{"id":75,"date":"2017-10-02T18:45:39","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T18:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.berea.edu\/bereawritingguide\/?page_id=75"},"modified":"2018-06-06T09:18:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T13:18:49","slug":"key-questions-considerations-creating-assignments","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/legacy.berea.edu\/bereawritingguide\/chapter-3-creating-assignments\/key-questions-considerations-creating-assignments\/","title":{"rendered":"Key Questions or Considerations for Creating Assignments"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What skill are you asking your students to develop, and how do your assignments support them? This is another way of asking about sequence, really. For instance, if we are asking them to focus on audience and voice, then the first assignment might consider the voice of one writer and her audience, a second might critique authorial voice from a larger cultural standpoint or in contrast to a more complex and heterogeneous audience, and a final essay might ask the student to use the tools of audience and voice to generate her own entry into a conversation with course material.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Have you included in the assignment a statement of basic expectations describing what you want to see in the assignment, its required parts or skills, and its various due dates? The clearer you are about your expectations &#8212; this may include a rubric of some kind &#8212; the clearer students will be in turn about how to complete the task you have set for them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>How do assignments move from smaller and more specific subjects to more nuanced inquiries? For example, if you are considering the changing role of technology in social discourse, one might begin in the first essay with a critique of a single technology or application and its use, move in the second essay to discuss the relationship between online and offline technologies or practices, and in the final essay, relate a technological tool to the social goals it aims to address (and\/or its shortcomings)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>What is the relationship between informal and formal elements in your assignments? Consider: if you require journal entries in response to readings, you will want to include goals or prompts for the journal entry to prevent overly-vague and under-developed material from becoming too representative of what should be an intellectual engagement with material. When you assign formal writing, it should pick up on some theme or topic you have included in the journal assignment, such as an expanded examination of an historical event, text or author, or perhaps a deeper consideration of a question to which the students have made informal responses. Finally, when you ask students to write original interpretive\/critical work, those essays should draw together some of the social or critical questions brought to bear by the course material and, one hopes, reflected in journal assignments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>How have you sufficiently incorporated and assessed revision and review in your students\u2019 workflow? You may wish to build in re-submission of one essay after a final grade, for instance, to let students have another swing at an essay that did not fully succeed. You will also need to ask yourself how you will examine student peer review to ensure its quality: will you grade review materials, or how else might you model the kinds of review and revision processes you wish to engender in your students\u2019 work?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Have you made it clear to students what skills and cognitive habits you want them to examine in each assignment? Using bullet points to tell them what they will be working on can be a clear way to describe their task (as, apparently, I seem to be doing here).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Are you over-extending your students by asking too much? Remember that you can only teach a limited number of skills in any term. We recommend focusing on two or three fundamentals that you can teach carefully across your course\u2019s units. If you are over-reaching your students developmental capacities, they will not necessarily follow your lead. A proviso here for students follows that old saw: bite less, chew more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>What is the finished product you wish to see your students develop? If you want a portfolio, by way of example, then you will need to describe its elements and give students ample opportunity to compose those elements during the semester. The same holds true for smaller assignments as well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Have you fulfilled the basic expectation for GSTR 110 with your writing assignments, cumulatively and\/or individually? While there are varied formats for 110 courses, basic expectations most often include three (3) formal and graded analytical essays, adding up to a total of approximately fifteen (15) polished pages of graded, reviewed and revised, formal writing across the semester. Your course is likely to include additional journaling, reflection, or other kinds of informal writing inside and out of class, but do making a distinction in your planning between graded and un-graded work will help you to track their balance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<em>This website is a collaboration between Berea College professors Anne Bruder and Jason Cohen. As you will notice throughout these webpages, our work here has been more about aggregation than original invention. We have made every attempt to give credit to other instructors and friends of other instructors. One of the joys of teaching is the generosity we all seem to show one another in sharing materials. This webpage is a product of that spirit.<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] What skill are you asking your students to develop, and how do your assignments support them? This is another way of asking about sequence, really. For instance, if we are asking them to focus on audience and voice, then the first assignment might consider the voice of one writer and her audience, a second [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"parent":28,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"protect_children":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-75","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Key Questions or Considerations for Creating Assignments - The Berea Early Writing Guide<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Key Questions or Considerations for Creating Assignments - The Berea Early Writing Guide\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] What skill are you asking your students to develop, and how do your assignments support them? 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