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’

Slidecasting on Slideshare

I have been slowly uploading my PowerPoint presentations to slideshare for about a year now. There's a link to the left to see all the shows I've uploaded. I originally found this site when my mentor sent me a link to one of her presentations. It's a great place to showcase and share PowerPoint presentations. However, there are a couple of problems. When I upload my presentations, I lose all the animation and transitions. In addition, I can't (or couldn't) add audio to my presentations. However, slideshare now has the option of editing my presentations to create a slidecast. A slidecast is similar to a screencast (see Camtasia or Adobe Breeze) which allows the designer to demonstrate how to complete computerized tasks by showing step-by-step procedures. Slidecasting, on the other hand, is a multimedia format for viewing slide decks synchronized with an audio file.

I haven't had a chance to edit my current presentations to add audio yet, but I'm definitely going to try it out soon. Slideshare is currently conducting "The World's Best Presentation" Contest. I've entered one of my educational presentations on the 4-Square Method of brainstorming and organizing an essay. Check it out and place your vote today.