Effective Writing Assignments
Plagiarism-Resistant Assignment Strategies
Approaches
Separate assignment from approaches to avoid confusing students
- Create atypical assignments
- Localize the assignment to topics, texts, and/or terms specific to your course.
- Consider alternatives to the traditional essay: memos, multimodal projects, personal reflections, case studies, newspaper articles, annotated bibliographies, and other genres may be more useful for graduates in your discipline.
- Vary assignments from year to year
- Scaffold/schedule the process
- Provide models/examples
- Who can write a sonnet without first seeing a sonnet?
- Provide clear expectations
- Assignment sheets
- Localized assessment/rubric
- Prompts
- Questions to consider
- Possible topics
- Potential pitfalls
- Connections to class texts and/or resources
- Models/Examples
Conclusion
- Assignment
- Logistics
- Purpose
- Approaches
Works Cited
Walk, Kerry. "Elements of an Effective Writing
Assignment." Princeton Writing Program Handout. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. n.d. https://writing.princeton.edu/sites/writing/files/media/assignelements.pdf
(Click link to access Walk's original handout)
Also, including a localized assessment/rubric is recommended to make sure students are clear on the expectations and how they are being assessed
Elements of an Effective Writing Assignment
Purpose
by Kerry Walk, Former Director of the Princeton Writing Program
Objective:
What you’re trying to teach them and why learning it is worthwhile
Assignment
- Explicitly state what you want students to do
- Use precise directing verbs
- Avoid nebulous directions like “discuss,” or “explore”
- Instead use: analyze, narrate, describe, compare, contrast, evaluate, summarize, explain
- The best assignments nudge students toward making an argument
Relevancy
- To class
- To discourse community
- To their scholarship
- To society
- To responsible citizenship
- etc...
Logistics
- When and where is the paper due?
- How long is it required to be?
- What are the formatting specifications (margin width, font size, citation style, etc.)?
It is also useful to discuss class policies when it comes to academic dishonesty, appropriate collaboration, late papers, and rewrites.