Writing Effective Assignments

Although assignments appear at the end of each learning module, interestingly they are created before their preceding module content (text and media included).

After freezing the goals of a learning content, assignments are created, which is followed by the development of the reading content. Doing so ensures that (a) the assignments map to the goals or objectives of the learning content and (b) the reading content is streamlined and includes all the necessary information that the students need to be able to do the assignments.

For a content developer or an instructional designer, developing effective assignments ensures that the course goals are met and students develop competencies that the course promises. From my experience as an instructional designer, I feel the following guidelines can help you write effective assignments.

Work backward from the goals. While designing the assignment, remind yourself of the goals of the learning content. Think of the answers or solutions you would expect the students to produce in the assignment. Now think how to write the assignment so that the students are able to reach that answer or solution. Think what prerequisite(s) the students will need to perform the assignment in a manner that they get full grades for it---any information or job aid or sample, reasons of doing the assignment, where the assignment fits in the whole curriculum, what format to produce the assignment in, any word limits or length restrictions to the assignment, due date, grading criteria, and so forth. Include all these prerequisites as a part of the assignment. Working backwards from the goals ensures that (a) the assignment maps to the goals and (b) students are judged on the competencies that the course offers to develop.

Consider the skill level. When the course competencies and goals, say of an engineering-based course, are about enabling the students to apply (Bloom 3) the concepts of engineering in the field of robotics, you cannot put an assignment that asks students to create a robotic arm (Bloom 5) or write equations that govern the movement of a robotic arm (Bloom 1). Design the assignment so that it matches the desired skill level that a student is expected to achieve after going through the learning content.

Be specific: Writing vague, broad-ended (mind you not open-ended) questions would produce similar results. The students will respond likewise---with vague, broad, and varied answers. This not only makes the assessment of the assignment difficult, but also hampers the assignment mapping to the lesson goals or objectives.

Your assignment needs a precise direction---provide it yourself. Specify the students exactly what they need to do. For example,
Ineffective assignment: Comment on any one aspect of your choice in the Roman Empire.
Effective assignment: Identify four reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Explain each of the reasons. Document your response in a word document of not more than 1000 words. The assignment is due on Day X.

Give in details. Your students should be able to understand the assignment completely without asking for much help around. Do not leave room for assumptions, interpretations, and intuition-work by the students. They should be told what to do (steps, format, and naming convention of the assignment), why to do (purpose of the assignment), when to do (deliverable date of the assignment), for whom to do (expected audiences for the assignment; e.g., they should know whether they need to create a memo for their manager or an editorial for their local newspaper), and the associated brownies (grades and their split-up). In addition, the context building, if needed, should be elaborate and guide the student towards a specific answer. Remember that a detailed assignment guides students to specific answers, which in turn enable them to earn appropriate grades for the assignment.

Build relevant context or scenario. Place the assignment in the context of a typical job setting that a student will encounter after taking the course. For a student of fashion retail management, an assignment revolving around Sears or Macy’s or Ann Taylor (for devising an ‘effective sales strategy for the next season merchandise’) will help the him or her get the real feel of on-the-job experience and therefore make the student more prepared for the life after school. If, for this student, you build the assignment in the scenario of an automobile company (for devising an ‘effective sales strategy for their next model’), it would be irrelevant. Although the skill that the student would exhibit under the two scenarios would be the same (devising an effective sales strategy for products), using the relevant scenario (a) places the student in the shoes of the person he or she will likely become after taking the course, (b) checks the relevance of competency developed after taking the course, and (c) addresses the goals of the course in a better way.

Spread a long assignment across weeks. If you plan to include a lengthy assignment, it is wiser to split it up across different weeks and ask the students to execute its subparts each week. Such an assignment works well if it is a build-on type of an assignment; for example, if the course is on ‘Business Plans’ and the course objective states that the students will be able to build their own Business Plan after taking the course, a good assignment will be to ask them create a Sample Business Plan for a specific business and need. The business plan has many parts to it and creating all of it in one assignment or week might be stressful for the students; therefore, such an assignment can be spread over the weeks. Each week the student can be asked to create different parts of the business plan and in the last week, the student can be asked to compile the work of all weeks and improve or finalize it to submit a completed Sample Business Plan. This way, a lengthy assignment can be retained and the student load can also be balanced.

Weigh and word the assignment grading carefully. For each task, sub-task, and sub-sub-task that a student is asked to perform in the assignment, there should be a corresponding grading criteria. In addition, the grading points associated with each grading criteria should consider the effort and understanding that the particular task demands. The sum of grading points of all grading criteria is the total grade point of an assignment. In addition, word the grading criteria so that it maps to the task listed in the assignment. The verbs used in the grading criteria should map to the verbs used to perform the tasks. For example, if a task in an assignment is to “Provide at least two reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with the statement ‘XYZ’.”, then the corresponding grading criteria can be worded as “The student should have provided at least two reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with the given statement.” All tasks in the assignments should have a respective grading criterion and vice versa---students should not be assessed on anything not mentioned in the assignment. Doing it ensures that the students know what to do to achieve what.

Write inclusive instructor or facilitator notes. Often, instructors or facilitators of a learning course are not subject matter experts. They might just be responsible for holding or conducting a class or learning session with a set of notes provided by the educational facility. Therefore, your instructor or facilitator notes should contain detailed answers to the assignments and reasons for every trivial question and subparts of the assignment. Do not presume that the facilitator will know most of the stuff for a simple subject---just write as if the facilitator is going to need a lot of your help and so provide it at once in abundance.