So in don’t want to be an old man here again, but unfortunately there is this thing that is called time, and despite Einstein discovering relativity which theoretically gives us the capability of traveling into the future, … no ones cured the slow creep of time that is currently ravishing all of us! Enjoy being young my friends…

Soo… back in my day we had homework in which we were assigned problems out of the book (usually evens) and the book had the odd answers (not solutions) in the back of the book. So we would get together in small groups, compare our approaches to answers and try to figure out where we went wrong where our answers didn’t match up to the back of the book. Once we were fairly confident in our approach (albeit without the internet and ONLY the textbook and lecture), we did our homework and compared approaches with one another and then submitted it. Then you would get your homework back and find out you missed something here or there. Honestly, I believe I almost always had the right answer, but the mark downs were based on notation, symbolism, and me skipping steps and leaving out mathematical arguments which I thought were obvious.

Now, you have every resource you could possibly imagine available online to walk you through any problem. You have videos from our faculty here at ASU, videos from me (depending on the class), external websites, my website, and your homework is exclusively online.

If your answer is right, it accepts it and does not care about the argumentation / symbolism leading up to the answer (To my dismay when I grade your exams and try to decipher hieroglyphics). The system we are now using is EdFinity. It allows you to select “Show me another” and when doing so it identifies the solution for the current problem you are on step by step. Therefore when you start on the problem again, which has different numbers, you can simply adjust the number in the process and chug through. I do worry about retention of the solution process for students, but I have no doubt that every student can get 100% on the homework.

More importantly you are allowed to do this at any time of the day and at any geographic location on the planet, assuming you have access to the internet. If you are at McMurdo station in Antarctica because your checking out the 2nd Earth Stargate with the hopes of being the next group sent to the Pegasus Galaxy, … as long as they allow you to utilize their internet, you can do your homework.

You can do it in a house, you can do it on a mouse. You can do it on a plane, you can do it on a train. You can do it on vacation, you can do it while being given a moving citation. You can do it in your lair, you can do it when your bare. You can do it while your sick, you can do it watching a flick. You can do it in bed, you can do it painted red…

And while I’m sure Dr. Seuse would school me on the Rhyming, despite the timing, or concepts intertwining, while I am pantomiming and euthanizing, you can do it anywhere, with some flare, in a wheel chair, because no … it’s not a nightmare.

Therefore, I do not extend homework at all for any reason. EdFinity already has extensions (at a reduction of points) built in. So please do not ask. That being said, I have NO issue extending homework based on the progress that WE have made in lecture. So if we’re behind schedule, you can bet your Starbucks Paycheck on the fact that the homework will be extended.

On a side note here’s a little anectdote.

I was at Mesa Community College in Calculus II (22 ish years ago as of 2024) and the instructor had the brilliant idea of having 4 homeworks all semester long. Basically, each chapter was one singular homework and thus each homework submission was 7.5% of our grade. At the time, because Uber did not exist, if you had no vehicle (because Orbit didn’t exist and the phoenix metro was much worse than it was today) to go from baseline and Mcclintock I had to sit and wait for a bus that would arrive once per hour. On top of that it would sometimes show up 20 minutes early or 20 minutes late. So you had to show up 30 minutes early, luckily I had my textbooks with me and I would do my homework at the stop, bus would come, do homework on the bus, get to campus and do homework until the class starts, and it was pretty easy.

When one of my assignments was due, I had forgot it at home. The process of taking the bus back to get it, etc.. would of been a 3-4 hour process and class would of been over ages before. I was given an automatic zero because no late work is allowed. He only assigned maybe 5 – 10 problems per section. I chose to do 30-40 problems to ensure I knew the material. I thought that perhaps doing 5+ times the amount of work for the class may engender me with some sympathy and therefore I showed up 2 days later and turned in a gigantic thick stack of homework to which he promptly picked it up and threw it in the trash. (bare in mind this instructor allowed TI-89’s on exams, and allowed students to write answers for integration with zero work and they received full credit… horrible instructor that was did a large disservice to his students) Despite working in the tutoring center and helping out all my friends through that class, I got a B and 22 years later I am still pissed.

So when students mention they have sniffles or a headache, or any other issue and couldn’t get to their homework….

You can do it on a boat, you can do it in a coat, you can do it climbing buoys, you can do it at the movies, you can do it in the park, you can do it in the dark …. provided you have a light source of some kind.

Moreover, there is a fairness that must be considered. The mere act of extending the deadline is unfair to the rest of the class. Many students have made countless sacrifices such as, paying for baby sitters, cancelling dates, not hanging out with friends for the night, ignoring significant others, etc… all in order to get their homework done on time. I wont invalidate the sacrifice and hard work of these students.