It’s 10:00 pm on Sunday, and your Monday, 9:00 am class has essays due. They have been working on them for the past month, but the emails have started streaming in. One student, with admiral honesty, explains that they have been studying for an exam in a class they are at risk of failing, and have not had time to work on the essay. Could they have a few more days? Another student just needs a few more hours so they can take their draft to tutoring one last time. Two more have unexplained technical problems that will make it difficult to access Canvas. You are not surprised by these emails. In fact, you’ve anticipated them with dread. Although you have a late policy in your syllabus, these students are hoping they will not lose points, that they will be excused. Can you make an exception to your policy? 

In your mind, several thoughts run together: “Why are they emailing me so last minute?” “Why didn’t they plan better?” “How much time is ‘a few more days,’ anyway?” And also maybe, “I hate being the judge and jury for what is considered excused.” 

In this “post-pandemic” era, we all understand the need for flexibility, for providing holistic support to our students. But where should we draw the line? How can we offer flexibility and demonstrate care while still setting our students (and ourselves) up for success? One solution is the “oops token,” a get-out-of-jail free card that doesn’t involve a believable story or middle-of-the-night email. 

How it works

The benefit of an oops token is that you get to set the parameters. For instance, you can decide that students can use the token for major assignments but not for weekly reading or homework. This makes sense–it’s easy to fall behind on reading and weekly assignments. Carleton College Statistics professor Adam Loy allows his students to use a token to rewrite an exam question that is clearer or similar in concept. Unsure about how much flexibility is too much? Katherine M. Castle has a helpful decision tree to help you decide. 

Once you’ve decided to employ oops tokens, you can make them work for you in a number of ways. For instance, each student may start the term with two tokens, but you can incentivize them to earn more by visiting office hours, completing optional assignments, or achieving high participation grades. 

Another benefit is that you can decide how much of an extension students get when using a token. This removes the ambiguity of “a few more days” and allows you to still set clear guidelines about when work is due. After all, you don’t want students to fall behind, but you also don’t want to fall behind on grading and juggling the demands of your schedule. 

See Rebecca Davis’s example of how to explain it to students. 

Staying organized

One of the potential challenges of this is organization–how do you keep track of token counts, and how will you know when a student is cashing in a token? The last thing you want is to replace one kind of email with another. Loy employs a spreadsheet to keep track and requires students to fill out a Google form when they use a token. Robert Talbert also uses a Google form, and Christine Nowik takes it a step further and adds a link to the form on her course navigation bar. 

Incorporating oops tokens into your course can transform how you manage deadlines and student requests for extensions. This approach not only fosters a sense of fairness and flexibility, but also encourages students to take an active role in their own learning. Schedule a consultation with a Learning and Teaching Consultant for hands-on help with this and other strategies to balance flexibility and accountability. 

References:

Davis, R. (2022). Oops Token Example. Knowledge Commons. https://doi.org/10.17613/4fw8-7w88

Loy, A. (2022, June 27. Building Flexibility into your Course with “Oops tokens.” StatTLC. https://stattlc.com/2022/06/27/building-flexibility-into-your-course-with-oops-tokens/

Nowik, C. (2021, December 13). I need an extension! Change is hard. https://christinenowik.substack.com/p/i-need-an-extension

Talbert, R. (2021, November 8). The care and feeding of tokens. Grading for growth. https://gradingforgrowth.com/p/the-care-and-feeding-of-tokens?s=r