Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments

In a perfect world, first-year students would arrive on campus with a solid foundation of research and writing skills that you get to build upon with true college-level assignments. Unfortunately, that's often not the case.

As a result, writing assignments are time consuming and, at times, frustrating to grade. Of course, they also are vital to furthering student learning and an important part of the academic experience. In other words, they're not going away anytime soon.

Download Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments »

This Faculty Focus special report was created to provide instructors with fresh perspectives and proven strategies for designing more effective writing assignments, including how to thwart "cut and paste" plagiarism.

Here are just some of the articles you will find in this report:

• Revising the Freshman Research Assignment
• Writing an Analytical Paper in Chunks
• Designing Assignments to Minimize Cyber-Cheating
• Chapter Essays as a Teaching Tool
• Writing (Even a Little Bit) Facilitates Learning
• How to Conduct a ‘Paper Slam’

Using Blogs to Expand the Curriculum--2 ideas

I was reading David Warlick's blog "Mr. Blogmeister" where he provided several examples of assignments using blogs to fit the new ISTE standards. The following two I thought would especially be useful in higher education. I've included them with minor grammatical adjustments. Both these assignments take blogging beyond just the journaling/diary-keeping concept. The first assignment asks students to think about the learning process--how they actually found the information and to evaluate that information. Warlick only asks the teacher to respond, but I think student responses might also generate discussion about why certain information was appropriate and how the student came to his/her conclusions. As always, having students role play or take on the persona of a character in a story, poem, or play adds a new dimension to the study. But having them choose a particular place/sentence in the text requires them to read closely and to evaluate. As the other students play out the second character, the story changes. The blog also allows for commentary on why the students chose particular sections and why they answered the way they did.

Research & Information Fluency

Assignment:
As students are engaged in a major research assignment, ask them to journal daily about their experience, listing what information they have found, how they found it, and how they evaluated the information to assure its appropriateness to the assignment. Read and comment on the blog entries, giving support, tips, corrections, and other aide.

Critical Thinking, Problem-solving, & Decision-Making

Assignment:
After reading a story, novel, or play, ask students to pretend to be one of the characters, and describe one sentence that might have been spoken to another character and at what time that might have overcome the roadblocks of the problem more quickly and with less cost. Ask classmates to read the blog entries and comment what the second character would logically have said in return.