text: Another important aspect of summer projects is the various time restraints every student has. Students may have sports, vacations, jobs, and many other activities. Designing a project which accommodates everyone's complex and ever-changing needs can be impossible. By allowing students to design the project, much of this problem is eliminated. They know the time they have better than anyone else, so they can design a project which fits far better to their own schedule. If students were able to design their own projects, they could even tie it into the activities they're already doing. This way, they're able to gain the benefits of a summer project, while not having to change much about their summer. Not having enough time is another reason why some students may not do their summer project, but can have other, additional, consequences. With a teacher-designed project, if students don't have the time to complete it, they may look towards cheating off of others, since everyone is following the same project. This not only negates any benefits of a summer project, but can also lead to some downsides. If a student cheats on a summer project because they didn't have the time to do it, they may feel encouraged to cheat again in the future, even if they wouldn't have otherwise. With a student-designed project, cheating is much less of a problem. Not only are there far fewer reasons to cheat, but it's much harder to as well, since every student has their own project, they can't simply copy off of what someone else has done.