How do I know when a professor changes a due date?

To know when a professor changes a due date, turn on your course site’s due date and announcement notifications and set them to send right away. Then check each syllabus against the course site at the start of term, and again after any announcement that mentions a date. Notifications catch the changes a professor makes on the assignment itself. Announcements and the syllabus catch the rest. Here’s how to set up all three in about ten minutes, so you know a due date changed before it costs you anything.

Step 1: Turn on due date notifications, and make them immediate

Your course site can tell you when a due date changes, but at some schools that notification is set to a weekly summary, or off, by default.

1. On your course site, open your Account (usually your profile picture or name), then Notifications.
2. Find the notification for due date changes. Set it to send right away (it may say “immediately” or “notify me right away”).
3. Find announcements and set them to right away too. Professors often post a changed date there first.
4. Find the one for course content changes (edits to assignments, pages or quizzes). A daily summary is a good setting: it can be busy, but it catches rewritten instructions.
5. Check whether a class has its own notification settings. Many course sites let you set them per class, and a class setting can override your account setting. Look for a notifications option on each class’s home page.
6. If you use your course site’s phone app, allow its notifications in your phone’s settings, or the right-away setting has nowhere to go. Our notifications checklist walks through the iPhone settings.

Step 2: Read announcements for dates

When a professor says “the paper is now due Friday” in an announcement, the assignment’s date may not change until later, or ever. Many professors handle deadlines this way, especially for whole-class extensions.

1. Open each class’s Announcements at least every other day, or read the announcement emails or notifications as they come.
2. Look for any day, date or time. Words like “moved”, “pushed”, “extended”, “instead” and “now due” are the giveaways.
3. When you see one, check the assignment page. If the date there still shows the old one, trust the announcement for now, and ask your professor if it’s unclear.

Step 3: Check the syllabus against the course site

The syllabus is often the first place a date exists, and it isn’t always updated when the course site is (or the other way around).

1. At the start of term, list every exam, paper and project date in each syllabus.
2. Compare them with the course calendar. Mark anything missing or different.
3. Do it again whenever a professor posts an updated syllabus or schedule.

When we checked real syllabi against their course sites, two of the five courses had a syllabus that disagreed with the course site about a date. That’s not unusual, and it’s rarely anyone’s mistake on purpose: plans change, and one place gets updated first.

If you find a mismatch, ask. A two-line email works: “The syllabus lists the midterm on October 20, but the course calendar shows October 22. Which date should I plan for?” Professors would much rather answer that than deal with a missed exam.

Step 4: Check whether the due date changed before each big deadline

Calendars and lists show a copy of the date. The assignment page on your course site is the original.

1. Two days before anything big is due, open the assignment itself.
2. Check the due date, the time (11:59 PM and 11:00 PM are not the same) and the instructions.
3. Check whether the instructions grew: a new length requirement, a new file format, a rubric that wasn’t there before.

This takes a minute and catches the changes no notification sends you.

Why a moved deadline slips past students

There are four common reasons:

• The notification is off or weekly. Default settings vary by school, and a weekly summary can arrive after the new deadline has passed.
• The change was never made on the assignment. A date moved in class, in an announcement or in the syllabus doesn’t touch the course site’s due date, so nothing fires.
• Your calendar app is behind. If you subscribed to your course calendar in Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, the app fetches updates on its own schedule. Google can take several hours and has no refresh button. Our guide on why your course calendar isn’t updating explains the lag and what to do about it.
• The instructions changed, not the date. A rewritten prompt or an added requirement is easy to miss, because most students only reopen an assignment when they start it.

A habit that catches the rest

Notifications and checks only work if they reach you. Two small habits close the gaps:

• Keep one list. Write every deadline in one place, including the ones from announcements and syllabi. When something changes, cross out the old date and write the new one next to it, so you can see that it moved.
• Review the week ahead on the same day each week. Open the next two weeks of your calendar, skim each class’s announcements, and fix your list. Our guide on seeing every assignment in one place has a ten-minute version of this check.

Where Coursebird fits

Coursebird watches for changes for you. It reads your classes through the calendar feed link your course site gives every student, plus each class’s announcements, and compares what it sees each time it syncs with what it saw last time.

When a due date moves, the instructions change or a new assignment appears, What’s New in Coursebird’s Planner shows the old and the new side by side. You see exactly what changed, not just a new date. A date written in an announcement is listed at the top, with the sentence it came from, for you to add. Coursebird also reads each syllabus for exam dates and deadlines, each with the line it came from, so a syllabus that disagrees with the course site stands out. On iPhone, Coursebird checks now and then even while it’s closed (when iPhone allows) and tells you when a due date moves.

Coursebird is read-only (it never submits or changes anything on your school’s site), and your data stays on your device. It’s in beta, and you can join the list from this page. See how What’s New works.