Really appreciate the clarity of your point that professors can’t have multiple simultaneous “#1” priorities. If our #1 priority is guaranteeing that no one takes advantage of us, that will impact inclusivity, not to mention a number of other important goals of education. Being honest with ourselves, within our departments, and within our institutions about trade offs is so difficult and so necessary!
I love this and agree that scripting is so helpful. A couple additional things I say that I've found helpful in response to this question:
1. One thing I hear a lot from people who do offer flexible due dates is that when we give students additional flexibility, the vast majority don't abuse it--they take a few extra hours or a couple extra days.
2. Another way to think of priorities is, "What you can do to let students show you what they know?" Maybe an extended due date is format that fits for you--another format may be a conversation in office hours, or an opportunity for reassessment on a subsequent exam that overrides some of the previous score, etc. (Robert Talbert and David Clark have written much more about this!)
3. Extensions aren't always helpful for students either! But there are other forms of grace you can show--e.g., offer to assess partial work that's submitted by the due date, so that students can still get some feedback.
Really appreciate the clarity of your point that professors can’t have multiple simultaneous “#1” priorities. If our #1 priority is guaranteeing that no one takes advantage of us, that will impact inclusivity, not to mention a number of other important goals of education. Being honest with ourselves, within our departments, and within our institutions about trade offs is so difficult and so necessary!
I love this and agree that scripting is so helpful. A couple additional things I say that I've found helpful in response to this question:
1. One thing I hear a lot from people who do offer flexible due dates is that when we give students additional flexibility, the vast majority don't abuse it--they take a few extra hours or a couple extra days.
2. Another way to think of priorities is, "What you can do to let students show you what they know?" Maybe an extended due date is format that fits for you--another format may be a conversation in office hours, or an opportunity for reassessment on a subsequent exam that overrides some of the previous score, etc. (Robert Talbert and David Clark have written much more about this!)
3. Extensions aren't always helpful for students either! But there are other forms of grace you can show--e.g., offer to assess partial work that's submitted by the due date, so that students can still get some feedback.
Nicole Bedera's academic accommodations template is a great synthesis of a lot of these ideas (apologies for the decontextualized link!) https://www.nicolebedera.com/_files/ugd/c93510_eeb4d9d4bc3a4f3c8363e1480124df4d.pdf