach such as this.
The discussion that follows will outline the expected benefits from allowing greater
flexibility in assignment submissions,
the context necessary for successful
implementation, as well as some of the
drawbacks and difficulties. It begins by
examining the place of deadlines in the curriculum and the effect this often has on
students. Next, a highly successful approach from an unlikely source is reviewed to
discover which elements might
be appropriated and applied
in a post-secondary learning
environment. That unlikely source is modern
video games. The approach used there is
highly relevant to work that
involves setting challenges, and to experiencing and
accepting their associated consequences. Both of
these conditions exist in a typical CS
programming assignment.
