Originally, I wanted to see whether Moodle plugins could automatically remind students about assignment deadlines. I tested two different plugins, but neither worked as expected. In the end, I had no choice but to use what I call a “manual reminder.”
By “manual reminder,” I mean the following process:
About one to two days before an assignment deadline, I log into Moodle, download the quiz/assignment grade sheet, and sort it by score in Excel. Students with no recorded score are assumed not to have submitted yet. I then send reminder emails to those students.
This process is relatively convenient because Moodle automatically includes students’ email addresses in the grade sheet. I simply copy and paste the email column. To protect students’ privacy, all reminder emails are sent using BCC.
At the end of the semester, I became curious:
Does this kind of manual reminder actually work?
Fortunately, I had saved all the grade sheets used for reminders, so I could compare submission rates before and after reminders. I also used quizzes from an earlier Moodle testing phase (where no reminders were sent) as a control group.
Department-level analysis was assisted by AI.
Thanks, AI. Praise AI.
Now, let’s look at the results.
Monday Class (77 students)
- Submission rate before reminder: 73%
- Submission rate after reminder: 93%
- No-reminder baseline: 84%
That is an increase of 9%.
Departments most frequently requiring reminders (late submitters)
1st place: Bachelor Program in Digital Media and Technology
In almost every quiz, most students from this program completed the task only after receiving reminders.
2nd place: Bachelor Program in International Service Industry Management
Although the number of students is small, the proportion requiring reminders is high.
3rd place (tie): Department of Biomedical Science and Engineering & Department of Medical Imaging and Radiological Sciences
These departments show a polarized pattern: roughly half of the students submit on time, while the other half require reminders.
Most self-motivated departments (rarely need reminders)
Best performance: Post-baccalaureate School of Chinese Medicine
This group is the most impressive. The vast majority of students completed quizzes before any reminder was sent, showing very strong learning discipline.
Excellent performance: School of Medicine
Only one or two students occasionally required reminders. Overall initiative is very high.
Thursday Class – Group 1
- Submission rate before reminder: 54%
- Submission rate after reminder: 83%
- No-reminder baseline: 80%
That is an increase of 3%.
That said, this class is relatively small (21 students total). Some departments only have one student, so strong performance should not be overinterpreted. Practically speaking, Nursing is the only group worth close attention, as they account for nearly half of the class.
Thursday Class – Group 2 (32 students)
- Submission rate before reminder: 59%
- Submission rate after reminder: 80%
- No-reminder baseline: 74%
That is an increase of 6%.
Departments most dependent on reminders
Department of Information Technology and Management
Reminder-dependent rate: 47% (nearly half)
Department of Nursing
Reminder-dependent rate: 42%
While about half submit on time, the other half rely heavily on reminders.
Department of Oriental Language and Literature
Reminder-dependent rate: 40%
Sample size is small, but dependency is still high.
Best performers (highest self-motivation)
School of Medicine & Department of Medical Imaging and Radiological Sciences
Self-motivation rate: 100%
Across five assignments, all students submitted before any reminder. Perfect performance.
School of Post-baccalaureate Nursing
Self-motivation rate: 91%
A pleasant surprise. Unlike the undergraduate nursing students, post-baccalaureate students showed very high self-discipline.
Special attention: reminders ineffective / high non-submission
Bachelor Program in International Service Industry Management
In all five assignments with reminders, submissions were still missing.
Data suggest reminders were entirely ineffective (“No Submission”). Gemini even suggested that I should verify whether these students were still enrolled.
Department of Social Work
Non-submission rate: 65%
Only a few students submitted assignments, regardless of reminders. More than half remained inactive even after being reminded.
Summary
Reminder emails are most effective (highest return) for Department of Information Technology and Management and undergraduate Nursing students.
Medical students, Medical Imaging students, and post-baccalaureate Chinese Medicine and Nursing students are the most worry-free groups.
Final Thoughts
That said, I still want to state this clearly:
You are already adults. Teachers are not obligated to remind you to do your assignments.
Teachers can be busy and may forget. Ideally, students should remember on their own.
Once students develop the mindset of “the teacher will remind me, so I’ll wait,” the situation can become risky. If the teacher forgets, the outcome can be disastrous.
This is exactly what happened in Thursday Class – Group 2. For the final assignment, I was extremely busy and forgot to send reminders. As a result, the submission rate dropped to 66%—compared to 80% when reminders were sent. That difference is genuinely alarming.
A closer examination of the largest class (the Monday class, n = 77) provides clearer evidence that repeated manual reminders may gradually foster reminder dependency among some students.
As shown in the time-series data, beginning with the third reminder, the assignment completion rate before reminders consistently fell below 75%, reaching a low of 56% at its minimum. This decline did not reflect reduced capability or willingness to complete the assignments, as completion rates after reminders remained consistently high throughout the semester.
To further clarify this pattern, the assignments were divided into two groups: the first three assignments and the subsequent five assignments. When comparing the average completion rates before reminders, a clear shift emerged. The average pre-reminder completion rate for the first three assignments was 85%, whereas for the latter five assignments it dropped to 66%.
This marked decrease suggests that, over time, reminders may have been incorporated into the workflow of some students, shifting the timing of task initiation rather than eliminating task completion. In other words, reminders appeared to function not merely as a safeguard against forgetfulness, but increasingly as an external trigger upon which a subset of students came to rely.
Importantly, this pattern does not indicate a decline in student motivation or ability. Instead, it highlights how consistent external reminders can reshape collective behavior in large classes, reducing autonomous task initiation while maintaining high final submission rates.
The original motivation for implementing manual reminders did not stem from a desire to closely monitor students, but from repeated experiences in previous semesters. In several cases, students contacted the instructor near the end of the semester to request—or even plead for—the reopening of missed assignments.
Given the total number of assignments in any given course (approximately 12–14 per semester), reopening assignments individually at the end of the term imposed a substantial administrative burden. More importantly, such ad hoc reopening introduced issues of fairness and consistency across students.
Manual reminders were therefore introduced as a preventive measure: a way to reduce last-minute appeals and to minimize the need for reopening assignments after deadlines had passed. In this sense, reminders were intended to lower administrative workload and to provide students with an earlier opportunity to act, rather than to function as a routine component of the assignment process.
However, as the analyses above demonstrate, this well-intentioned intervention may have had unintended consequences, gradually reshaping student behavior and contributing to reliance on reminders rather than reinforcing autonomous deadline management.
The Real Question
So here is my GENUINE question:
For that extra 6–9% (at most about 8 students), should I continue doing “manual reminders” next semester?
I need to rethink my strategy.
