Late Work
PLS provides a late policy in each class syllabus and the Sakai Tutorials course. If your institution doesn’t have a late policy covering all courses, you should make your personal expectations clear at the beginning of the course. You may also discover the need to make adjustments to due dates or exceptions to your policy for specific situations. For example, a participant might return from a vacation late, or be stuck somewhere unexpectedly. Occasionally you'll have a participant start the course late due to technical difficulties, or perhaps someone will have a family emergency and will be unable to keep up with the current module in class. You may choose to extend a deadline, but you should make it clear exactly how long the participant has to make up the missed work.
If a participant is late to enter the class, have them start by completing their profile or introduction and then jump into the current module or activities. The profile will allow others to "meet" the new participant as they respond to posts in the current discussions.
In most cases, when a participant returns from an emergency absence, he/she should be required to jump into the current module (even if they've missed a previous week) and be required to submit that work with the rest of the class. This will allow the student to reap the benefits of collaboration and any group work currently taking place. You can then set up a schedule with the student to complete the missing work from earlier in the course.