Milestones and Deadlines

This discussion forum explores the use of milestones and deadlines in online courses. Respond to the following and, if it's relevant, include your own personal experience:

Begin by considering the information presented this week regarding milestones and deadlines.

Construct an initial post that briefly describes a course you would like to teach or already teach online. In a few sentences, describe a final signature project that students would complete as part of that course.

Next, construct an outline of the key milestones and deadlines that are important for the students to meet in order to successfully complete that project. Approach it as if you want to prevent your students from procrastinating. As a result, you are going to set "mini deadlines" for students to complete portions of their work.

For example, maybe one project would ask students to work in teams. Teams would develop a proposal for implementing an education technology solution at school or the office. Teams might identify roles and tasks in the first week. In the second week they might meet with people within the organization or school and create a report in week 3. In weeks 4 and 5 students would be researching and identifying a technical solution, etc. through to the last week in which the entire project would be due.

Conclude your post with a description of why you have set these particular milestones and deadlines. You want to make sure that you don't randomly break up assignments. The milestones and deadlines you set should logically "chunk" student work to help them manage their workload.