What If There Were No Deadlines?

One of the things I've always admired about the teachers at FLVS is their ability to deal with deadlines--or rather the lack of them.  Students can take as long as they need to accomplish objectives.  Of course, they are reminded, gently nudged, offered help and strongly encouraged to stay on track.

This couldn't happen at UCF under the current more traditional structure.  Learning takes place within a semester....or it's supposed to! There are deadlines.  For most of you, that's not a problem.  You're used to deadlines from Kindergarten through high school, deadlines on the job, deadlines for applying and enrolling at UCF, deadlines for registration, deadlines for dropping and adding courses.

In this course, there are weekly deadlines and I have to admit I'm grateful for that.  It's much easier to think about a topic or two at a time.  Grading is easier, too.  I look at the assignment directions, get the criteria firmly in mind, and then grade all of the projects at one time--at least all that have been submitted.  If we didn't have deadlines, many of you would wait until the last week to do all of your work....because there would still be a deadline.  Learning would suffer for sure. So would I!

But what if there were no deadlines?  I saw this video recently and it really made me wonder: What if there were no deadlines for learning?




What do you think?