A procedure for maintaining student progress in a personalized university course.

Ten college students took a self-paced course. They could finish lessons any time they wanted.

The teacher added a rule. Each lesson now had a firm due date. If a student missed the date, the teacher gave two warnings. After the second warning, the student was dropped from the course.

The researchers flipped the rule on and off four times to see what happened.

When the deadline rule was in place, students finished about one lesson every day.

When the rule was removed, work dropped to about one lesson every three days.

The threat of being withdrawn tripled lesson completion.

Jenkins et al. (1973) tried a softer approach the year before. They raised the minimum score needed to pass each unit. That also boosted work, but it kept control inside the teacher’s hands.

de Merlier et al. (2024) went the opposite direction fifty years later. They let students block their own social media to create “study time.” The gain in homework was small. The 1974 rule shows that instructor power still beats self-management for big jumps.

Deshais et al. (2019) used group token boards with first graders. Both studies used an ABAB design and saw large gains, proving that clear contingencies work from age six to twenty-six.

If you run a self-paced course, add hard deadlines with real teeth. Two warnings followed by removal can turn procrastination into daily progress. Start small: pick one unit, set a date, and mean it.