What is an "optional" assignment?

For normal assignments, you can set it as an "optional" assignment:

There are a couple implications of setting an assignment as optional.

First, on the student side, optional assignments show up under a separate tab. Normally, assignments will show up under the "Current" tab until the assignment is past due and finished. However, incomplete optional assignments will show up in the third "Optional" tab instead:

Second, optional assignments will not show up as a "Late Assignment" in the class roster view:

Practically, optional assignments can be used in a couple of ways. First, you can use optional assignments as extension activities for students who might finish their other assignments early. Please note that even though the assignments are optional, the questions will still be transferred to the student's personal deck after the student has finished the questions.

One other way of using optional assignments is to help keep assignments organized for students. For example, let's say that you have a couple of students who joined your class in the middle of the school year. By default, once they enroll in your Podsie class, all of the assignments that your other students have completed up to that point would show up in their "Current" assignments tab as a "Late" assignment. This could be pretty overwhelming, so in this case, you could retroactively go through your older assignments and mark all but the essential assignments as "optional", so your students can know which ones they should be prioritizing.