PBL Starter Guide: Help! My Students Procrastinate Too Much!

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

Do you know when I'm writing this blog? You guessed it, the day before we're about to do a PBL training. But that's okay! Did you know that there are actually two types of procrastination? There's constructive procrastination and unproductive procrastination.

Here's how it works. Let's imagine that you give an assignment for a big paper. Both Student A and Student B put it off until the night before.

Student A, however, has been thinking about it the whole time. She also knows that she's a fast writer and she's been paying attention in class and doing all homework assignments up until now. She sits down at 8pm and types out her thoughts and finishes her paper by 2am. She doesn't get a lot of sleep, but her paper is coherent and she earns an A.

Now picture Student B. Student B hasn't been doing the homework and often falls asleep in class. He's not a fast writer. He sits down at 8pm the night before to write his paper and by 10pm, when he has still only written one paragraph, gives up. He doesn't turn in anything.

See the difference? While Student A didn't get anything down on paper, she had of course been somewhat working all along. She's also more aware of her own strengths and knew that as a fast writer, she could put it off. Student B, on the other hand, did not complete any of the thinking required beforehand, and also misjudged his own abilities to complete a paper in a short amount of time.

Of course, Student A is going to think that she's fine procrastinating until she's asked to write a 20-page paper and realizes that she cannot physically do so in one evening. Therefore, it serves everyone to not only teach students the content, but how to manage their own time in a PBL. Here are some easy things you can do:

1. Chunk the PBL and set multiple due dates.

Don't require that an entire project be turned in last minute. If students have to research, make that due one week. Make their outline of their presentation due the next week. Make their rough draft of the presentation due week after, etc.. If you REALLY want to help your students achieve more, you can grade each portion, return it, and have them make changes before moving on.

2. Use checklists for each chunk and check in frequently with students.

Aim to check in with each group at least twice for each chunk. Ask them how it's coming. See if they need any support. If they're rocking and rolling, let them keep on. But this will prevent students from going too far down an incorrect path (or no path at all), only to freak out at the end when they realize they have to (
re)do everything.

3. Teach students how to set calendar reminders.

Use Google Calendar or Google Keep and use G-Suite training to help students better understand how to set up their own calendar invites. Have them set notifications for due dates that go off 1 week, 3 days, and 1 day before something is actually do. BONUS: If your students use Google Calendar, they can automatically create a Google Hangout to discuss their projects outside of school time.