Self-Pacing in a Personalized Psychology Course: Letting Students Set the Deadlines

Abstract

Our studies allowed students to set deadlines for course tasks, supplementing instructor-set deadlines, in a self-paced psychology course. In addition to instructor-set and student-set deadlines, two experimental procedures were evaluated in two studies. The first procedure required students to respond to a quiz question assessing compliance with their self-set schedules. The second procedure required students to meet deadlines that they had set for themselves. Results indicated that both procedures produced accelerated pacing rates and general schedule compliance. No differences were found among conditions for academic performance measures.