Think of how to create unique kinds of assignments in one of your courses.
Suggestions include:
- Creative angles and topics
- Hybrid genres
- Multi-modal assignments
- Episodic or multi-staged tasks
- Cases and scenarios
Another suggestion is to develop class-specific assignments:
- Ask students to incorporate material from class discussions/lectures
- Provide additional readings/materials for writing
- Design assignments from your current course material
Yet another idea is to create specific audiences (or self-reflection) for assignments:
- Consider asking students to write the same text for different audiences and/or purposes
- Ask for “parallel texts” in which students reflect on their papers and processes
Four questions to ask yourself:
- Learning goals . . .
What new knowledge, skills, and processes do you want students to be able to know or use? - Assignment design . . .
What aspects of your assignment help to accomplish those goals? - Supporting strategies . . .
What activities support the development of the assignment? - Assessment . . .
How do you judge whether the learning goals are reflected in students’ products?
Plagiarism-proofing your goals:
What learning goal(s) do you want students to acquire? Describe each goal: is it informational (some pieces of knowledge)? Experiential (something experienced, or some skill practiced)? Affective (some new awareness, or metaconsciousness)? How does each goal help you to achieve the goals of your entire course?
Plagiarism-proofing your assignment design:
If a specific, generalized form or genre is not crucial, can you achieve the goal(s) through highly particularized and unique assignments? Cases? Hybrid or mixed genres? What “input” from your course can you incorporate into your assignment that comes only from your course? How can you break larger projects up into smaller assignments?
Plagiarism-proofing your support strategies:
How can you build certain assignment processes into your instruction and class time? How can you relate discussions and activities to your assigned projects? How can you use less formal assignments to drive your class sessions and enrich your course? How can you sequence short assignments to build up to larger projects?
Choose a Low-Stakes Assignment::Before you consider high-stakes, assessment-oriented assignments, consider low(er)-stakes assignments designed to encourage learning.Such assignments are driven by specific intellectual goals in your course, they tend to be linked well to your course material. They are also easier to evaluate and are very difficult to plagiarize.
Learning goals:
What new knowledge, skills, and processes do you want students to be able to know or use? Describe each goal in the following way:
Is the goal . . .
informational--some pieces of knowledge?
experiential--something experienced, or some skill practiced?
affective--some new awareness or metaconsciousnes?
How does each goal help you to achieve the goals of your entire course?
Assignment Design:
What aspects of your assignment help to accomplish those goals?
Consider high-stakes, assessment oriented assignments designed to encourage learning.
Make sure the assignments are driven by specific intellectual goals in your course.
Link the assignments well to your course material.
Hybrid or mixed genre assignments are difficult to plagiarize.
Create multi-modal assignments.
Use cases and scenarios.
Include episodic or multi-staged tasks.
Supporting strategies:
What activities support the development of the assignment?
Assign a task in stages that move from early ideas → freewrites → topic explorations → source analyses → focus exercises → drafts → reflections → peer responses → revisions/edits → final paper
Student portfolios provide a collection of work that documents progress over time.
Use writing in the class when teaching large classes
