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• Designing Effective Writing Assignments

One of the best ways for students to determine what they know, think, and believe about a given subject is to write about it. To support students in their writing, it is important to provide them with a meaningful writing task, one that has an authentic purpose, clear guidelines, and engages students in their learning. In this section, you can read about key principles of assignment design, review examples of effective writing assignments, and use a checklist to guide your own designs. You can also consult with a Writing Across the Curriculum Program team member . We’re happy to think with you about your writing assignment, whether it is in the inkling stage or undergoing a few minor tweaks.

What makes an assignment effective?

A good deal of educational research points to the benefits of writing assignments that exhibit the following features:

Meaningful tasks. A task is given meaning by its relevance to and alignment with the learning aims in the course. What counts as meaningful in one course context might not be meaningful in another. As Eodice, Geller, and Lerner (2016) have shown, meaningful writing assignments do occur across all disciplines and they are typically ones that “offer students opportunities to engage with instructors, peers, and texts and are relevant to past experiences and passions as well as to future aspirations and identities.”

Maximized learning time. As Linda Suskie argues, effectiveness is determined by the “learning payoff,” not by size of the assignment. Will students learn four times as much on an assignment that takes 20 hours outside of class than one that takes 5? Longer research-based assignments and elaborate class activities (mock conferences, debates, poster sessions, etc.) can greatly maximize learning, but there must be an appropriate level of writing and learning time built into the task. Term papers are much more effective when students have time to draft and revise stages of the assignment, rather than turning in one final product at the end.

Logical sequencing. A writing task that includes discrete stages (research, drafting, review, revising, etc.) is more likely to be an effective learning experience than one that only specifies the final product. Furthermore, these stages are more effective when they are scaffolded so simpler tasks precede more complex tasks. For example, a well-sequenced 10-12 page essay assignment might involve discrete segments where students generate a central inquiry question, draft and workshop a thesis statement, produce a first draft of the essay, give and receive feedback on drafts, and submit a revision. Read more about sequencing assignments . 

Clear criteria will help students connect an assignment’s relevance to larger scale course outcomes. The literature on assignment design strongly encourages instructors to make the grading criteria explicit to students before the assignment is collected and assessed. A grading scheme or rubric that is handed out along with the assignment can provide students with a clear understanding of the weighted expectations and, thus help them decide what to focus on in the assignment. It becomes a teaching tool, not just an assessment tool.

Forward-thinking activities more than backward-thinking activities. Forward-thinking activities and assignments ask students to apply their learning rather than simply repeat it. The orientation of many writing prompts is often backward, asking students to show they learned X, Y, and Z. As L. Dee Fink (2013) points out, forward-thinking assignments and activities look ahead to what students will be able to do in the future having learned about X, Y, and Z. Such assignments often utilize real-world and scenario-based problems, requiring students to apply their learning to a new situation. For Grant Wiggins (1998) , questions, problems, tests, and assignments that are forward-thinking often:

• Require judgment and innovation. Students have to use knowledge and skills to solve unstructured problems, not just plug in a routine.
• Ask students to do the subject. Beyond recitation and replication, these tasks require students to carry out explorations, inquiry, and work within specific disciplines.
• Replicate workplace and civic contexts. These tasks provide specific constraints, purposes, and audiences that students will face in work and societal contexts.
• Involve a repertoire of skills and abilities rather than the isolation of individual skills. 

Feel free to use this assignment checklist , which draws on the principles and research described on this page.

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Teaching Commons > Teaching Guides > Assignment Design

Assignment Design

Here's a short list of some general assignment design strategies that apply to a wide variety of disciplines.

A number of strategies for deterring plagiarism are discussed, including asking your students to write about current topics relevant to your course and staging essay assignments throughout the quarter.

​Integrative learning occurs when students make connections among ideas and experiences in order to transfer learning to new contexts.​

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Designing Assignments for Learning

The rapid shift to remote teaching and learning meant that many instructors reimagined their assessment practices. Whether adapting existing assignments or creatively designing new opportunities for their students to learn, instructors focused on helping students make meaning and demonstrate their learning outside of the traditional, face-to-face classroom setting. This resource distills the elements of assignment design that are important to carry forward as we continue to seek better ways of assessing learning and build on our innovative assignment designs.

On this page:

Rethinking traditional tests, quizzes, and exams.

• Examples from the Columbia University Classroom
• Tips for Designing Assignments for Learning

Reflect On Your Assignment Design

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• Resources and References

Cite this resource: Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2021). Designing Assignments for Learning. Columbia University. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/teaching-with-technology/teaching-online/designing-assignments/

Traditional assessments tend to reveal whether students can recognize, recall, or replicate what was learned out of context, and tend to focus on students providing correct responses (Wiggins, 1990). In contrast, authentic assignments, which are course assessments, engage students in higher order thinking, as they grapple with real or simulated challenges that help them prepare for their professional lives, and draw on the course knowledge learned and the skills acquired to create justifiable answers, performances or products (Wiggins, 1990). An authentic assessment provides opportunities for students to practice, consult resources, learn from feedback, and refine their performances and products accordingly (Wiggins 1990, 1998, 2014). 

Authentic assignments ask students to “do” the subject with an audience in mind and apply their learning in a new situation. Examples of authentic assignments include asking students to: 

• Write for a real audience (e.g., a memo, a policy brief, letter to the editor, a grant proposal, reports, building a website) and/or publication;
• Solve problem sets that have real world application; 
• Design projects that address a real world problem; 
• Engage in a community-partnered research project;
• Create an exhibit, performance, or conference presentation ;
• Compile and reflect on their work through a portfolio/e-portfolio.

Noteworthy elements of authentic designs are that instructors scaffold the assignment, and play an active role in preparing students for the tasks assigned, while students are intentionally asked to reflect on the process and product of their work thus building their metacognitive skills (Herrington and Oliver, 2000; Ashford-Rowe, Herrington and Brown, 2013; Frey, Schmitt, and Allen, 2012). 

It’s worth noting here that authentic assessments can initially be time consuming to design, implement, and grade. They are critiqued for being challenging to use across course contexts and for grading reliability issues (Maclellan, 2004). Despite these challenges, authentic assessments are recognized as beneficial to student learning (Svinicki, 2004) as they are learner-centered (Weimer, 2013), promote academic integrity (McLaughlin, L. and Ricevuto, 2021; Sotiriadou et al., 2019; Schroeder, 2021) and motivate students to learn (Ambrose et al., 2010). The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning is always available to consult with faculty who are considering authentic assessment designs and to discuss challenges and affordances.   

Examples from the Columbia University Classroom 

Columbia instructors have experimented with alternative ways of assessing student learning from oral exams to technology-enhanced assignments. Below are a few examples of authentic assignments in various teaching contexts across Columbia University. 

• E-portfolios: Statia Cook shares her experiences with an ePorfolio assignment in her co-taught Frontiers of Science course (a submission to the Voices of Hybrid and Online Teaching and Learning initiative); CUIMC use of ePortfolios ;
• Case studies: Columbia instructors have engaged their students in authentic ways through case studies drawing on the Case Consortium at Columbia University. Read and watch a faculty spotlight to learn how Professor Mary Ann Price uses the case method to place pre-med students in real-life scenarios;
• Simulations: students at CUIMC engage in simulations to develop their professional skills in The Mary & Michael Jaharis Simulation Center in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Helene Fuld Health Trust Simulation Center in the Columbia School of Nursing; 
• Experiential learning: instructors have drawn on New York City as a learning laboratory such as Barnard’s NYC as Lab webpage which highlights courses that engage students in NYC;
• Design projects that address real world problems: Yevgeniy Yesilevskiy on the Engineering design projects completed using lab kits during remote learning. Watch Dr. Yesilevskiy talk about his teaching and read the Columbia News article . 
• Writing assignments: Lia Marshall and her teaching associate Aparna Balasundaram reflect on their “non-disposable or renewable assignments” to prepare social work students for their professional lives as they write for a real audience; and Hannah Weaver spoke about a sandbox assignment used in her Core Literature Humanities course at the 2021 Celebration of Teaching and Learning Symposium . Watch Dr. Weaver share her experiences.  

​Tips for Designing Assignments for Learning

While designing an effective authentic assignment may seem like a daunting task, the following tips can be used as a starting point. See the Resources section for frameworks and tools that may be useful in this effort.  

Align the assignment with your course learning objectives 

Identify the kind of thinking that is important in your course, the knowledge students will apply, and the skills they will practice using through the assignment. What kind of thinking will students be asked to do for the assignment? What will students learn by completing this assignment? How will the assignment help students achieve the desired course learning outcomes? For more information on course learning objectives, see the CTL’s Course Design Essentials self-paced course and watch the video on Articulating Learning Objectives .  

Identify an authentic meaning-making task

For meaning-making to occur, students need to understand the relevance of the assignment to the course and beyond (Ambrose et al., 2010). To Bean (2011) a “meaning-making” or “meaning-constructing” task has two dimensions: 1) it presents students with an authentic disciplinary problem or asks students to formulate their own problems, both of which engage them in active critical thinking, and 2) the problem is placed in “a context that gives students a role or purpose, a targeted audience, and a genre.” (Bean, 2011: 97-98). 

An authentic task gives students a realistic challenge to grapple with, a role to take on that allows them to “rehearse for the complex ambiguities” of life, provides resources and supports to draw on, and requires students to justify their work and the process they used to inform their solution (Wiggins, 1990). Note that if students find an assignment interesting or relevant, they will see value in completing it. 

Consider the kind of activities in the real world that use the knowledge and skills that are the focus of your course. How is this knowledge and these skills applied to answer real-world questions to solve real-world problems? (Herrington et al., 2010: 22). What do professionals or academics in your discipline do on a regular basis? What does it mean to think like a biologist, statistician, historian, social scientist? How might your assignment ask students to draw on current events, issues, or problems that relate to the course and are of interest to them? How might your assignment tap into student motivation and engage them in the kinds of thinking they can apply to better understand the world around them? (Ambrose et al., 2010). 

Determine the evaluation criteria and create a rubric

To ensure equitable and consistent grading of assignments across students, make transparent the criteria you will use to evaluate student work. The criteria should focus on the knowledge and skills that are central to the assignment. Build on the criteria identified, create a rubric that makes explicit the expectations of deliverables and share this rubric with your students so they can use it as they work on the assignment. For more information on rubrics, see the CTL’s resource Incorporating Rubrics into Your Grading and Feedback Practices , and explore the Association of American Colleges & Universities VALUE Rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education). 

Build in metacognition

Ask students to reflect on what and how they learned from the assignment. Help students uncover personal relevance of the assignment, find intrinsic value in their work, and deepen their motivation by asking them to reflect on their process and their assignment deliverable. Sample prompts might include: what did you learn from this assignment? How might you draw on the knowledge and skills you used on this assignment in the future? See Ambrose et al., 2010 for more strategies that support motivation and the CTL’s resource on Metacognition ). 

Provide students with opportunities to practice

Design your assignment to be a learning experience and prepare students for success on the assignment. If students can reasonably expect to be successful on an assignment when they put in the required effort ,with the support and guidance of the instructor, they are more likely to engage in the behaviors necessary for learning (Ambrose et al., 2010). Ensure student success by actively teaching the knowledge and skills of the course (e.g., how to problem solve, how to write for a particular audience), modeling the desired thinking, and creating learning activities that build up to a graded assignment. Provide opportunities for students to practice using the knowledge and skills they will need for the assignment, whether through low-stakes in-class activities or homework activities that include opportunities to receive and incorporate formative feedback. For more information on providing feedback, see the CTL resource Feedback for Learning . 

Communicate about the assignment 

Share the purpose, task, audience, expectations, and criteria for the assignment. Students may have expectations about assessments and how they will be graded that is informed by their prior experiences completing high-stakes assessments, so be transparent. Tell your students why you are asking them to do this assignment, what skills they will be using, how it aligns with the course learning outcomes, and why it is relevant to their learning and their professional lives (i.e., how practitioners / professionals use the knowledge and skills in your course in real world contexts and for what purposes). Finally, verify that students understand what they need to do to complete the assignment. This can be done by asking students to respond to poll questions about different parts of the assignment, a “scavenger hunt” of the assignment instructions–giving students questions to answer about the assignment and having them work in small groups to answer the questions, or by having students share back what they think is expected of them.

Plan to iterate and to keep the focus on learning 

Draw on multiple sources of data to help make decisions about what changes are needed to the assignment, the assignment instructions, and/or rubric to ensure that it contributes to student learning. Explore assignment performance data. As Deandra Little reminds us: “a really good assignment, which is a really good assessment, also teaches you something or tells the instructor something. As much as it tells you what students are learning, it’s also telling you what they aren’t learning.” ( Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode 337 ). Assignment bottlenecks–where students get stuck or struggle–can be good indicators that students need further support or opportunities to practice prior to completing an assignment. This awareness can inform teaching decisions. 

Triangulate the performance data by collecting student feedback, and noting your own reflections about what worked well and what did not. Revise the assignment instructions, rubric, and teaching practices accordingly. Consider how you might better align your assignment with your course objectives and/or provide more opportunities for students to practice using the knowledge and skills that they will rely on for the assignment. Additionally, keep in mind societal, disciplinary, and technological changes as you tweak your assignments for future use. 

Now is a great time to reflect on your practices and experiences with assignment design and think critically about your approach. Take a closer look at an existing assignment. Questions to consider include: What is this assignment meant to do? What purpose does it serve? Why do you ask students to do this assignment? How are they prepared to complete the assignment? Does the assignment assess the kind of learning that you really want? What would help students learn from this assignment? 

Using the tips in the previous section: How can the assignment be tweaked to be more authentic and meaningful to students? 

As you plan forward for post-pandemic teaching and reflect on your practices and reimagine your course design, you may find the following CTL resources helpful: Reflecting On Your Experiences with Remote Teaching , Transition to In-Person Teaching , and Course Design Support .

The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is here to help!

For assistance with assignment design, rubric design, or any other teaching and learning need, please request a consultation by emailing [email protected] . 

Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework for assignments. The TILT Examples and Resources page ( https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources ) includes example assignments from across disciplines, as well as a transparent assignment template and a checklist for designing transparent assignments . Each emphasizes the importance of articulating to students the purpose of the assignment or activity, the what and how of the task, and specifying the criteria that will be used to assess students. 

Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) offers VALUE ADD (Assignment Design and Diagnostic) tools ( https://www.aacu.org/value-add-tools ) to help with the creation of clear and effective assignments that align with the desired learning outcomes and associated VALUE rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education). VALUE ADD encourages instructors to explicitly state assignment information such as the purpose of the assignment, what skills students will be using, how it aligns with course learning outcomes, the assignment type, the audience and context for the assignment, clear evaluation criteria, desired formatting, and expectations for completion whether individual or in a group.

Villarroel et al. (2017) propose a blueprint for building authentic assessments which includes four steps: 1) consider the workplace context, 2) design the authentic assessment; 3) learn and apply standards for judgement; and 4) give feedback. 

References 

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., & DiPietro, M. (2010). Chapter 3: What Factors Motivate Students to Learn? In How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching . Jossey-Bass. 

Ashford-Rowe, K., Herrington, J., and Brown, C. (2013). Establishing the critical elements that determine authentic assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 39(2), 205-222, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2013.819566 .  

Bean, J.C. (2011). Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom . Second Edition. Jossey-Bass. 

Frey, B. B, Schmitt, V. L., and Allen, J. P. (2012). Defining Authentic Classroom Assessment. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. 17(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.7275/sxbs-0829  

Herrington, J., Reeves, T. C., and Oliver, R. (2010). A Guide to Authentic e-Learning . Routledge. 

Herrington, J. and Oliver, R. (2000). An instructional design framework for authentic learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(3), 23-48. 

Litchfield, B. C. and Dempsey, J. V. (2015). Authentic Assessment of Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 142 (Summer 2015), 65-80. 

Maclellan, E. (2004). How convincing is alternative assessment for use in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 29(3), June 2004. DOI: 10.1080/0260293042000188267

McLaughlin, L. and Ricevuto, J. (2021). Assessments in a Virtual Environment: You Won’t Need that Lockdown Browser! Faculty Focus. June 2, 2021. 

Mueller, J. (2005). The Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Enhancing Student Learning through Online Faculty Development . MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 1(1). July 2005. Mueller’s Authentic Assessment Toolbox is available online. 

Schroeder, R. (2021). Vaccinate Against Cheating With Authentic Assessment . Inside Higher Ed. (February 26, 2021).  

Sotiriadou, P., Logan, D., Daly, A., and Guest, R. (2019). The role of authentic assessment to preserve academic integrity and promote skills development and employability. Studies in Higher Education. 45(111), 2132-2148. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1582015    

Stachowiak, B. (Host). (November 25, 2020). Authentic Assignments with Deandra Little. (Episode 337). In Teaching in Higher Ed . https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/authentic-assignments/  

Svinicki, M. D. (2004). Authentic Assessment: Testing in Reality. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 100 (Winter 2004): 23-29. 

Villarroel, V., Bloxham, S, Bruna, D., Bruna, C., and Herrera-Seda, C. (2017). Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 43(5), 840-854. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2017.1412396    

Weimer, M. (2013). Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice . Second Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Wiggins, G. (2014). Authenticity in assessment, (re-)defined and explained. Retrieved from https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/authenticity-in-assessment-re-defined-and-explained/

Wiggins, G. (1998). Teaching to the (Authentic) Test. Educational Leadership . April 1989. 41-47. 

Wiggins, Grant (1990). The Case for Authentic Assessment . Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation , 2(2). 

Wondering how AI tools might play a role in your course assignments?

See the CTL’s resource “Considerations for AI Tools in the Classroom.”

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Strategies for Effective Assignment Design

As students progress through their degree programs, it becomes increasingly important for them to learn the major genres, research strategies, and writing conventions of their field. Because writing expectations vary across disciplinary and professional contexts, students benefit from transparent explanation of what those expectations are, how to achieve them, and why they’re important. This can be accomplished through carefully designed formal assignments.

Experts in Writing across the Curriculum argue that students learn most successfully when formal assignments engage them with “authentic research projects that promote disciplinary ways of inquiry and argument and are written in real disciplinary genres. [1]  from the National Survey of Student Engagement shows that deep learning depends less on the amount of writing assigned in a course than on the design of the writing assignments themselves. According to this and other research, effective assignments have the following three features: [2]  a meaning-constructing task, clear explanations of expectations, and interactive components.

Engage students in meaning-making

A meaning-constructing task asks students to bring their own critical thinking to bear on problems that matter to both the writer and the intended audience. A meaning-constructing task typically presents students with a disciplinary problem, asks them to formulate their own problems, or otherwise engages them in active critical thinking in a specific rhetorical context.

Provide clear expectations

Effective assignments clearly present the instructor’s expectations for a successful performance. Ideally, the assignment prompt also explains the purpose of the assignment in terms of the course’s learning goals and presents the instructor’s evaluation criteria.

Include interactive components

Interactive activities situate writing as a process of inquiry and discovery, promote productive talk about the writer’s emerging ideas, and encourage multiple drafts and global revision.

Create a Rhetorical Context

Creating a rhetorical context for your assignments means considering the role students will play in their writing, the audience they are meant to address, the format (or genre) of the writing task, and the task they are meant to accomplish. The mnemonic RAFT is helpful to recall these four components. [3]

Having a role helps students understand the kind of change they hope to bring about in their audience’s view of the subject matter. Without a specific role to play other than “student,” writers in your class might assume that their purpose is simply to regurgitate information to the instructor.

Specifying an audience goes hand-in-hand with establishing the student’s role. By identifying an audience, the instructor can help students see how their writing might influence a reader’s stance.

Format/Genre

By specifying a genre (e.g., experimental report, op-ed piece, proposal), the assignment helps students transfer earlier genre knowledge to the current task and make decisions about document design, organization, and style. It also helps instructors clarify expectations about length, citation style, etc. More important still, the rhetorical awareness enabled by writing in a specific genre also creates an awareness of a discourse community at work. To students, college writing assignments often appear to be an isolated transaction between student and teacher. Students assume that strange features of the assignment reflect the idiosyncrasies of the instructor rather than the conventions of a larger community. When instructors assign authentic genres there is an opportunity to make discourse community values and expectations explicit.

Task (Problem-Focused)

The task itself sets forth the subject matter of the assignment. Unlike topic-focused tasks (e.g., research/write about X), which can lead to unfocused papers that merely report information, a truly engaging task is typically embedded in disciplinary “problems” and disciplinary ways of thinking and argumentation. A problem-focused task should give students agency to bring their own critical thinking to bear on the subject matter—that is, to engage them in making their own meaning.

Use Transparent Assignment Design

Often an assignment that seems clear to you can be confusing to your students. While designing your assignments, ask yourself what might be unclear to your students—what assumptions might you be making about their procedural or background knowledge? Scholar Mary Ann Winkelmas

Align writing activities and assignments clearly with learning objectives

The goal of transparent assignment design is to “to make learning processes explicit and equally accessible for all students” (winkelmes et al., 2019, p. 1)., make clear the purpose, task, and criteria for success., for more information visit tilt (transparency in teaching and learning).

Example: Less Transparent

Assignment from an Introductory Communications Course

1. Select a professional in your prospective academic discipline and/or career filed that is considered an expert in an area in which you are interested 2. Secure an interview with the professional for a date and time that is convenient for both of you. 3. Prepare 8-10 questions to ask the professional about their knowledge of a particular academic discipline/career field. 4. Conduct a 20-30 minute, face-to-face interview to gather knowledge that will help you make an informed decision about the major/career you are considering. You will want to audio/video record the interview with the interviewee’s permission 5. Prepare a typed transcript of the questions and answers using the audio/ video recording 6. Write a 400-500 word reflection paper in which you address the following items: a. Who you selected and why? b. What you learned from them that is most interesting? c. What this assignment helped you learn about your major/career decision? 7. What questions you still have? 8. Submit the typed transcript and reflection paper to your instructor

Revised EXAMPLE: More Transparent

Communications 100E, Interview Assignment Used by permission of Katharine Johnson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Due dates: - Sept 30 - Draft interview questions - October 15 - Transcript of interviews - November 17 - Report

Purpose : The purpose of this assignment is to help you make an informed decision about the major/career you are considering.

Skills : This assignment will help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in school and professional life: - Accessing and collecting information from appropriate primary and secondary sources - Synthesizing information to develop informed views - Composing a well-organized, clear, concise report to expand your knowledge on a subject in your major.

Knowledge : This assignment will also help you to become familiar with the following important content knowledge in this discipline: - Issues facing professionals in a field - Scholarly research formats for documenting sources and creating reference pages (i.e., bibliographies).

Task : To complete this assignment you should: 1. Secure an interview with two professionals in hour prospective academic discipline and/or career field who are considered experts. 2. Schedule the interviews with the professionals at a date and time that is convenient for both of you. 3. Prepare 8-10 questions to ask the professionals about their expertise in a particular academic or career field. The questions must be based on a review of the filed using 5 credible sources as defined by the librarian in our research module. Sources should be cited using APA formatting. 4. Conduct a 2 -3 -minute, face-to-face interview with each professional to gather knowledge that will help you make an informed decision about the major/career you are considering. You will want to audio/video record the interview with the interviewee’s permission. 5. Prepare a typed transcript of the interviews 6. Compare and contrast the information provided by both professionals in an 8-page (1.5 spaced, 12point Times New Roman font, 1 inch margins) report that documents the advantages and disadvantages of a career in the selected field.

Criteria for success : Please see the attached rubric.Type your textbox content here.

Information Literacy Skills Needed for Research Writing

Asking students to engage authentic, discipline-specific problems requires a kind of dismantling of the commonly encountered “research paper” culture in which students think of research as going to the library to find sources that can be summarized, paraphrased, and quoted. To move from “research paper” culture to a culture in which research projects are written in disciplinary genres, instructors need to help students develop the following skills related to information literacy: [4]

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Consider the Novice-Expert Framework

Consider backward design

• Bean and Melzer, p. 64-65 ↵
• All of this section excerpted and paraphrased from Bean and Melzer, pp. 66-68 ↵
• All of this section excerpted and paraphrased from Bean and Melzer, pp. 200-202 ↵
• Bizup, Joseph. “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review, 2008, Vol.27 (1), p.72-86. DOI: 10.1080/07350190701738858 ↵

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Designing Assignments and Presenting Them to Students

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Here are some ways to help students learn your subject through writing about it, while developing their writing skills at the same time. Designing your assignments with learning in mind is the single most important way you can support students’ development as writers. Research on student learning demonstrates that many problems of language use and reasoning dissipate when students are engaged with their subject matter and are aware of their purposes for writing. Plagiarism also decreases when students can see a pathway to success. (See our pages Deterring Plagiarism for more discussion of this benefit, and Effective Instructional Techniques for a list of teaching activities to back up your good assignments.) 

NOTE: The page Books and Articles on Writing in the Disciplines lists a number of books with further suggestions and examples for assignment design: see especially Bean, Walvoord and Anderson, and Wright and Herteis. The research basis for these ideas is evident in the works by Beyer et al., Light, Russell, and Thaiss and Zawacki.

Assignment Prompts: Telling Students What You Want

• Keep showing how writing is used for learning and thinking in your discipline: e.g., by commenting on the ways knowledge is produced and disseminated in your field, by analysing the style and organization of course readings, by asking invited speakers about their writing practices e.g., by mentioning your own use of writing as a way to develop ideas and discuss them with others. 
• Create assignment prompts that refer explicitly to elements in the course:    e.g., “apply what you have learned about theories of deviance,” “formulate a hypothesis as defined in Lab 4,” “locate this article’s position in the current arguments about X.”      
• Ask questions that will lead students beyond mere summary or replication of sources: e.g., “Critically evaluate which of the two levels of analysis offers the best explanation for war,” “Choose an important detail or key word and show its function in the novel,” “To what extent is statement A true?”
• Ask students for various modes of writing, not always essays and reports: e.g., 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 e.g., non-linear genres: response journals to readings or field work, diagrams, posters, cartoons, videos, blogs (NOTE: specify whether and how to document sources) e.g., real-world genres (especially of types seen in course readings): government briefing paper, environmental impact statement, museum display notes, manual for clients or the public (again, let students know whether academic documentation is needed). 
• Describe success in realistic and understandable terms: e.g., by formulating grading criteria (perhaps as a rubric with numerical values, or as a checklist of specific expectations, or as a description of good work, or a description by grade levels) e.g., by showing examples of past student writing with commentary on what exactly makes them good—or improvable.
• Define the reader (and thus a role for the writer)—not always yourself or your TA: e.g., “explain to other students in your class who have not read the work,” “write as a scientific expert to managers who do not all have your background,” “advise the foreign minister of Lower Slabovia,” “be a director before rehearsals begin.”
• Help students avoid pitfalls by anticipating their questions and assumptions (keeping in mind that conventions may differ greatly among courses they are taking): e.g., about narrowing of topic, use of sources, use and placement of thesis statement, first-person references, expectation of documentation if writing in non-academic genre, documentation system.

NOTE: Specifications like those in points 5-7 can sometimes be given in appendices or separate pages to avoid overloading the assignment instructions. Some should also be explained or demonstrated orally in class.

Presenting Assignments: Reinforcing Students’ Motivation

• Give students many chances at writing and being read, starting early in the course, and sometimes ungraded or for only a few marks:  e.g., by asking for two-minute papers or exit notes at the end of a lecture or tutorial (What was the clearest point today? the muddiest point?), then reading the set through quickly and commenting on what was said at the start of the next class.
• Demonstrate  what you mean by the logical or cognitive operations you name (discuss, analyse/synthesize, compare/contrast, criticize, evaluate, etc.); Instructional librarians and writing specialists are sometimes available to visit your class to help in these sessions.  e.g., by drawing diagrams on the board, by outlining a good answer, by citing published models, by commenting on the organizational patterns in course readings, by leading class or tutorial exercises that practice the operations e.g., by using some class time to show and practice ways of understanding and developing assignment topics (focussing broad topics, generating lists of potential questions and controversies in specific topics, using search terms to find relevant resources).
• Similarly, let students know what you expect when you name a genre of writing (essay, report, book review, peer review, journal, journal article, critical response, reflective response, blog, annotated bibliography, literature review, case study, brief, memo): e.g., by describing its function in the discipline and/or profession (including types of readers), noting differences in function and form from high school or from other courses, supplying examples and noting range of adaptations. 
• * Most importantly, ensure that students have a chance to apply your feedback and learn from trial and error:     e.g., by scaffolding a sequence of assignments (summary of one article, comparison of two, then analysis of three or more) e.g., by structuring larger assignments in two or more stages (proposal, first draft, revised draft; introduction and thesis statement, then full paper)

Coaching Through the Process: Getting Students to Take Responsibility

• Ask students to write or talk briefly in class about their progress and discoveries as they work on longer projects. Expressing anxieties can lead to discussion of possible strategies. 
• Suggest that students write focus statements periodically as they draft, for themselves or as part of class exercises: state briefly why they have included a 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.
• Structure peer review sessions (in class or online) so students respond to each other as authentic readers in the discipline, not just untrained proofreaders. You can ask pairs of students to look briefly at an excerpt from each other’s work (e.g., a first paragraph or an outline), then challenge them each to summarize what they remember. Or for longer projects, ask students to look at each other’s drafts in class or online and answer simple focussed questions: “What was the most interesting idea in this piece?” “What points need clarifying?” “Did all sections of the paper relate to the stated thesis?” 
• Refuse to let students’ problems of process become your problems of grading. Encourage students to consult you in office hours—it’s easier to look at flawed drafts than mark awful final copies. Comment on cogency and coherence of reasoning, and note points where you genuinely can’t follow the argument, then ask the student to come up with solutions. Find passages you can admire, say why, and ask the student for more of the same qualities.
• Encourage all students to find and use other sources of writing instruction. The lefthand menu on this website leads to information about Writing Centres and Writing Courses at U of T. The News and Writing Plus pages outline non-credit group instruction. Direct students also to relevant handouts in the Advice section (including one on Understanding Essay Topics ). 
• Refer students to specialists when needed. Help is available at U of T for anxious students ( Academic Success Centre ), students with possible learning disabilities (e.g. showing a striking discrepancy between oral and written performance: Accessibility Services ), students facing challenges in learning English as a second or third or fourth language (our section for English Language Learners sets out the range of resources). Present your suggestion as an opportunity to improve and develop. Then follow up by commenting on specific improvements and by asking students about their learning experiences.

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Designing your Syllabus: Backward Design

When you design a syllabus for any course, you begin with the outcomes that you intend for your students to achieve, and you work backwards from these to particular readings and writing assignments. This method, formalized, is called the method of backward design. Backward design is a useful method for any professor in that it ensures that all assignments, readings, and activities will connect students with the outcomes that the professor deems essential to the course.

At the first stage of backward design, writing instructors should consider two issues: what they want their students to know/experience in their courses, and what they want them to be able to do, in these courses and afterwards.  Put another way, instructors need to think both about their focusing questions and their course outcomes. 

You'll note that the first issue—what instructors want their students to know/experience—distinguishes between knowledge and experience. Indeed, this distinction is significant in a writing class, where course content (while important) does not drive the course. The best writing classes consider the students' experiential learning in their course design. To accomplish the aims of experiential learning, it's important to come up with a course question that can bring together the many smaller questions of the course and that can engage students intellectually and experientially. For instance: What is happiness? What are the roots of violence? What is the nature of the self? Technology: friend or foe? 

These are the kinds of questions that can focus course readings and class discussions. They are also the kinds of questions that students can engage with outside of the context of the writing classroom. Finally, they are the kinds of questions around which professors can build a course that is intellectually coherent. 

Even more important the the course questions, however, are the course outcomes — in other words, what students should be able to do when the course comes to an end.  In the first-year writing classes, an instructor's set of outcomes will be informed by the course outcomes (see the outcomes for Writing 2-3 , Writing 5 , or the First-Year Seminar ) . Take some time to review these outcomes, and to consider how every assignment and classroom activity might work to help students achieve them. 

Designing Your Assignment

As you design your assignments, you'll want first to determine the outcomes that each assignment will work to accomplish. If your aim is to ensure, for instance, that students learn how to shape good academic questions, you might ask them to compose, share, and then revise their questions.  If you want them to develop their research capabilities, have them take these questions to the library databases in order to look for appropriate sources.  If you want to ensure that students learn how to work with sources, ask them to compose a summary and synthesis document, in which they nutshell their sources and show how these sources are in conversation with one another.  Finally, if you want to ensure that they learn how to compose and revise, assign drafts and give them feedback.  Have their peers offer feedback as well.  Whatever you decide to assign, use the outcomes to guide you. 

Second, you'll want to scaffold your assignments, so that students can build on their capabilities.  You'll see in the examples cited in the paragraph above that each assignment builds on the one before.  Students work on one step in the process and get feedback on it (from the instructor or their peers) before moving on to the next challenge.  By scaffolding, instructors can be sure that students know how to successfully complete the final assignment.  Students can also track the evolution and transfer of their skills. 

Third, writing instructors frequently comment that Dartmouth's ten-week term is very short.  Assignments must therefore be designed to achieve multiple outcomes. Consider the first step of the assignment sequence outlined above: "Ask students to compose, share, and then revise their questions."  Several outcomes are achieved here:  students are composing, they are collaborating, and they are revising.  If you design your assignments to achieve multiple outcomes, you'll be surprised at how much your students can accomplish.  

Whatever assignments you design, do understand that simply making an assignment does not ensure that students will acquire the desired skills. For an assignment to succeed it should be transparent and progressive—that is, your students should understand your goals for the assignment, and they should be able to chart their own development in relation to these goals. The better students understand your assignments and your vision for your course, the better they'll be able to meet the course aims.

Spacing Your Assignments

When designing your syllabus, you will want to consider carefully the spacing of your writing assignments. It's important that students are given enough time to write and to revise their papers. Professors who use a writing assistant will also want to be sure that they provide the writing assistant enough time to read and respond to students' papers.

Here are some things to consider:

• Give students time to move through the writing process. If you are teaching a first-year course whose purpose is to make students able writers, you will have to give them time to move through the various inventions, composing, and revision processes. One way of making room for these various steps in the writing process is by assigning a paper in three parts: the pre-draft (which could consist of crafting questions, writing a discovery draft, creating an outline, and so on), the first draft, and the revised final draft.
• Give students time to revise. If we want our students to revise their papers substantively, we must give them adequate time. This means that we need to get their papers back on time, particularly the first drafts. Consider whether you'll need two days, four days, or a full week to return an assignment. Also consider whether or not you expect the student to see a writing assistant or to meet with you between drafts.
• Try not to make a reading assignment on the day a major paper is due. Let your students focus their attention fully on their writing. Schedule writing workshops the day that a paper is due instead.
• Long assignments (particularly those that involve research) work better if you break them up into smaller assignments. Ask students to bring in an annotated bibliography, a working thesis, an outline, etc. Scheduling these shorter assignments ensures that students remain engaged in the writing process. It also prevents them from writing the paper at the last minute.
• Consider what's best for you. Many students and instructors like Monday due dates: students get the weekend to work on their papers, and professors keep their weekends free. Other instructors prefer for papers to come in on Thursday or Friday, so that they can use the weekends to respond.  Think of your own rhythms as you plan.

Crafting Your Assignments

Professors often wonder, when creating writing assignments, how detailed the assignments should be. Some professors don't use prompts, requiring students to come up with the topics and questions themselves. Others create detailed writing assignments, arguing that this allows students to save energy for writing their papers (as opposed to generating topics and questions). Still others craft writing prompts that offer students ideas for writing but that leave plenty of room for students to come up with ideas of their own. We'll consider the options of prompting and not prompting here.

The Open Writing Assignment

Professors who don't use writing prompts believe that an important part of scholarship is learning to raise questions that will yield a good academic argument. Instead of creating a writing prompt, these professors craft an assignment process that supports students as they work through the various challenges of scholarly inquiry. In a sense, these professors are asking students to craft their own prompts, and to write the paper that will answer the questions that they outline there. The obvious pedagogical advantage of the open assignment is that it allows students to learn to develop topics on their own. In the open assignment, students are not only permitted to pursue intellectual questions that are of interest to them, they also gain some experience in framing a topic that is neither too narrow nor too broad.

If you elect not to use prompts, you should intend to devote class and conference time to assisting students in this process. For instance, you might ask students to come up with three good academic questions about the course's reading materials. Students can post these questions on the Canvas discussion board. You can then workshop these questions, using class time to talk about which questions will (or won't) yield a good academic argument, and why. You should also comment thoroughly on the questions submitted, raising further questions for the student to consider. You might also invite students to comment on one another's questions on the Canvas site. Students can then revise their questions and resubmit them for another round of feedback before they write.

Some professors find it useful to offer students models of good academic questions. Other professors give explicit instruction regarding what the paper shouldn't do and leave it to the students to determine what they want to do within these parameters. All professors ask students to submit their prompts in advance of drafting so that they can determine, before the students proceed too far, whether or not these topics are appropriate and promising.

Whatever you decide, do note that a prompt-less writing assignment needs a good infrastructure in order to succeed. Indeed, Karen Gocsik's research assignment for Writing 2-3 has twelve steps, indicating the many moments of support and feedback that first-year students require as they work through the process of writing a research paper Your assignment need not have twelve steps to be effective; it may have four steps, for instance, or five. Craft your assignment steps according to the aims of your assignment.

Crafting a Good Prompt

Writing a good prompt for a writing assignment is a difficult task. Too often, professors write prompts for writing assignments knowing exactly what sorts of essays they want their students to produce, only to get papers that miss the mark. How can you produce writing assignments that clearly convey the tasks and questions you want your students to undertake?

Before writing your prompts, you will want to consider a few matters.

• Consider what you want the assignment to require the students to do, in relation to the course outcomes.  What outcomes are most important at this point in your course? How can the assignment move students closer to achieving these outcomes?  
• Consider what you want the assignment to do, in terms of the larger questions of your course. What questions, in particular, do you want your students to consider? Are these questions related closely or peripherally to topics you've been discussing in class? 
• Consider what kinds of thinking you want students to do. Do you want your students to define, illustrate, compare, analyze, or evaluate? You will want to come up with prompts that clearly direct students as to the kind of thinking they will have to do.
• Consider your students' writing processes. Are you focusing on teaching students to place their arguments within a larger conversation or context? If so, your prompt should address the importance of context and suggest things that you want students to consider as they write. Are you hoping to get your students to understand the mechanics of the paragraph? Your prompt might ask students to write paragraphs that summarize, then analyze, then synthesize, so that they can see how different tasks require different paragraph development.
• If the paper involves research, consider outlining your research requirements in a way that educates students about the research process. You may want to require students to use a variety of sources, or to use certain sources that you've either put on reserve or listed in the course syllabus. Understand that students may need help with finding sources, evaluating them, and incorporating them successfully into their arguments. Craft your prompt accordingly.

Once you've determined the outcomes for your writing assignment, you're ready to craft the prompt. Here are some things to consider:

• Break the assignment down into specific tasks. If, for example, you want students to compare the effectiveness of two political movements, you might first ask students to define the goals of each movement; then to consider the history of each movement; then to discuss how the history of the movement affected the creation of its goals; and finally, to consider how history influenced the movement's ultimate success (or failure).
• Break the assignment down into specific questions. For example, if you want students to discuss the formal elements of a particular painting, you might, as Art Historian Joy Kenseth does, ask the students: What is the focus of the painting? How does the artist treat such things as light and shadow, line, space, and composition? How does this treatment communicate the painting's ideas? If you don't want students to answer all of the questions you put to them, but want them simply to consider these questions before writing their responses, make that clear.
• Provide context. A writing prompt that asks students to discuss whether or not the films of Leni Riefenstahl are propagandistic does not point students to the interesting controversy surrounding Riefenstahl's work. Nor does it indicate whether they should limit themselves to discussing the formal elements of Riefenstahl's films, or whether they should include biographical detail. The more contextual information you give your students, the more precise their responses will be.
• Craft each sentence carefully. You will want to be sure that there is no room for misunderstanding the assignment. If you ask students to analyze how a myth informed paintings and sculptors during the first century of the Renaissance, do you want students to examine the works themselves or the artists that produced them? Sometimes a slip in word choice or the careless placement of a modifier can leave students confused as to what, precisely, you are asking them to do.
• Be clear about what you don't want. If you don't want students to discuss Virginia Woolf's personal experiences as they relate to A Room of One's Own , then be sure to instruct them not to include biographical references. In addition, explaining why such information should be excluded will help students to understand better the questions and the desired response.
• Be clear about the paper requirements. Have you indicated the paper's due date? How many pages you require? How many sources you require? What special criteria (if any) you will use when grading this paper? If your requirements are rigid, say so. If you're flexible, let the students know. This may be the aspect of the prompt that students are most anxious about, so offer as much detail as you think is necessary.
• Try to write (or at least to outline) the assignment yourself. If you have trouble outlining a paper based on this prompt, your students will, too. You will want to think about ways of revising the assignment to make it clearer and more manageable.
• Discuss the assignment with the class. When you distribute the assignment to the class, take time to go over it. Ask for their questions. Make notes as to where their understanding of the assignment differs from yours so that you can improve the prompt the next time you use it.

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• Designing Essay Assignments

by Gordon Harvey

Students often do their best and hardest thinking, and feel the greatest sense of mastery and growth, in their writing. Courses and assignments should be planned with this in mind. Three principles are paramount:

1. Name what you want and imagine students doing it

However free students are to range and explore in a paper, the general kind of paper you’re inviting has common components, operations, and criteria of success, and you should make these explicit. Having satisfied yourself, as you should, that what you’re asking is doable, with dignity, by writers just learning the material, try to anticipate in your prompt or discussions of the assignment the following queries:

• What is the purpose of this? How am I going beyond what we have done, or applying it in a new area, or practicing a key academic skill or kind of work?
• To what audience should I imagine myself writing?
• What is the main task or tasks, in a nutshell? What does that key word (e.g., analyze, significance of, critique, explore, interesting, support) really mean in this context or this field?
• What will be most challenging in this and what qualities will most distinguish a good paper? Where should I put my energy? (Lists of possible questions for students to answer in a paper are often not sufficiently prioritized to be helpful.)
• What misconceptions might I have about what I’m to do? (How is this like or unlike other papers I may have written?) Are there too-easy approaches I might take or likely pitfalls? An ambitious goal or standard that I might think I’m expected to meet but am not?
• What form will evidence take in my paper (e.g., block quotations? paraphrase? graphs or charts?) How should I cite it? Should I use/cite material from lecture or section?
• Are there some broad options for structure, emphasis, or approach that I’ll likely be choosing among?
• How should I get started on this? What would be a helpful (or unhelpful) way to take notes, gather data, discover a question or idea? Should I do research? 

2. Take time in class to prepare students to succeed at the paper

Resist the impulse to think of class meetings as time for “content” and of writing as work done outside class. Your students won’t have mastered the art of paper writing (if such a mastery is possible) and won’t know the particular disciplinary expectations or moves relevant to the material at hand. Take time in class to show them: 

• discuss the assignment in class when you give it, so students can see that you take it seriously, so they can ask questions about it, so they can have it in mind during subsequent class discussions;
• introduce the analytic vocabulary of your assignment into class discussions, and take opportunities to note relevant moves made in discussion or good paper topics that arise;
• have students practice key tasks in class discussions, or in informal writing they do in before or after discussions;
• show examples of writing that illustrates components and criteria of the assignment and that inspires (class readings can sometimes serve as illustrations of a writing principle; so can short excerpts of writing—e.g., a sampling of introductions; and so can bad writing—e.g., a list of problematic thesis statements);
• the topics of originality and plagiarism (what the temptations might be, how to avoid risks) should at some point be addressed directly. 

3. Build in process

Ideas develop over time, in a process of posing and revising and getting feedback and revising some more. Assignments should allow for this process in the following ways:

• smaller assignments should prepare for larger ones later;
• students should do some thinking and writing before they write a draft and get a response to it (even if only a response to a proposal or thesis statement sent by email, or described in class);
• for larger papers, students should write and get response (using the skills vocabulary of the assignment) to a draft—at least an “oral draft” (condensed for delivery to the class);
• if possible, meet with students individually about their writing: nothing inspires them more than feeling that you care about their work and development;
• let students reflect on their own writing, in brief cover letters attached to drafts and revisions (these may also ask students to perform certain checks on what they have written, before submitting);
• have clear and firm policies about late work that nonetheless allow for exception if students talk to you in advance.

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Assignment Design: Checklist

Careful planning and implementation of assignments will help your students produce what you expected. Consider using this checklist as a tool to trouble-shoot your assignment design and identify possible areas to refine. Other considerations may be required for your specific assignment, but this will give you a great start, no matter what type of assignment you plan to give.

Stage one: Planning

When planning the assignment, decide how it can.

• Fit with main learning objectives for the course, term, and program
• Relate to previous work done in this course and past courses
• Be new and different from the type of assignments given in this course and other courses(e.g., seek alternatives to the proverbial term-paper or problem set)
• Benefit from an audience other than yourself (e.g., peers, community professionals, liaison librarian, politicians)
• Use current topics and current resources
• Be broken into a series of smaller assignments to avoid overwhelming students
• Be completed – in groups, pairs, or individually
• Be completed – in the online environment
• Build on students’ previous experience and current skill set
• Develop important skills for students, both for your course work and beyond (e.g., skills for the workplace, skills for life)
• Require a reasonable amount of work and be successfully completed in the allotted time, given other courses and demands outside of school
• Have value to you (e.g., will be interesting to grade, lead to a research project)
• Require a level of commitment you can meet (e.g., student support, grading)

Also, prepare by considering the support demands students may have

• Identify types of assistance students will require to complete the assignment
• Contact liaison librarian, community professionals, or other people who can assist you and your students in completing the assignment
• Arrange guest lectures relevant to assignment process (e.g., liaison librarian, community professional, colleagues)
• When possible, use class time for activities to help students complete the assignment (e.g., discuss how to write an annotated bibliography, run lab activities to demonstrate a requisite skill, discuss material related to assignment topic)
• Decide if students are required to meet with you or your teaching assistants (TAs) as they complete the assignment and set times and policies for availability to help students avoid procrastinating

Then, make evaluation decisions by choosing the

• Assignment length limitations and due dates
• Type of feedback to give – written, oral, anonymous
• Evaluators – you, peers, community professional, liaison librarian
• Type of grade required (e.g., check mark, pass/fail, numeric grade)
• Parts to evaluate – effort, research process, thinking process, progress, sequence of assignments, drafts, final products
• Weighting of components – how much is each part worth
• Turnaround times for marking to make the assignment meaningful for students
• Policies for possible problems – late or incomplete assignments, missed meetings, poor group work practices, plagiarism

Stage two: Implementing

Prepare an assignment description or handout that.

• Comprises the key parts  –  situation  (background information, audience, relevance),  task  (what to do),  stages  (a timeline for completing key stages of the assignment), and  evaluation criteria  (specific grading scheme, special policies)
• Uses plain language – avoids jargon
• Provides advice from past experiences with the assignment
• Explains proper referencing and acceptable sources for information – be specific and expect to be taken literally

Have a colleague (preferably someone not familiar with your course) read the handout and identify any unclear instructions and jargon, then revise accordingly. As well, do your assignment before giving it to students whenever possible, so you can identify problems before they do. And when you distribute the handout in class, take time to discuss it and allow for questions and clarifications about the task.

Consider giving ongoing support

• Share useful student feedback with the class and TAs
• Keep in touch with support people (i.e., liaison librarian)
• Ask for mid-assignment feedback since no news is not necessarily good news
• Have a backup plan for areas identified as difficult to complete (i.e., if a document is hard to get, have a copy available for reserve) – but take care not to modify the assignment too much from the handout because this confuses students

And when the assignments are all submitted and returned

• List 5 strengths and 5 weaknesses of the assignment and suggest changes for next time
• Ask for evaluative feedback from students and support contacts – find out what worked well, what could be improved, where students had the most difficulty, and how you can better facilitate the process next time
• Use feedback and experiences to modify assignment plan for the next time

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact. 

This Creative Commons license  lets others remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and indicate if changes were made. Use this citation format:  Assignment Design: checklist. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo

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How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?

Prepared by allison boye, ph.d. teaching, learning, and professional development center.

Assessment is a necessary part of the teaching and learning process, helping us measure whether our students have really learned what we want them to learn. While exams and quizzes are certainly favorite and useful methods of assessment, out of class assignments (written or otherwise) can offer similar insights into our students' learning.  And just as creating a reliable test takes thoughtfulness and skill, so does creating meaningful and effective assignments. Undoubtedly, many instructors have been on the receiving end of disappointing student work, left wondering what went wrong… and often, those problems can be remedied in the future by some simple fine-tuning of the original assignment.  This paper will take a look at some important elements to consider when developing assignments, and offer some easy approaches to creating a valuable assessment experience for all involved.

First Things First…

Before assigning any major tasks to students, it is imperative that you first define a few things for yourself as the instructor:

• Your goals for the assignment . Why are you assigning this project, and what do you hope your students will gain from completing it? What knowledge, skills, and abilities do you aim to measure with this assignment?  Creating assignments is a major part of overall course design, and every project you assign should clearly align with your goals for the course in general.  For instance, if you want your students to demonstrate critical thinking, perhaps asking them to simply summarize an article is not the best match for that goal; a more appropriate option might be to ask for an analysis of a controversial issue in the discipline. Ultimately, the connection between the assignment and its purpose should be clear to both you and your students to ensure that it is fulfilling the desired goals and doesn't seem like “busy work.” For some ideas about what kinds of assignments match certain learning goals, take a look at this page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons.
• Have they experienced “socialization” in the culture of your discipline (Flaxman, 2005)? Are they familiar with any conventions you might want them to know? In other words, do they know the “language” of your discipline, generally accepted style guidelines, or research protocols?
• Do they know how to conduct research?  Do they know the proper style format, documentation style, acceptable resources, etc.? Do they know how to use the library (Fitzpatrick, 1989) or evaluate resources?
• What kinds of writing or work have they previously engaged in?  For instance, have they completed long, formal writing assignments or research projects before? Have they ever engaged in analysis, reflection, or argumentation? Have they completed group assignments before?  Do they know how to write a literature review or scientific report?

In his book Engaging Ideas (1996), John Bean provides a great list of questions to help instructors focus on their main teaching goals when creating an assignment (p.78):

1. What are the main units/modules in my course?

2. What are my main learning objectives for each module and for the course?

3. What thinking skills am I trying to develop within each unit and throughout the course?

4. What are the most difficult aspects of my course for students?

5. If I could change my students' study habits, what would I most like to change?

6. What difference do I want my course to make in my students' lives?

What your students need to know

Once you have determined your own goals for the assignment and the levels of your students, you can begin creating your assignment.  However, when introducing your assignment to your students, there are several things you will need to clearly outline for them in order to ensure the most successful assignments possible.

• First, you will need to articulate the purpose of the assignment . Even though you know why the assignment is important and what it is meant to accomplish, you cannot assume that your students will intuit that purpose. Your students will appreciate an understanding of how the assignment fits into the larger goals of the course and what they will learn from the process (Hass & Osborn, 2007). Being transparent with your students and explaining why you are asking them to complete a given assignment can ultimately help motivate them to complete the assignment more thoughtfully.
• If you are asking your students to complete a writing assignment, you should define for them the “rhetorical or cognitive mode/s” you want them to employ in their writing (Flaxman, 2005). In other words, use precise verbs that communicate whether you are asking them to analyze, argue, describe, inform, etc.  (Verbs like “explore” or “comment on” can be too vague and cause confusion.) Provide them with a specific task to complete, such as a problem to solve, a question to answer, or an argument to support.  For those who want assignments to lead to top-down, thesis-driven writing, John Bean (1996) suggests presenting a proposition that students must defend or refute, or a problem that demands a thesis answer.
• It is also a good idea to define the audience you want your students to address with their assignment, if possible – especially with writing assignments.  Otherwise, students will address only the instructor, often assuming little requires explanation or development (Hedengren, 2004; MIT, 1999). Further, asking students to address the instructor, who typically knows more about the topic than the student, places the student in an unnatural rhetorical position.  Instead, you might consider asking your students to prepare their assignments for alternative audiences such as other students who missed last week's classes, a group that opposes their position, or people reading a popular magazine or newspaper.  In fact, a study by Bean (1996) indicated the students often appreciate and enjoy assignments that vary elements such as audience or rhetorical context, so don't be afraid to get creative!
• Obviously, you will also need to articulate clearly the logistics or “business aspects” of the assignment . In other words, be explicit with your students about required elements such as the format, length, documentation style, writing style (formal or informal?), and deadlines.  One caveat, however: do not allow the logistics of the paper take precedence over the content in your assignment description; if you spend all of your time describing these things, students might suspect that is all you care about in their execution of the assignment.
• Finally, you should clarify your evaluation criteria for the assignment. What elements of content are most important? Will you grade holistically or weight features separately? How much weight will be given to individual elements, etc?  Another precaution to take when defining requirements for your students is to take care that your instructions and rubric also do not overshadow the content; prescribing too rigidly each element of an assignment can limit students' freedom to explore and discover. According to Beth Finch Hedengren, “A good assignment provides the purpose and guidelines… without dictating exactly what to say” (2004, p. 27).  If you decide to utilize a grading rubric, be sure to provide that to the students along with the assignment description, prior to their completion of the assignment.

A great way to get students engaged with an assignment and build buy-in is to encourage their collaboration on its design and/or on the grading criteria (Hudd, 2003). In his article “Conducting Writing Assignments,” Richard Leahy (2002) offers a few ideas for building in said collaboration:

• Ask the students to develop the grading scale themselves from scratch, starting with choosing the categories.

• Set the grading categories yourself, but ask the students to help write the descriptions.

• Draft the complete grading scale yourself, then give it to your students for review and suggestions.

A Few Do's and Don'ts…

Determining your goals for the assignment and its essential logistics is a good start to creating an effective assignment. However, there are a few more simple factors to consider in your final design. First, here are a few things you should do :

• Do provide detail in your assignment description . Research has shown that students frequently prefer some guiding constraints when completing assignments (Bean, 1996), and that more detail (within reason) can lead to more successful student responses.  One idea is to provide students with physical assignment handouts , in addition to or instead of a simple description in a syllabus.  This can meet the needs of concrete learners and give them something tangible to refer to.  Likewise, it is often beneficial to make explicit for students the process or steps necessary to complete an assignment, given that students – especially younger ones – might need guidance in planning and time management (MIT, 1999).
• Do use open-ended questions.  The most effective and challenging assignments focus on questions that lead students to thinking and explaining, rather than simple yes or no answers, whether explicitly part of the assignment description or in the  brainstorming heuristics (Gardner, 2005).
• Do direct students to appropriate available resources . Giving students pointers about other venues for assistance can help them get started on the right track independently. These kinds of suggestions might include information about campus resources such as the University Writing Center or discipline-specific librarians, suggesting specific journals or books, or even sections of their textbook, or providing them with lists of research ideas or links to acceptable websites.
• Do consider providing models – both successful and unsuccessful models (Miller, 2007). These models could be provided by past students, or models you have created yourself.  You could even ask students to evaluate the models themselves using the determined evaluation criteria, helping them to visualize the final product, think critically about how to complete the assignment, and ideally, recognize success in their own work.
• Do consider including a way for students to make the assignment their own. In their study, Hass and Osborn (2007) confirmed the importance of personal engagement for students when completing an assignment.  Indeed, students will be more engaged in an assignment if it is personally meaningful, practical, or purposeful beyond the classroom.  You might think of ways to encourage students to tap into their own experiences or curiosities, to solve or explore a real problem, or connect to the larger community.  Offering variety in assignment selection can also help students feel more individualized, creative, and in control.
• If your assignment is substantial or long, do consider sequencing it. Far too often, assignments are given as one-shot final products that receive grades at the end of the semester, eternally abandoned by the student.  By sequencing a large assignment, or essentially breaking it down into a systematic approach consisting of interconnected smaller elements (such as a project proposal, an annotated bibliography, or a rough draft, or a series of mini-assignments related to the longer assignment), you can encourage thoughtfulness, complexity, and thoroughness in your students, as well as emphasize process over final product.

Next are a few elements to avoid in your assignments:

• Do not ask too many questions in your assignment.  In an effort to challenge students, instructors often err in the other direction, asking more questions than students can reasonably address in a single assignment without losing focus. Offering an overly specific “checklist” prompt often leads to externally organized papers, in which inexperienced students “slavishly follow the checklist instead of integrating their ideas into more organically-discovered structure” (Flaxman, 2005).
• Do not expect or suggest that there is an “ideal” response to the assignment. A common error for instructors is to dictate content of an assignment too rigidly, or to imply that there is a single correct response or a specific conclusion to reach, either explicitly or implicitly (Flaxman, 2005). Undoubtedly, students do not appreciate feeling as if they must read an instructor's mind to complete an assignment successfully, or that their own ideas have nowhere to go, and can lose motivation as a result. Similarly, avoid assignments that simply ask for regurgitation (Miller, 2007). Again, the best assignments invite students to engage in critical thinking, not just reproduce lectures or readings.
• Do not provide vague or confusing commands . Do students know what you mean when they are asked to “examine” or “discuss” a topic? Return to what you determined about your students' experiences and levels to help you decide what directions will make the most sense to them and what will require more explanation or guidance, and avoid verbiage that might confound them.
• Do not impose impossible time restraints or require the use of insufficient resources for completion of the assignment.  For instance, if you are asking all of your students to use the same resource, ensure that there are enough copies available for all students to access – or at least put one copy on reserve in the library. Likewise, make sure that you are providing your students with ample time to locate resources and effectively complete the assignment (Fitzpatrick, 1989).

The assignments we give to students don't simply have to be research papers or reports. There are many options for effective yet creative ways to assess your students' learning! Here are just a few:

Journals, Posters, Portfolios, Letters, Brochures, Management plans, Editorials, Instruction Manuals, Imitations of a text, Case studies, Debates, News release, Dialogues, Videos, Collages, Plays, Power Point presentations

Ultimately, the success of student responses to an assignment often rests on the instructor's deliberate design of the assignment. By being purposeful and thoughtful from the beginning, you can ensure that your assignments will not only serve as effective assessment methods, but also engage and delight your students. If you would like further help in constructing or revising an assignment, the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center is glad to offer individual consultations. In addition, look into some of the resources provided below.

Online Resources

“Creating Effective Assignments” http://www.unh.edu/teaching-excellence/resources/Assignments.htm This site, from the University of New Hampshire's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning,  provides a brief overview of effective assignment design, with a focus on determining and communicating goals and expectations.

Gardner, T.  (2005, June 12). Ten Tips for Designing Writing Assignments. Traci's Lists of Ten. http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/034.shtml This is a brief yet useful list of tips for assignment design, prepared by a writing teacher and curriculum developer for the National Council of Teachers of English .  The website will also link you to several other lists of “ten tips” related to literacy pedagogy.

“How to Create Effective Assignments for College Students.”  http:// tilt.colostate.edu/retreat/2011/zimmerman.pdf     This PDF is a simplified bulleted list, prepared by Dr. Toni Zimmerman from Colorado State University, offering some helpful ideas for coming up with creative assignments.

“Learner-Centered Assessment” http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/tips/learner_centered_assessment.html From the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo, this is a short list of suggestions for the process of designing an assessment with your students' interests in mind. “Matching Learning Goals to Assignment Types.” http://teachingcommons.depaul.edu/How_to/design_assignments/assignments_learning_goals.html This is a great page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons, providing a chart that helps instructors match assignments with learning goals.

Additional References Bean, J.C. (1996). Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fitzpatrick, R. (1989). Research and writing assignments that reduce fear lead to better papers and more confident students. Writing Across the Curriculum , 3.2, pp. 15 – 24.

Flaxman, R. (2005). Creating meaningful writing assignments. The Teaching Exchange .  Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008 from http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Sheridan_Center/pubs/teachingExchange/jan2005/01_flaxman.pdf

Hass, M. & Osborn, J. (2007, August 13). An emic view of student writing and the writing process. Across the Disciplines, 4. 

Hedengren, B.F. (2004). A TA's guide to teaching writing in all disciplines . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Hudd, S. S. (2003, April). Syllabus under construction: Involving students in the creation of class assignments.  Teaching Sociology , 31, pp. 195 – 202.

Leahy, R. (2002). Conducting writing assignments. College Teaching , 50.2, pp. 50 – 54.

Miller, H. (2007). Designing effective writing assignments.  Teaching with writing .  University of Minnesota Center for Writing. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008, from http://writing.umn.edu/tww/assignments/designing.html

MIT Online Writing and Communication Center (1999). Creating Writing Assignments. Retrieved January 9, 2008 from http://web.mit.edu/writing/Faculty/createeffective.html .

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Understanding Assignments

What this handout is about.

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

Basic beginnings

Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well :

• Read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.
• Ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats

Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic, include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, and offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind

The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class. For example:

“Throughout history, gerbils have played a key role in politics,” or “In the last few weeks of class, we have focused on the evening wear of the housefly …”

The Task of the Assignment

Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information. (See the section in this handout titled “Key Terms” for more information.)

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about

Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue furiously.”

Technical Details

These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”

The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment

Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?

Who is your audience.

• What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?

What kind of writing style is acceptable?

• What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that they will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor. For help with this, see our handout on getting feedback .

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs

Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.

• define —give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
• describe —provide details about the subject by answering question words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
• explain —give reasons why or examples of how something happened
• illustrate —give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
• summarize —briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
• trace —outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
• research —gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.

• compare —show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
• contrast —show how two or more things are dissimilar
• apply —use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
• cause —show how one event or series of events made something else happen
• relate —show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.

• assess —summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
• prove, justify —give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
• evaluate, respond —state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
• support —give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
• synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
• analyze —determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
• argue —take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

• What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?
• In lecture, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove their point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?
• What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.
• How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, they still have to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

• Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.
• The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and they already know everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

You’ll find a much more detailed discussion of these concepts in our handout on audience .

The Grim Truth

With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present. For help with understanding the role of argument in academic writing, see our handout on argument .

What kind of evidence do you need?

There are many kinds of evidence, and what type of evidence will work for your assignment can depend on several factors–the discipline, the parameters of the assignment, and your instructor’s preference. Should you use statistics? Historical examples? Do you need to conduct your own experiment? Can you rely on personal experience? See our handout on evidence for suggestions on how to use evidence appropriately.

Make sure you are clear about this part of the assignment, because your use of evidence will be crucial in writing a successful paper. You are not just learning how to argue; you are learning how to argue with specific types of materials and ideas. Ask your instructor what counts as acceptable evidence. You can also ask a librarian for help. No matter what kind of evidence you use, be sure to cite it correctly—see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

You cannot always tell from the assignment just what sort of writing style your instructor expects. The instructor may be really laid back in class but still expect you to sound formal in writing. Or the instructor may be fairly formal in class and ask you to write a reflection paper where you need to use “I” and speak from your own experience.

Try to avoid false associations of a particular field with a style (“art historians like wacky creativity,” or “political scientists are boring and just give facts”) and look instead to the types of readings you have been given in class. No one expects you to write like Plato—just use the readings as a guide for what is standard or preferable to your instructor. When in doubt, ask your instructor about the level of formality they expect.

No matter what field you are writing for or what facts you are including, if you do not write so that your reader can understand your main idea, you have wasted your time. So make clarity your main goal. For specific help with style, see our handout on style .

Technical details about the assignment

The technical information you are given in an assignment always seems like the easy part. This section can actually give you lots of little hints about approaching the task. Find out if elements such as page length and citation format (see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial ) are negotiable. Some professors do not have strong preferences as long as you are consistent and fully answer the assignment. Some professors are very specific and will deduct big points for deviations.

Usually, the page length tells you something important: The instructor thinks the size of the paper is appropriate to the assignment’s parameters. In plain English, your instructor is telling you how many pages it should take for you to answer the question as fully as you are expected to. So if an assignment is two pages long, you cannot pad your paper with examples or reword your main idea several times. Hit your one point early, defend it with the clearest example, and finish quickly. If an assignment is ten pages long, you can be more complex in your main points and examples—and if you can only produce five pages for that assignment, you need to see someone for help—as soon as possible.

Tricks that don’t work

Your instructors are not fooled when you:

• spend more time on the cover page than the essay —graphics, cool binders, and cute titles are no replacement for a well-written paper.
• use huge fonts, wide margins, or extra spacing to pad the page length —these tricks are immediately obvious to the eye. Most instructors use the same word processor you do. They know what’s possible. Such tactics are especially damning when the instructor has a stack of 60 papers to grade and yours is the only one that low-flying airplane pilots could read.
• use a paper from another class that covered “sort of similar” material . Again, the instructor has a particular task for you to fulfill in the assignment that usually relates to course material and lectures. Your other paper may not cover this material, and turning in the same paper for more than one course may constitute an Honor Code violation . Ask the instructor—it can’t hurt.
• get all wacky and “creative” before you answer the question . Showing that you are able to think beyond the boundaries of a simple assignment can be good, but you must do what the assignment calls for first. Again, check with your instructor. A humorous tone can be refreshing for someone grading a stack of papers, but it will not get you a good grade if you have not fulfilled the task.

Critical reading of assignments leads to skills in other types of reading and writing. If you get good at figuring out what the real goals of assignments are, you are going to be better at understanding the goals of all of your classes and fields of study.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Assignment Design Checklist

Use this very simple checklist to assess your assignment design. 

• What is the assignment asking students to do?
• Does what the assignment asks match the author’s purposes (given the nature of the class, etc.)?
• Is there a discernible central question or task?
• Is the assignment clear? 
• Are there words or phrases that might be confusing or unclear to the intended audience?
• Is the assignment itself separate from thought questions or process suggestions?

Format and Organization:

• Look at the layout on the page. Is there a long narrative of unbroken text?
• A long series of questions?
• How is it organized?
• Do the layout and order help the audience understand the assignment?
• Can it be broken into steps or paragraphs?
• Are suggestions separated from the assignment itself?
• If the assignment is a major essay, are there any steps or process work assigned along the way to the final draft?

Adapted from Gail Offen-Brown, College Writing 300, UC Berkeley, Fall 2005

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, creating assignments.

Here are some general suggestions and questions to consider when creating assignments. There are also many other resources in print and on the web that provide examples of interesting, discipline-specific assignment ideas.

Consider your learning objectives.

What do you want students to learn in your course? What could they do that would show you that they have learned it? To determine assignments that truly serve your course objectives, it is useful to write out your objectives in this form: I want my students to be able to ____. Use active, measurable verbs as you complete that sentence (e.g., compare theories, discuss ramifications, recommend strategies), and your learning objectives will point you towards suitable assignments.

Design assignments that are interesting and challenging.

This is the fun side of assignment design. Consider how to focus students’ thinking in ways that are creative, challenging, and motivating. Think beyond the conventional assignment type! For example, one American historian requires students to write diary entries for a hypothetical Nebraska farmwoman in the 1890s. By specifying that students’ diary entries must demonstrate the breadth of their historical knowledge (e.g., gender, economics, technology, diet, family structure), the instructor gets students to exercise their imaginations while also accomplishing the learning objectives of the course (Walvoord & Anderson, 1989, p. 25).

Double-check alignment.

After creating your assignments, go back to your learning objectives and make sure there is still a good match between what you want students to learn and what you are asking them to do. If you find a mismatch, you will need to adjust either the assignments or the learning objectives. For instance, if your goal is for students to be able to analyze and evaluate texts, but your assignments only ask them to summarize texts, you would need to add an analytical and evaluative dimension to some assignments or rethink your learning objectives.

Name assignments accurately.

Students can be misled by assignments that are named inappropriately. For example, if you want students to analyze a product’s strengths and weaknesses but you call the assignment a “product description,” students may focus all their energies on the descriptive, not the critical, elements of the task. Thus, it is important to ensure that the titles of your assignments communicate their intention accurately to students.

Consider sequencing.

Think about how to order your assignments so that they build skills in a logical sequence. Ideally, assignments that require the most synthesis of skills and knowledge should come later in the semester, preceded by smaller assignments that build these skills incrementally. For example, if an instructor’s final assignment is a research project that requires students to evaluate a technological solution to an environmental problem, earlier assignments should reinforce component skills, including the ability to identify and discuss key environmental issues, apply evaluative criteria, and find appropriate research sources.

Think about scheduling.

Consider your intended assignments in relation to the academic calendar and decide how they can be reasonably spaced throughout the semester, taking into account holidays and key campus events. Consider how long it will take students to complete all parts of the assignment (e.g., planning, library research, reading, coordinating groups, writing, integrating the contributions of team members, developing a presentation), and be sure to allow sufficient time between assignments.

Check feasibility.

Is the workload you have in mind reasonable for your students? Is the grading burden manageable for you? Sometimes there are ways to reduce workload (whether for you or for students) without compromising learning objectives. For example, if a primary objective in assigning a project is for students to identify an interesting engineering problem and do some preliminary research on it, it might be reasonable to require students to submit a project proposal and annotated bibliography rather than a fully developed report. If your learning objectives are clear, you will see where corners can be cut without sacrificing educational quality.

Articulate the task description clearly.

If an assignment is vague, students may interpret it any number of ways – and not necessarily how you intended. Thus, it is critical to clearly and unambiguously identify the task students are to do (e.g., design a website to help high school students locate environmental resources, create an annotated bibliography of readings on apartheid). It can be helpful to differentiate the central task (what students are supposed to produce) from other advice and information you provide in your assignment description.

Establish clear performance criteria.

Different instructors apply different criteria when grading student work, so it’s important that you clearly articulate to students what your criteria are. To do so, think about the best student work you have seen on similar tasks and try to identify the specific characteristics that made it excellent, such as clarity of thought, originality, logical organization, or use of a wide range of sources. Then identify the characteristics of the worst student work you have seen, such as shaky evidence, weak organizational structure, or lack of focus. Identifying these characteristics can help you consciously articulate the criteria you already apply. It is important to communicate these criteria to students, whether in your assignment description or as a separate rubric or scoring guide . Clearly articulated performance criteria can prevent unnecessary confusion about your expectations while also setting a high standard for students to meet.

Specify the intended audience.

Students make assumptions about the audience they are addressing in papers and presentations, which influences how they pitch their message. For example, students may assume that, since the instructor is their primary audience, they do not need to define discipline-specific terms or concepts. These assumptions may not match the instructor’s expectations. Thus, it is important on assignments to specify the intended audience http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm (e.g., undergraduates with no biology background, a potential funder who does not know engineering).

Specify the purpose of the assignment.

If students are unclear about the goals or purpose of the assignment, they may make unnecessary mistakes. For example, if students believe an assignment is focused on summarizing research as opposed to evaluating it, they may seriously miscalculate the task and put their energies in the wrong place. The same is true they think the goal of an economics problem set is to find the correct answer, rather than demonstrate a clear chain of economic reasoning. Consequently, it is important to make your objectives for the assignment clear to students.

Specify the parameters.

If you have specific parameters in mind for the assignment (e.g., length, size, formatting, citation conventions) you should be sure to specify them in your assignment description. Otherwise, students may misapply conventions and formats they learned in other courses that are not appropriate for yours.

A Checklist for Designing Assignments

Here is a set of questions you can ask yourself when creating an assignment.

• Provided a written description of the assignment (in the syllabus or in a separate document)?
• Specified the purpose of the assignment?
• Indicated the intended audience?
• Articulated the instructions in precise and unambiguous language?
• Provided information about the appropriate format and presentation (e.g., page length, typed, cover sheet, bibliography)?  
• Indicated special instructions, such as a particular citation style or headings?  
• Specified the due date and the consequences for missing it?
• Articulated performance criteria clearly?
• Indicated the assignment’s point value or percentage of the course grade?
• Provided students (where appropriate) with models or samples?

Adapted from the WAC Clearinghouse at http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm .

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Assignment Design

There’s a fine line between assignment design and assessment strategies . In short, designing good assignments is one means of assessing your students’ learning on a larger scale.

Assignments help measure student learning in your course. Effective assignment design in your course involves aligning your assignments with learning outcomes. When assignments and outcomes are aligned, good grades and good learning go hand in hand ( https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/assessments.html ).

Assessments fall into one of two categories, formative or summative .

Formative assessments are typically low-stakes and help students identify their strengths and weaknesses so that they can improve their learning. Routine formative assessments also help instructors identify the areas where students are struggling and adapt their teaching accordingly.

Summative assessments evaluate student learning (such as at the end of a unit of instruction). Summative assessments are generally higher stakes (like midterm exams and final projects).

Assignments are what students actually ‘do’ as part of those assessments.

Incorporating a mix of assignment activities in your course can help students practice and demonstrate their mastery of outcomes in multiple ways. Consider ways you can design your assignments so that they better mirror the application of knowledge in real-world scenarios. Assignments designed in this way are often referred to as Authentic Assessments ( Authentic-assessment.pdf (uwex.edu)). One type of highly authentic assessment is the long-term project which challenges students to solve a problem or complete a challenge requiring the application of course concepts ( Project_Based_Learning.pdf (uwex.edu) ).

More details and examples can be found in the tabbed content box below. Please also consider signing up for a CATL consultation with one of our instructional designers for some personalized assistance in developing your ideas for assignments and ensuring that they align with your course outcomes .

(Adapted from Carnegie Mellon's:  Design and Teach a Course )

Assessments should provide instructors and students with evidence of how well students have mastered the course outcomes.

There are two major reasons for aligning assessments with learning outcomes.

• Alignment increases the probability that we will provide students with the opportunities to learn and practice knowledge and skills that instructors will require students know in the objectives and in the assessments. (Teaching to the assessment is a  good  thing.)
• When instructors align assessments with outcomes, students are more likely to translate "good grades" into "good learning." Conversely, when instructors misalign assessments with objectives, students will focus on getting good grades on the assessments, rather than focusing on mastering the material that the instructor finds important.

Instructors may use different types of assessments to measure student proficiency in a learning objective. Moreover, instructors may use the same activity to measure different objectives. To ensure a more accurate assessment of student proficiency, many instructional designers recommend that you use different kinds of activities so that students have multiple ways to practice and demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

Formative assessment

The goal of formative assessment is to  monitor student learning  to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative assessments are generally  low stakes , which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:

• draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic
• submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture
• turn in a research proposal for early feedback

Summative assessment

The goal of summative assessment is to  evaluate student learning  at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

Summative assessments are often  high stakes , which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a senior recital

Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

Formative Assessments:

• Reading quizzes
• Concept map
• Muddiest point
• Pro/con grid
• Focused paraphrasing
• Reflective journal
• Virtual lab/game
• Webconference
• Debate (synchronous or asynchronous)
• Participant research
• Peer review

Summative Assessments:

• Presentation
• Portfolio project

Carnegie Mellon University on Aligning Assessments with Objectives with examples.

Items to consider when weighing your assessment options:

If you are thinking about using discussions, be sure to think about the following:.

• What kind of questions/situations do you want the students to discuss? Is it complex enough to allow students to build knowledge beyond the textbook? Will the discussion help students meet your objectives (and develop an answer for your essential questions)?
• What are your expectations for discussions? Should students participate (post) a certain number of times, with a certain number of words, and reply to a certain number of people?
• What is your role in the discussion (traffic cop, the person who clarifies issues, will you respond to every post)?

If you are thinking about using quizzes, be sure to think about the following:

• What type of questions will help your students meet the objectives of the course? Are you going to grade essay questions or just let the computer grade multiple choice questions?
• What is the place for academic integrity? Are you going to randomize questions, randomize answers, restrict time, restrict the answers that students can see after completing the exam?
• How are you going to populate your quiz? Are you going to write the questions or use questions that come from a textbook publisher?

If you are thinking of using essays, be sure to think about the following:

• Will these essays/papers help students to meet the course objectives, which ones? Is the length of the essay appropriate?
• What do you think about plagiarism checkers such as TurnItIn?
• To what extent will you allow students to submit drafts, and will you provide feedback on drafts, or will you use a peer review system?

Other items to consider:

• Are you thinking about using an alternative assignment? If so, you may want to talk with an instructional technologist or designer.
• Consider the type of feedback you will provide for each assignment. What should students expect from you; how will you communicate those expectations; and how soon will you provide feedback (realistically)?

Further resources

Small teaching online.

This book (requires UWGB login) contains many tips that are easy to integrate into your distance education class. The chapter on “ surfacing backward design” contains many tips for assessment for online classes, many of which are adaptable to all distance modalities.

CATL Resources

• Collaborative Learning Assignments  (Toolbox article)
• Administering Tests and Quizzes (including alternatives) (Toolbox article)
• Writing Good Multiple Choice Questions ( TeAch Tuesday , YouTube)

Tip sheets from UW-System

UW-System put together some tip sheets for common sticking points in assessment for distance education.

• Writing effective multiple choice questions
• Authentic assessments
• Unproctored online assessments
• Project-based learning

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Transparent Assignment Design

When we communicate how and why students are learning course content in certain ways, we are being transparent about the methods we use for teaching and learning. The goal of Transparent Assignment Design is to “to make learning processes explicit and equally accessible for all students” (Winkelmes et al., 2019, p. 1). This involves sharing three critical pieces of information with students:

Purpose : Describe why students are completing an assignment and what knowledge and skills they will gain from this experience. Additionally, explain how this knowledge and skill set are relevant and will help the students in the future.

Task : Explain the steps students will take to complete the assignment.

Criteria and Examples : Show the students what successful submissions look like (e.g., provide a checklist or rubric and real-world examples).

The figure below illustrates an example of an assignment that has incorporated Transparent Assignment Design.

Additional examples in a variety of disciplines can be found on the TILT Higher Ed website.

Providing a full picture of a specific assignment, complete with the purpose, task, and criteria and examples, can equip students to do their best work. Research shows that Transparent Assignment Design benefits learning for all students, but it is especially beneficial to students in traditionally underrepresented groups, such as those who are non-white, low-income, first-generation, or struggling with general college success. In a 2014-2016 Association of American Colleges & Universities study, students self-reported an increase in academic confidence, sense of belonging, and acquisition of employer-valued skills in courses that were considered more transparent (Winkelmes et al., 2016).

CATLR Tips:

• Start with an informative title! The title should give students a preview of the purpose of the assignment. For example, an assignment title such as “Scientific Evidence” can be renamed “Evaluating Posters for Scientific Evidence.”
• Indicate the due date (date and time, including time zone) and how the students should submit (e.g., through the Assignments section on Canvas).
• Prior to distributing an assignment to students, ask a colleague to review it. Specifically, ask if they can identify the purpose, task, and criteria.
• Provide multiple examples that illustrate successful submissions in order to avoid students thinking there is one “correct” way to complete the assignment.

References:

Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) Higher Ed. (n.d.). TILT higher ed examples and resources. https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources

Winkelmes, M. A., Bernacki, M., Butler, J., Zochowski, M., Golanics, J., & Weavil, K. H. (2016). A teaching intervention that increases underserved college students’ success.  Peer Review ,  18 (1/2), 31-36.

Winkelmes, M. A., Boye, A., & Tapp, S. (2019). Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership: A guide to implementing the transparency framework institution-wide to improve learning and retention.  Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

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Creative Ways to Design Assignments for Student Success

There are many creative ways in which teachers can design assignments to support student success..

There are many creative ways in which teachers can design assignments to support student success. We can do this while simultaneously not getting bogged down with the various obstructions that keep students from both completing and learning from the assignments. For me, assignments fall into two categories: those that are graded automatically, such as SmartBook® readings and quizzes in Connect®; and those that I need to grade by hand, such as writing assignments.  

For those of us teaching large, introductory classes, most of our assignments are graded automatically, which is great for our time management. But our students will ultimately deliver a plethora of colorful excuses as to why they were not completed and why extensions are warranted. How do we give them a little leeway to make the semester run more smoothly, so there are fewer worries about a reading that was missed or a quiz that went by too quickly? Here are a few tactics I use. 

Automatically graded assignments: 

Multiple assignment attempts  

• This eases the mental pressure of a timed assignment and covers computer mishaps or human error on the first attempt. 
• You can deduct points for every attempt taken if you are worried about students taking advantage. 

Automatically dropped assignments  

• Within a subset or set of assignments, automatically drop a few from grading. This can take care of all excuses for missing an assignment. 
• Additionally, you can give a little grade boost to those who complete all their assignments (over a certain grade). 

Due dates  

• Consider staggering due dates during the week instead of making them all due on Sunday night.  
• Set the due date for readings the night before you cover the material, so students are prepared.  

Requirements  

• If we want our students to read, then make a reading assignment a requirement of a quiz. 

The tactics above might be applied to written assignments, too. An easy way to bolster a student’s interest and investment in these longer assignments is to give them a choice. This could be in the topic, location of study, or presentation style. For example, if you want them to analyze the susceptibility of a beach to hurricane threat, why not let them choose the location? In this way, you will also be gaining a lot of new information for your own use. 

With a small amount of effort, we can design our classes, so students concentrate on learning the subject matter rather than the logistics of completing the assignments. 

Gina Seegers Szablewski has taught large introductory geology classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for over 20 years with a total of nearly 20,000 students. Having received her BA in geology from Lawrence University and MS in geology (sedimentology) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she first worked as a geologist in environmental consulting for 7 years. Currently, she teaches physical and environmental geology and earth science classes in person and online, while working with McGrawHill in a variety of roles, not just as the author of Environmental Geology but also as a digital faculty consultant, subject matter expert, and lead digital author. She enjoys sharing with other teachers her experiences using digital content in and out of the classroom to improve both teaching and learning. She is an active member of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers and the Geological Society of America, and she frequently attends short courses and workshops associated with geoscience education. When she is not learning, teaching, and thinking about science and science education, she enjoys hiking, traveling, yoga, walking her standard poodle, reading, cooking, and crocheting. She and her husband have two children – one a high school earth science teacher in Brooklyn, NY, and one a mechanical engineer in Boston, MA.

Generative AI & Writing Assignment Design

Guides & tips.

The availability of generative AI requires writing instructors to be more deliberate about assignment design.  Yet many principles we have always valued remain the same: Prompts should provide opportunities for students to use writing as a means to practice critical thinking and reflection; to engage deeply with texts, using sources to help them generate interesting questions and develop compelling arguments; and to recognize the ethical and social dimensions of writing. 

We can encourage students to embrace these opportunities through tapping their intrinsic motivation—striving, as John Bradley puts it, to craft assignments that are “transformational” rather than “transactional.”     We begin with some general recommendations that draw on Mary-Ann Winkelmes’s research-based guidelines for transparent assignment design and are oriented toward this goal.

Writing assignments should include the following, ideally in about one page:

Purpose:  Begin by briefly describing the purpose of the assignment, how doing the assignment helps students reach a particular learning goal of the course. You may want to connect this goal to a future application in or beyond your course.

Tasks:  Craft a concise, specific prompt that is meaningful and relevant to students’ lives. This might mean asking students to draw on personal experiences, but it might also mean asking them to write for an authentic audience (not just you), in a genre relevant to their future professional or civic lives, or in connection to an urgent local or global challenge. Emphasize “distinctive human skills” as described on this useful chart,  Bloom’s Taxonomy Revisited .

Be sure to i ncorporate a series of process steps and deadlines. This might include brainstorming activities, proposals, drafts (for peer review, in-class workshops, or conferences), and reflective writing. Emphasize oral and interactive activities.

Criteria:  Show students what success looks like. Offer models of effective compositions, and invite students to analyze those models to develop a critical understanding of how they work. Consider using models published in Deerfield , the Writing Program journal of outstanding undergraduate writing, or other BU student publications . 

Tell students what you will focus on in your feedback and assessment. Consider deemphasizing criteria that AI-generated prose can easily meet and emphasizing criteria like intellectual risk-taking, originality, nuance, etc. ( Note the useful distinction Kevin Gannon makes between “logistical rigor” and “cognitive rigor” —and don’t mistake the former for the latter.)

See also Anatomy of an Assignment Sheet . 

Crafting Assignments That Discourage AI Use

• Make sure that “ distinctive human skills ” are front and center in each step of the assignment.
•  Ask students to write in longhand and/or talk about specific quotes or sources in class as part of the writing process. 
• Have students record their reading and research process. Consider assigning a research log or using a social annotation tool like Perusall . Formal or informal stepping-stone (scaffolded) assignments can help to ensure that students are engaging in authentic research and reading deeply.
• Offer opportunities for students to write about their own lives and experiences, as appropriate to the assignment genre and course topics. 
• Value creativity and difference. Invite students to explore nonstandard language and question genre conventions in a way that is relevant to your topic.

Crafting Assignments that Incorporate Generative AI

• Be explicit about the kind of AI use you are authorizing for the assignment, and model effective prompting for this use. Chapter 3 of Bowen and Watson’s Teaching with AI offers a useful overview.
• Consider an assignment that showcases what AI can do well and where it falls short–for example, a two-part assignment that asks students to use AI to draft, then write a critical analysis of what AI does well and poorly before they go on to revise or discard the draft.
• Engage AI in the revision process after students have drafted an essay. Let students experiment with the ways that AI can help them reformulate, rephrase, or reorganize their ideas. Include opportunities for reflection regarding their experience working with AI as a collaborator.
• Remember that servers that run AI, such as ChatGPT, are not always accessible during times of high demand, and plan ahead if you intend to use AI live in the classroom. For instance, if you are planning a live demonstration of AI, have it generate one or two responses to be used as backup in the event that the AI tool is not accessible during your class meeting.
• Be explicit about how you want students to cite AI. For example, refer to the MLA guide on Citing Generative AI in MLA Style .

More ideas that can be incorporated into the scaffolding for a writing assignment are available here .

Responding to Unauthorized Uses of AI for Writing

“Use caution about responses that emphasize surveillance or restrictions on the writing process that make the conditions of writing for class radically different from writing conditions students will encounter in other classes, work environments, and their personal lives.”

— MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI Unauthorized use of generative AI tools for academic work may fall within the Academic Conduct Code ’s definition of cheating: “Any attempt by students to alter their performance on an examination or assignment in violation of the stated or commonly understood ground rules.” However, documenting evidence of this kind of misconduct is not easy. The results of detectors like GPTZero and Turnitin are not very reliable, with evidence of “ an alarming bias against non-native English speakers .” (Concern about this bias is the basis for the Writing Program’s authorization of AI use for grammar, usage, and vocabulary in all WR courses; refer to our current guidelines in Section 2 of the syllabus templates .)

Therefore, if you are concerned that a student has used AI to do their work in a way that violates academic integrity, it’s best not to accuse a student based on detector results. Instead, invite the student to have a conversation with you about their process and their ideas. Be honest about your concerns and allow the student an opportunity to respond.  

Learn More: Writing Instruction in the Age of Generative AI

Center for Teaching Innovation

Ai in assignment design.

Using generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be both productive and limiting—it can help students to create and revise content, yet it also has the potential to undermine the process by which students create. When incorporated effectively into assignments, generative AI can be leveraged to stimulate students' ability to apply essential knowledge and develop critical thinking skills. 

As you explore the possible uses of generative AI in your course, note that establishing a general familiarity with generative AI and being mindful of accessibility and ethical concerns will be helpful. 

The following process may help you determine how to best incorporate generative AI into your course assignments.

Affirm What You Actually Want to Assess

As you decide how you might incorporate AI into your course, it’s important to revisit your current course assessment plan, most importantly your course learning outcomes —that is, the skills and knowledge you want students to learn and demonstrate by the end of your course. Once you have a clear idea of the specific skills/knowledge you want to assess, the following questions can help determine whether or not your current assignments are effective and assessing what you want them to assess:

• Does my assignment call for the same type of thinking skills that are articulated in my class outcomes? For example, if my course learning outcome calls for students to analyze major themes in a work, is there risk of my final assignment prompting students to do more (e.g., synthesize multiple themes across multiple works) or to do less (e.g., merely identify a theme) than this outcome? If so, there may be a misalignment that can easily be addressed.
• Does my assignment call for the same type of thinking skills that students have actually practiced in class? For example, if I am asking students to generate a research prospectus, have I given them adequate opportunity to develop—and receive feedback on—this skill in class?
• Depending on your discipline, is there a need for an additional course outcome that honors what students now need to know about the use of generative AI in your course/field?

Explore When & How Generative AI Can Facilitate Student Learning

Once you have affirmed your learning outcomes and ensured that your assignments are properly aligned with those outcomes, think about if, when, and how it might make sense to incorporate generative AI. Is there a way to leverage generative AI to engage students in deeper learning, provide meaningful practice, or help scaffold your assignments?

Consider the usefulness of generative AI to serve as:

• Have students analyze AI-generated texts to articulate what constitutes “good” (and not so good) responses to prompts.
• Have students analyze AI-generated texts and engage in error analysis to develop more nuanced and discipline-specific writing skills.
• Leverage the use of generative AI platforms to help students become more discerning. This can help students develop the critical thinking and information literacy skills required to effectively and responsibly use such platforms.
• Have students revise AI-generated texts to develop critical thinking skills.
• Have students engage with a generative AI platform as a tutor. 
• Facilitate students’ responsible, self-guided use of generative AI to develop select discipline specific skills (e.g., coding in computer science courses)
• Have students use generative AI to off-load repetitive tasks.
• Have students use generative AI to conduct preliminary analysis of data sets to confirm broad takeaways and affirm that their more nuanced analysis is heading in the right direction.

Identify When Generative AI Cannot Facilitate Student Learning

It is often the case that students cannot—or should not—leverage generative AI to promote or demonstrate their own learning. To help ensure that your assignment design highlights students’ unique perspectives and underscores the importance of a (non-generative AI informed) discipline-specific process, consider how to emphasize metacognition, authentic application, thematic connection, or personal reflection.  

Even if another part of an assignment calls for the use of generative AI, the following strategies may supplement the uses of AI highlighted above and foster deep and meaningful learning:

• Have students identify the successes and challenges they experienced throughout the completion of a project.
• Have students set incremental goals throughout a project, highlighting next steps of a discipline-specific process, resources they used, and the steps about which they are enthusiastic/nervous.
• Have students self-assess their work, identifying strengths and weaknesses of their product/effort.
• Have students engage in problem-based learning projects, ideally in authentic settings (e.g., problems that focus on our local community, real-world challenges, real-world industries, etc.).
• Have students present projects (and engage with) authentic audiences (e.g., real stakeholders, discipline-specific research partners, native-speaking language partners, etc.)
• Have students connect select reading(s) to course experiences (e.g., labs, field experiences, class discussions). 
• Leverage Canvas-based tools that promote student-to-student interactions (e.g., Hypothesis for social annotation or FeedbackFruits for peer review and feedback).
• Have students provide a reflective rationale for choices made throughout the completion of a class project (e.g., an artist statement, response to a reflection prompt about personal relevance of source selections)
• Have students connect course experiences/motivations to their own lived experiences.

Create Transparent Assignment Materials

Once you have thought about whether or not generative AI can be effectively incorporated into your assignments, it is important to create assignment materials that are transparent (Winkelmes, et al., 2019). Specifically, this means creating ways to communicate to students the task you are are requiring, along with its purpose and evaluative criteria:

• Task. Students will benefit from having a clear and accessible set of directions for the project or assignment you are asking them to complete. 
• Purpose. Students are often more motivated when they understand why a particular task is worth doing and what specific knowledge or skills they will develop by completing the assigned task.
• Evaluative Criteria. Students benefit from having a clear sense of how their work will be evaluated and a full understanding of what good work looks like.

Communicate Your Expectations for Generative AI Use 

Regardless of the extent to which you incorporate the use of generative AI into your assignment design, it is essential to communicate your expectations to students. Sharing clear directions for assignments, communicating how students can be successful in your class, and promoting academic integrity serves both you and your students well. 

Example Assignment Policy Language for Generative AI Use

The following language on the use of generative AI may be helpful as you create directions for specific assignments. Please note that the following sample language does not reflect general, course-level perspectives on the use of generative AI tools. For sample course-level statements, see AI & Academic Integrity .

Prohibiting AI Use for a Specific Assignment

Allowing the use of generative ai for a specific assignment with attribution.

For full details on how to properly cite AI-generated work, please see the APA Style article, How to Cite ChatGPT . "

Encouraging the Use of Generative AI for a Specific Assignment with Attribution

For full details on how to properly cite AI- generated work, please see the APA Style article, How to Cite ChatGPT ."

Confer with Colleagues

There is almost always a benefit to discussing an assessment plan with colleagues, either within or beyond your department. Remember, too, that CTI offers consultations on any topic related to teaching and learning, and we are delighted to collaboratively review your course assessment plan. Visit our Consultations page to learn more, or contact us to set up a consultation.

2023 EducaUse Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition. (2023, May 8). EDUCAUSE Library. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2023/5/2023-educause-horizon-report-teaching-and-learning-edition

Antoniak, M. (2023, June 22). Using large language models with care - AI2 blog. Medium. https://blog.allenai.org/using-large-language-models-with-care-eeb17b0aed27

Dinnar, S. M., Dede, C., Johnson, E., Straub, C. and Korjus, K. (2021), Artificial Intelligence and Technology in Teaching Negotiation. Negotiation Journal, 37: 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1111/nejo.12351

Jensen, T., Dede, C., Tsiwah, F., & Thompson, K. (2023, July 27). Who Does the Thinking: The Role of Generative AI in Higher Education. YouTube. International Association of Universities. Retrieved July 27, 2023.

OpenAI. (2023, February 16.). How should AI systems behave, and who should decide? https://openai.com/blog/how-should-ai-systems-behave

Winkelmes, M. A., Boye, A., & Tapp, S. (2019). Transparent design in higher education 

teaching and leadership: A guide to implementing the transparency framework institution-wide to improve learning and retention. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing .

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Course - geography in practice - field and research design - geog3008, course-details-portlet, geog3008 - geography in practice - field and research design, examination arrangement.

Examination arrangement: Assignment Grade: Letter grades

Course content

The course aims to give students knowledge about research design with an emphasis on the relation between theory, methodology and empirical research. The course starts with introductory lectures and obligatory fieldwork preparation where the students in groups will formulate research questions and prepare a research design. Following this there will be a three-day fieldcourse where students in groups will carry out an empirical study. The research questions must be formulated be within the focus areas at the Department of Geography. The research questions and main findings shall be reported in the form of a short, written group-based report.

Learning outcome

A student who has completed this course should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

• has insight and a critical understanding of a research process through the formulation of research questions and design, including the use of theoretical and methodological approaches within a chosen research topic.
• has experience in field methodology, experience in preparing research design and plan a research process, development of issues, justify problem solving, identify relevant theoretical and methodological approaches.

General competence:

• has training in professional analysis, writing, fieldwork and professional interaction.

Learning methods and activities

6 hours lectures, 3 days fieldwork, group-based report.

Compulsory assignments

• • Field course preparations, field course, group-based report.

Further on evaluation

The examination in this course is an individual assignment. The assignment shall be based on the fieldwork with emphasis on research design and choice of methods. The assignment should not overlap the students master`s thesis (GEOG3900/GEOG3901).

Specific conditions

Admission to a programme of study is required: Geography (MGEOG) Geography with Teacher Education, years 8 - 13 (MLGEOG)

Required previous knowledge

Completed GEOG1010, GEOG1011, GEOG1012, GEOG1013, GEOG1014. Other relevant qualifications can be accepted upon approval by the Department of Geography.

Credit reductions

Version: 1 Credits:  7.5 SP Study level: Second degree level

Term no.: 1 Teaching semester:  AUTUMN 2024

Language of instruction: Norwegian

Location: Trondheim

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• Hilde Nymoen Rørtveit
• Francis Chantel Nixon
• Haakon Lein
• Pascal Emanuel Egli

Department with academic responsibility Department of Geography

Examination

Examination arrangement: assignment.

Release 2024-10-30

Submission 2024-11-27

• * The location (room) for a written examination is published 3 days before examination date. If more than one room is listed, you will find your room at Studentweb.

For more information regarding registration for examination and examination procedures, see "Innsida - Exams"

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Individual Consultant, Conducting a Comprehensive Gender Assessment in Zimbabwe’s Humanitarian Context

Advertised on behalf of.

Harare, ZIMBABWE

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

Application deadline :.

02-Oct-24 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

National Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

Time left :, languages required :.

English  

Expected Duration of Assignment :

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Zimbabwe as a country is prone to multi hazards including climate induced humanitarian crises such as erratic rainfall patterns resulting in droughts, floods, extreme temperatures, water scarcity and increased food insecurity. Currently, the country is experiencing the effects of El Nino, which has resulted in disruptions of climatic patterns, including rainfall, and the resultant drought conditions. These climates induced humanitarian crises affect women and girls disproportionately because of pre-existing gender inequalities and social norms that impact on the articulation of their needs, their access to essential services and their ability to cope and recover from shocks. Intersecting aspects of identities, including disability, socio economic status, age, or ethnicity women, can further determine how people are affected and how they recover. Pre-existing gender-based discrimination and inequalities are exacerbated in crisis settings, where women and girls face violence and exclusion, directly affecting their ability to survive, receive lifesaving assistance and recover. Crisis also affects the ability of women to continue to effectively organize, take leadership positions in humanitarian response, disaster, or peace-building settings, and to influence decisions that impact their lives.

Gender sensitive humanitarian preparedness and response plans are critical to ensure the needs of women and girls become the centre of the Country’s humanitarian response mechanisms. In response to the above UN Women aims to ensure effectiveness in addressing gendered needs, working across the humanitarian development peace continuum, and embodying two approaches: i) supporting the mainstreaming of gender in the coordination, planning, prioritization and financing of humanitarian responses in the immediate aftermath of emergencies and humanitarian crises; and ii) contributing to long-term recovery and protecting the rights of women and girls in emergencies and protracted crises through the nexus approach.  This will significantly improve the effectiveness of humanitarian action, reduce vulnerabilities, including but not limited to gender-based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse, and aid women’s recovery.

Organizational Setting, Reporting and Collaborators

The consultant will work under the direct supervision of and report to the UN Women Deputy Country Representative, who will be the point of contact on the contract and payment issues. The Country Office Humanitarian portfolio team will provide added support.

Duties and Responsibilities

Specifically, the consultant is expected to do the following:

• Literature review and Assessment Design: Review existing literature and reports to identify knowledge gaps, then design and implement a comprehensive gender assessment focusing on inequalities in humanitarian contexts.
• Data collection and community engagement: Gather gender specific perspectives using qualitative and quantitative methods, including focus group discussions and interviews while engaging local women-led organisations to incooperate their voices and needs .
• Recommendations and capacity building: Provide evidence- based recommendations for gender-sensitive programming and identify training needs for local organisations to enhance their capacity to address gender- specific concerns.
• Reporting and stakeholder engagement: Prepare a detailed report summarising findings and strategies, present these to relevant stakeholders, and ensure alignment with on-going humanitarian efforts and frameworks within the specified timeframe.

Deliverables

• Desk Review will allow the researcher to gather and analyse existing literature, reports and data related to gender issues in humanitarian contexts.
• Inception Report will give the (1) consultant’s perspectives, insights and understanding of the assignment based on the desk review of key documents and discussions with UN Women key team; (2) set’s out the plan of action and timeline for accomplishing the assignment; and (3) includes the proposed methodology and tools for the research.
• Conduct research, Data collection, capturing and analysis.
• Prepare and submit first draft report to UN Women (should be delivered in the agreed timeframe)
• Submission of second draft report incooperating feedback from UN Women
• Presentation of the key findings at a validation workshop to be organized by UN Women
• Final report: inclusive of overall findings and incorporating findings from stakeholders.

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel

•The contracted Individual Consultant must have her/his own equipment and working space.

• UN Women will own all rights to the evidence and information gathered during the research, reports, and all documents produced for this assignment, and UN Women must be credited in perpetuity

The consultant will travel to conduct research in Manicaland, Matebeleland South and Mashonaland Central, the districts will be selected and agreed upon in consultation with the country office and the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprise Development. UN Women CO will provide the transport with driver and Daily Subsistence Allowance (where required) for travel.

This is a home-based consultancy.

Competencies

Core Values: 

• Respect for Diversity 
• Integrity 
• Professionalism 

Core Competencies: 

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues 
• Accountability 
• Creative Problem Solving 
• Effective Communication 
• Inclusive Collaboration 
• Stakeholder Engagement 
• Leading by Example 

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies:  

https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment/application-process#_Values  

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES : The following functional competencies are required:

• Technical credibility in gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment. 
• Research and gender analysis skills. 
• Planning of stakeholder engagement seminars/workshops.
• Facilitation of Reflection and Planning Seminars.
• Report writing & editing skills.

Required Skills and Experience