As I was answering a question this morning, I noticed that only half of you have started the web development programming exercise (PEX). This PEX is due M28, which is this Friday (17 April).1 My estimate for this PEX is 8–10 hours so if you haven’t started it already, then you really need to start today.

The learning activities for each lesson include working on the PEX so that you aren’t stuck trying to do all the work on the day it’s due. In addition, those explicit work times ensure that I’m not asking you to do something unreasonable – i.e., most lessons have about three hours of work (the amount expected for a 3-credit course) associated with them, including the work on the PEX.

One of the challenges with online classes is pacing yourself. You don’t have the benefit of in-class reminders about upcoming assignments. That said, I’m working hard to make sure that the course schedule is essentially fixed (changes to the academic calendar are outside my control), and I’m embedding reminders about larger assignments in the lessons leading up to their due date. Please let me know if there’s something else that I can do to help or to improve the presentation of course material so you don’t lose track of what’s upcoming.

  1. The revised academic calendar returns to having 40 lessons total, and I’m currently working to adjust the course schedule to include an additional lesson. Thus, there’s a small chance that due dates may shift for some assignments, but I don’t anticipate changing the due date for the web development PEX at this time. ↩