Configure tokens
How to configure tokens and manage deadline extensions
How tokens work
Section titled “How tokens work”Tokens are a flexible deadline extension system. You allocate tokens to students at the start of the term, and they spend them to buy extra hours on an assignment, before or after its deadline. No emails, no individual negotiations.
Setting the token cost
Section titled “Setting the token cost”Go to Settings > Extension and set Tokens per hour: how many tokens it costs a student to extend a deadline by one hour. It applies to every assignment that doesn’t set its own price, and changing it reprices those assignments right away.
To price one assignment differently, set Tokens per extension hour on that assignment (for a quiz, Tokens per hour in the quiz form). Leave the field empty to use the classroom’s price, or set it to 0 to turn extensions off for that assignment.
Assigning tokens to students
Section titled “Assigning tokens to students”Go to Tokens and click Assign Tokens. You can assign to specific students or to everyone at once. Add an optional description like “start of semester allocation” to keep the history readable. Tokens are added to each student’s balance immediately. Do this before anyone needs them, it takes 10 seconds and saves a lot of awkward conversations later.
How students use tokens
Section titled “How students use tokens”Students see an Extend button on each priced repository or quiz assignment that has a due date on their Assignments page, and can use it at any time: ahead of the deadline, while the work is late, or after a late submission or quiz attempt. They pick how many hours they want, see the token cost (hours x tokens per hour for that assignment), and confirm. Their balance is debited and that many hours past the deadline no longer count as late, so the late penalty shrinks accordingly. On a quiz, the hours also push back when a missing attempt counts as 0. A quiz that has closed before the student finished an attempt offers no Extend. The assignment’s deadline itself doesn’t change; students see a note under it saying how many hours they applied. A student can cancel a purchase from their Tokens page to get the tokens back, which takes the hours back too.
Token history
Section titled “Token history”The Tokens page shows a full log of every transaction across the classroom: who received tokens, who spent them, and when. Students can see their own transaction history on their Tokens page. Everything is logged — you’ll never have to take anyone’s word for it.