In the school where I work, I am required to assign homework 4-5 nights a week and this counts as 10% of the term grade. In addition, class participation is 20% of the grade. I have never been happy about the nightly HW because I can't really create meaningful, relevant work that can be done in one night about the work for just one day, and that I can check the following day in order to give them credit. I end up giving worksheets on something just covered in that class. Anyway, I think I might use a discussion board for students to contribute to conversations about a number of topics or prompts throughout, say, a 2-week period. (I am taking the WebCT discussion board as a model since it’s the only one I’m familiar with.) This would allow for the topics/questions/prompts to be more meaningful because they'd be about a longer topic. It would also allow the students to administer their time however they want (they could contribute to all of them at once, or in parts, as responses to the rest of the discussion. This would also add a valuable piece for the class participation portion o their grade, offering different ways to participate.