Assignment Design: Telling Students What You Want

From: http://www.sacredheart.edu/pages/13510_assignment_design.cfm

By Dr. Margaret Procter, Coordinator, Writing Support, University of Toronto.

Obviously, only a few of the assignment design tips below will be appropriate to a given course. Take what you like and leave the rest.

1. Demonstrate how writing is used for learning and thinking in your discipline: analyze the style and organization of readings; look at examples of good journal articles and book chapters; ask invited speakers about their writing practices; refer to your own writing.

2. Demonstrate your awareness of writing as a process and a part of learning: require "deep" revision and rethinking; difficult but rewarding; necessary for exploration of ideas.

3. Phrase assignment prompts to refer explicitly to the learning objectives of the course: use phrases like "apply what you have learned about theories of deviance," "practice historiographical analysis," "use your skills in critical thinking," "locate the article's position within arguments about X covered in this course."

4. Ask questions that will lead students beyond mere summary or replication of sources: "Critically evaluate which of the two levels of analysis offers the best explanation for war," "Choose a detail or key word and show its function in the novel," or "To what extent is statement X true?"

5. Describe success in realistic terms: state grading criteria, making models available (perhaps past student essays on similar topics), discussing good (and improvable) examples of past student writing in class.

6. Define the reader as someone other than yourself, thus giving the student a role to play: "explain to other students in your class who have not read the work," "advise the foreign ministers of [x country].”

7. Help students avoid pitfalls by anticipating their questions and assumptions: discuss narrowing of the topic, use of sources, citation method, use and placement of thesis statement, first-person references, expectations that they will proofread.

8. Ask students for various modes of writing, not always essays and reports: real-world genres: government briefing paper, environmental impact statement, museum display notes, letter to the author of your textbook, manuals for clients or the public.

9. Try microthemes (concise pieces of 150-200 words): abstract of a required reading, summary of one side of a controversy, interpretation of given set of data, solution of a quandary.

10. Try some non-linear genres: response journals to readings or field work, research journals on the conceptual development of a project or experiment, diagrams, posters, cartoons, videos.

11. Try "metanotes" on any assignment or project: brief summative notes outlining reasoning and presentation strategies, perhaps discussing writing problems and tactics. They may be reports on progress or impromptu in-class writing as the assignment is handed in.

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Presenting Assignments: Reinforcing Students' Motivation

1. Give students an early chance to succeed, to test their skills, and to improve: give small papers in the early weeks of the course, with prompt feedback--not necessarily grades).

2. Use some class time to show ways of understanding and developing assignment topics: focus on broad subjects, using specific ones as "keyholes," look for issues, questions, and conflicts.

3. Let students know what you mean by the logical or cognitive operation you name (discuss, analyze/synthesize, compare/contrast, criticize, evaluate, etc.): draw diagrams on the board, outline a good answer, show published models, comment on the organizational patterns in course readings.

4. Encourage and reward prompt starts: assign preliminary statements and annotated reference lists; ask for five-minute in-class progress reports; set up a question box or discussion thread on BlackBoard, set aside some office time for oral discussion of the topics.

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Coaching through the Process: Getting students to take responsibility

1. Ask students to be readers as well as writers. Have class members, in pairs, read each other's abstracts, outlines, or first paragraphs--then challenge the readers to reproduce what they have read. For longer projects, students can look at each other's drafts in pairs or small groups (in class or on their own time) and answer simple focused questions: "What was the most interesting idea in this piece?" "What points need clarifying?"

2. Ask students to write or talk briefly about their progress and discoveries as they put together longer projects. Be sure they know the purpose of their assignment in terms of their own learning. Expressing anxieties can lead to discussion of possible strategies.

3. Encourage students to write abstracts for themselves periodically. Challenge students to say in three or four sentences why they are discussing this particular point, what they want to say about it, and why that is worth saying. These exercises can help both those who are blocked and those who ramble, and they can reassure the anxious that they have something to say.