Building Online Assignments

Effective Instructions. Follow the link below to read an excellent article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Todd Gilman. Todd is librarian for literature in English at Yale University Library and a part-time instructor for the Schools of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University and Wayne State University. His article outlines a useful process for creating good online assignments. (He has strong opinions about use of quizzes and exams online that some may not agree with, but that's not the reason we want you to read this article - please focus on his suggestions for how to create good assignments other than quizzes or exams). The link will open a new tab in your browser.

Designing Effective Online Assignments (Links to an external site.)

 Students should not be left to wonder whether they are proceeding correctly at any point along their path to completion of the work. That means that your instructions on how to do the assignments have to explicit and flawlessly clear. As Todd writes:

"For example, if you ask students to 'briefly identify' a list of important people, places, and technical terms for a particular assignment, everyone will immediately wonder 'how briefly?' Yet few students will ask for clarification, and most will instead seek to be as long-winded as possible, hoping that their largess will translate into more points. Your phrasing, with its breezy imprecision, will have had exactly the opposite effect you intended."

Another resource for designing assignments online can be found here:

"Characteristics of Effective Online Assignments", (Links to an external site.) from Brown University's Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. (For further reading, check out their annotated list of resources (Links to an external site.) too.) Use this resource as additional reference to help you design your Assignment in this module.