Put everything with a deadline into the to-do list

[Beth_Young]

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No matter how many ways I try to direct them otherwise, students start with the "to do" list and don't look at anything else, not the Calendar, not the Syllabus, not the Assignments page. Then they miss deadlines because some types of assignments never appear on the to-do list. Please put everything that has a deadline into the to-do list: reading assignment, practice quiz, homework to be submitted offline, etc.

I tried adding reminders to the things that do show up in the to-do list--for example, in quiz instructions, I said something like, "Remember to read X, do practice quiz Y, do textbook activity Z before you take this quiz." Some students were angry because there were "hidden" assignments inside quizzes. Well, the assignments were not hidden from anyplace . . . EXCEPT from the "to do" list. At the beginning of this semester, I spent a great deal of time personally contacting students who were failing to do assignments, and every single one of them told me "It wasn't on the to-do list so I didn't know I was supposed to do it."

An incomplete list causes more problems than it solves.

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