Examine Traditional Policies
Classroom policies governing grades, attendance, and due dates reflect underlying beliefs about what students should be able to do and what learning should look like. Disability studies invites us to reconsider these assumptions, examining who these policies center and who they might exclude.
Many of the challenges students face in higher education stem not from disability itself, but from rigid instructional design. Scholar Linda Feldmeier White argues that traditional academic accommodations often arise from limitations in standard teaching methods. For example, students with disabilities may need extended test time, which could prompt educators to reevaluate the length of time on an assignment or even the concept of timed testing. Requests for accommodations, official or not, signal spaces for stronger pedagogical design by revealing where current practices might fall short.
Rather than waiting for accommodation requests, instructors can proactively build multiple options into assignments for all students. For example, to participate in class discussion, students might be given the options to speak aloud extemporaneously, write down an answer to read aloud, or respond in an online forum.
This kind of flexibility is central to access and to learning motivation as well. Nira Hativa explains in Teaching for Effective Learning in Higher Education, “The more students believe they operate under their own control, the greater is their learning motivation.” Researchers in self-determination theory widely agree that offering learners meaningful choices fosters autonomy. Similarly, Ken Bain and Robert Boice suggest that excessive teacher control leads to resistance, disengagement, and even hostility in the classroom. Strict policies can create precisely the opposite of what they intend.
At the same time, inclusive pedagogical strategies like flexible policies do not operate in a vacuum. How students respond to these approaches is shaped by the social identities and positionality of the instructor. As discussed on our Tone page, instructors from marginalized communities may face greater scrutiny or resistance when implementing inclusive practices, particularly if those practices challenge traditional norms of authority. The flexibility that benefits students can carry professional risk for instructors who are not equally protected by institutional power. These complexities underscore the importance of attending not only to pedagogy, but to the structural dynamics that shape how it’s received.
The strategies proposed below draw on common course accommodations and offer flexible options that instructors can adapt to fit their own teaching contexts.
Begin with an Inclusive Learning Statement
Beginning the syllabus with an inclusive learning statement emphasizes cooperation and flexibility for disabled and nondisabled students. Tara Wood and Shannon Madden’s excellent resource “Suggested Practices for Syllabus Accessibility Statements” gives multiple examples of inclusive language. Overall, they recommend that instructors:
- incorporate flexibility for different modes of learning
- include a collaborative element
- advocate for Universal Design for Learning (Wood & Madden).
Here is one example that borrows liberally from their suggestions, particularly language from Stephanie Kerschbaum.
| Sample Inclusive Learning Statement |
| Your success in this class is important to me. We will all need accommodations because we all learn differently. If there are aspects of this course that prevent you from learning or exclude you, please let me know as soon as possible. Together, we’ll develop strategies to meet both your needs and the requirements of the course. I encourage you to visit the Office of Disability Services to determine how you could improve your learning as well. If you need official accommodations, you have the right to have these met. There are also a range of resources on campus, including the Writing Center, Tutoring Center, and Academic Advising Center. |
On the tone page, we highlight other shifts in language that can showcase a collaborative and inclusive disability statement. For example, the 2014 guide “Reframing Disability” from The University of Arkansas highlights language shifts to move from paternalistic language to cooperative language.
| Paternalistic Language | Cooperative Language |
| assist
allowable receive support services The services you need. |
collaborate
usable, equitable, sustainable create an inclusive learning environment Creative solutions. Together. |
Expand Deadlines
Extended deadlines are a common disability accommodation because learners perform at different speeds and college students juggle multiple time commitments. Ken Bain, in his fifteen year study of nearly a hundred college teachers, found that the most effective college professors didn’t deduct points to ensure timeliness. These threats could be counterproductive to motivating students to learn.
Several studies across disciplines report positive outcomes when students have some control over deadlines.
- Time Banks: In computer science, John Aycock and Jim Uhl use “time banks.” In this model, students have a two-day grace period for one assignment or two one-day extensions for two different assignments. They report that students are “overwhelmingly in favor of the time bank” and that it created little work for them to track even in large enrollment classes.
- Self-Set Deadlines: In psychology, Susan Roberts, Myke Fulton, and George Semb experimented with instructor-set deadlines against student self-set deadlines. They found that “students in the self-scheduling condition attempted [the last exam] significantly earlier, distributed pacing more evenly, and complied with their schedules to a significantly greater degree than did students in comparison conditions. Accelerated pacing rates were obtained without detriment to academic performance.”
- Week-Long Paper Due date: In English, Anne-Marie Womack reports favorably on student-set deadlines within instructor-set ranges. For major writing assignments, students have a due date window (typically lasting about 5 days). Papers are graded in the order they are submitted–often within hours for the first round of submissions–to encourage early papers. Because it spreads out grading, it helps Womack handle her workload, too. She receives about 10% of the papers on the first day, and approximately half by the day before the final due date.
- Dual-Deadline System: In a large enrollment introductory Biology course, Joseph Ruesch and Mark Sarvary, use a two-tiered system: ideal deadlines paired with “extensions without penalty” (EWP). In both the syllabus and class discussions, they stress the advantages of the ideal dates and the intention of the EWPs to account for emergencies and differences in pace. Students reported that they preferred the system because it reduced stress and helped them balance other life and school responsibilities. Their data showed that 41% of students used an EWP once, 37% used it more than once, and 22% never used it.
- Flexible Low-Stakes Deadlines (with selective hard deadlines): In writing courses (designed for first-year students to Master’s students), Womack implements a flexible system for low-stakes assignments. Small scaffolding assignments are due every Friday, but students may submit for full credit anytime before the corresponding major paper is due. After that, submissions receive partial credit (7/10). A small number of assignments have hard deadlines to receive credit, which are clearly marked and announced in class. These hard deadlines exist only when they are essential to the course structure, such as when drafts are required for in-class peer review.
- Rolling Deadlines Tied to Feedback Level: In Professional Writing for Engineering Master’s Students, Mary Glavan offers students tiered due dates based on how much feedback they want on their resume and cover letter. If students submit by the first due date, they receive extensive feedback, including marginal comments and an end comment. The second date results in moderate feedback, focused on key strengths and priority areas for revision. The third date results in a brief end comment, addressing only major issues. This model lets students weigh the tradeoff between feedback and flexibility.
Build Flexibility into Grading Distributions
Many innovative grading approaches build in some degree of flexibility and choice.
- Grading Contracts: Critical pedagogy advocate Ira Shor negotiates grade criteria with his students to form a contract. For example, students in one class negotiated standards for an A which included: A quality work, 3 absences, one late assignment, two group projects, etc. Lower grades required less for each of these standards.
- Everyone Gets a B: Composition scholars Jane Danielewicz and Peter Elbow detail their version of contract grading in writing courses—everyone gets a B for completing a set of requirements without taking into account writing quality. Students who want to score higher than a B must demonstrate higher quality prose.
- Contract Weighting: Computer scientists John Aycock and Jim Uhl developed a system called “contract weighting.” They allow students to allocate weighted percentages to assignments within an instructor mandated range. So, a student could assign 10-15% to project 1 and 15-25% to project 2.
- Grade Includes Daily Work or Not: Composition scholar Womack describes a summer course in which she taught nontraditional working students. She created two possible grading distributions that students chose from: in the first, the grade was made up of low stakes work and major essays. In the second, only major paper grades were averaged.
- Later Exam Grades Replace Earlier: Some professors that give exams allow the grade on the cumulative final to replace lower earlier exam grades.