1. The Two Deadline System (Friday and Sunday) for Op-Eds and Evaluations: There are two deadlines for the Op-Ed writing assignment. The stated deadline in the emails sent to students every day (until they complete that week's assignment) and on the website is Friday at 11:59 pm. However, there are actually two extra days before the final deadline. This offers a grace period for students who earnestly want to complete the assignment but have run into a problem of one sort or another (or waited too long to complete the Op-Ed by the specified deadline). NO OP-EDS CAN BE SUBMITTED AFTER SUNDAY AT 11:59 PM. Students who pass the Op-Eds in after the Friday deadline but before the Sunday deadline are told that their Op-Eds will be marked late but that they still will receive credit and, hence, they should complete the Op-Ed before the Sunday deadline.

Those who fail to pass in their Op-Eds by Friday night get the following email on Saturday and Sunday:

We are sending you this reminder because you have not written your Op-Ed by the Friday deadline. Although your Op-Ed will be marked late, you still can and should complete it by the Sunday deadline. Your teacher will decide to what degree being late will affect your grade. But stopping now and not completing the Op-Ed means you will fail the entire assignment.

You only have through Sunday to write and save your Op-Ed. By writing your Op-Ed now you ensure your continued participation and protect your grade. Login now and start to write your Op-Ed!

2. The Two Deadline System Avoids the Problem of Having to Sift Through Student Excuses: Students may or may not complete the specified assignments by the required deadlines for a variety of reasons. But if they try to justify their inaction because of a problem with the software program or their computer, then they need to take responsibility for the fact that they missed the Friday deadline AND did not inform their Teacher or their TA regarding any problems they were having. As a result, the failure for not completing the assignment by the Sunday deadline clearly rests on a student's shoulders. They have not excuses to fall back on.

Please Note: If a student put his or her Op-Ed in the box allocated for it, then it is automatically saved every three minutes and is automatically submitted at the Sunday 11:59 pm deadline. It is a relatively fail-safe system as long as the student has actually copied and pasted his or her Op-Ed into that box (whether they click save or not). As a result, students CANNOT claim to have submitted an Op-Ed piece and blame the system for failing to save it.

3. Why It Is So Important that Students Complete the Evaluations as Well as the Op-Ed: The evaluations are important because other students depend on them for their grades. If a student fails to complete his or her Op-Ed, only the student suffers. If the student fails to complete the evaluations, other students suffer. IT IS FOR THIS REASON THAT THE STANDARD RULE, IS: IF STUDENTS FAIL TO COMPLETE THE UNIT 2 EVALUATIONS, EVEN THOUGH THEY WROTE AN OP-ED, THEY FAIL THE WHOLE ASSIGNMENT. Students who have not submitted their Unit 2 evaluations by Sunday night are automatically locked out from further participation in the project.

The evaluations usually take between 40 and 60 minutes to complete. Students are encouraged to do a thoughtful, careful job. They should understand that there is a timer on their web page indicating how long is spent on the evaluations and that this information appears on the teacher's and TAs dashboards (under Evaluations).

4. Viewing an Individual Student’s Personal Web Page: If you are curious, it is easy to see what your students are seeing when they log in. Simply go to a particular student’s profile (i.e. by clicking on that student’s name) and, using that students email address and REVIEW PASSWORD (listed on the same page a little lower than the email address), you can log on to that student’s web page.