Promoting Student Learning by Automatically Managing Resubmission Tokens

Abstract

In many university computer science courses, strict deadlines can create stress and penalize students who face unexpected challenges. A popular alternative is to give students a few "late passes", "resubmission passes", or "tokens" to use on assignments throughout the semester. While this approach is more flexible and equitable, it creates a significant amount of manual work for instructors, who have to track every request and update deadlines across multiple websites. This thesis tackles that problem in two ways. First, it introduces the EGP Broker, an LMS-integrated LTI 1.3 tool that automates the entire process, removing the need for instructors to manually manage tokens or for students to perform extra steps to use them. Second, this thesis analyzes what happened when a large introductory computer science course switched from a traditional late penalty (a 10% deduction per day) to a manually managed flexible token resubmission based policy. The results indicate that the flexible policy was associated with higher pass rates, improved final course and exam grades, and reduced dropout rates. Most students thrived under this system, using the flexibility to manage their time effectively without compromising the quality of their work. While a small number of students appeared to struggle with using the policy productively, the overall impact was positive. Overall, flexible token policies show great promise in promoting student success, while also highlighting the importance of providing additional support for students who may need more structure.