Giving Assignments to Get Good Results
Before you give the assignment:
- Know and understand your own purpose(s):
- Write to learn?
- Write to demonstrate understanding? mastery (of what)?
- Write for their peers, write for clients, non_specialists?
- Basic concepts, fundamental definitions
- Understanding of the way people in the discipline, think, do their work, select and use evidence, data, and other support
- Will your grading be formative? summative?
- Are you planning to examine and comment on:
- Preliminary theses, outlines?
- First or early drafts? (How many drafts do you expect students to write?)
- Intermediate draft(s)?
- Final version?
- Style? mechanics? citation format?
- Do you distinguish between writing and editing? If not, why not?
The Assignment Itself
- WRITE OUT THE ASSIGNMENT, in take-home form. Tell students explicitly and clearly what you expect in the way of length, breadth, and depth of writing. USE KEY WORDS.
- Identify its primary traits, such matters as: Topic area, issue, or even the specific point of view (an argument in the discipline, for instance) they should address
- How original, derivative
- How comprehensive? What limitations on scope, subject?
- Methodology__explain how they should go about doing the research, writing the paper
- What investigative or other research process
- What resources (categories or specific items) to use, where to find them
- How to distinguish between primary and secondary sources, major and minor (re)sources
- If this is a collaborative effort, who does what?
- Context of writing/ intended audience
- general disciplinary conventions, biases, taboos, material taken for granted
- institutional or other local conventions, local knowledge
- Be explicit about your evaluation criteria in advance. Possibilities:
- accuracy
- clarity
- definitions of fundamental terms
- logic
- organization
- linear--point one leads to point two etc.
- topical
- according to disciplinary or normative format
- understanding of ideas, development, use of supporting materials
- primary sources
- secondary sources and info. retrieval technology
- statistics
- charts, graphs, illustrations
- style
- characteristic of the discipline
- individual
- innovation, creativity, originality
- editing
- spelling
- mechanics
- sentence structure
- citation format of the discipline
- professional appearance of the manuscript
- Provide good models, sample papers by students, professionals that demonstrate the assignment
- Try writing the assignment yourself
- To see what you learn from the experience
- To anticipate problems students might have in writing it. If you can walk the walk you can surely talk the talk.
- Conclusion: You should get the kinds of papers you want, on target, on time, and without excessive effort on your part.
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