Fertile Ground: The Movement to Build More Effective Assignments
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ERIC Institute of Education Sciences
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| Format: | Recurso educativo Open Access |
| Sprache: | en |
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2018
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| _version_ | 1867181837609074688 |
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| author | Hutchings, Pat Jankowski, Natasha A. Baker, Gianina |
| author_facet | Hutchings, Pat Jankowski, Natasha A. Baker, Gianina Hutchings, Pat Jankowski, Natasha A. Baker, Gianina |
| collection | Education Resources Information Center |
| contents | Fertile Ground: The Movement to Build More Effective Assignments Hutchings, Pat Jankowski, Natasha A. Baker, Gianina Assignments Instructional Design Academic Achievement College Faculty College Students National Programs Scoring Rubrics Shared Resources and Services Educational Technology Professional Associations Graduation Requirements Educational Resources Teaching Methods Databases Designing the tasks that students are required to complete in their courses has always been an essential part of what faculty do as teachers, and many faculty members work hard to shape and reshape those tasks in ways that bring out the best in students. But such work has mostly been done behind the scenes. A growing number of programs, campuses, disciplinary societies, and national initiatives are now creating opportunities for faculty to collaborate to make their assignments more effective. Many of these gatherings are shaped by findings from a national research project documenting the power of "transparent" assignments to advance student success (Winkelmes, et al., 2016), and many employ the VALUE rubrics developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (McConnell & Rhodes, 2017). The use of these rubrics is now supported by the newly established VALUE Institute (see Sullivan & McConnell, 2018). Some campuses and groups are creating local online repositories of assignments to encourage further sharing and to underscore the intellectual work that goes into the design of effective assignments. Several disciplinary and professional associations have also gotten into the act, seeing work on assignment design as a useful and engaging route into more scholarly attention to teaching and learning. The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) has had the good fortune to play a role in these efforts (Hutchings, Jankowski, & Ewell, 2014). In 2012, as part of NIOLA's tracking campus engagement with the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP), NIOLA began an initiative aimed at supporting and learning from educators seeking to develop assignments that more effectively elicit 21st century proficiencies and habits of mind. Toward this end, NIOLA convened interested educators to review one another's draft assignments, hosting four such occasions over the first several years. The resulting assignments are now part of NILOA's searchable online "assignment library" (see www. assignmentlibrary.org). As interest in this work has grown, NILOA has provided guidance and facilitation for 26 different assignment design events, continued to add to the library, and created a toolkit of resources (see www.learningoutcome assessment.org/assignmenttoolkit.html) to support local efforts. The purpose in all of this given NILOA's mission, has been to advance more authentic, actionable forms of student learning outcomes assessment. This article reports that attention to assignments turns out to be remarkably fertile ground for improvement. Most immediately, it yields more effective assignments--assignments that do a better job of developing and eliciting important learning outcomes for students. What is also being seen as less immediate but equally consequential benefits from this work are --new practices migrating from one course to another, a greater appetite for talking about teaching and learning, more willingness to take pedagogical risks, and a more shared sense of purpose and responsibility for student learning. The article concludes by suggesting three emerging and future directions: inviting additional stakeholder groups (for instance student affairs professionals and local employers) into discussions of assignment design; making a more prominent place for students in this work; and using the energy around assignment design to forge more fruitful partnerships between assessment and professional development centers. |
| format | Recurso educativo Open Access |
| id | eric_EJ1198572 |
| institution | ERIC Institute of Education Sciences |
| language | en |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| record_format | eric |
| spellingShingle | Fertile Ground: The Movement to Build More Effective Assignments Hutchings, Pat Jankowski, Natasha A. Baker, Gianina Assignments Instructional Design Academic Achievement College Faculty College Students National Programs Scoring Rubrics Shared Resources and Services Educational Technology Professional Associations Graduation Requirements Educational Resources Teaching Methods Databases Fertile Ground: The Movement to Build More Effective Assignments Hutchings, Pat Jankowski, Natasha A. Baker, Gianina Assignments Instructional Design Academic Achievement College Faculty College Students National Programs Scoring Rubrics Shared Resources and Services Educational Technology Professional Associations Graduation Requirements Educational Resources Teaching Methods Databases Designing the tasks that students are required to complete in their courses has always been an essential part of what faculty do as teachers, and many faculty members work hard to shape and reshape those tasks in ways that bring out the best in students. But such work has mostly been done behind the scenes. A growing number of programs, campuses, disciplinary societies, and national initiatives are now creating opportunities for faculty to collaborate to make their assignments more effective. Many of these gatherings are shaped by findings from a national research project documenting the power of "transparent" assignments to advance student success (Winkelmes, et al., 2016), and many employ the VALUE rubrics developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (McConnell & Rhodes, 2017). The use of these rubrics is now supported by the newly established VALUE Institute (see Sullivan & McConnell, 2018). Some campuses and groups are creating local online repositories of assignments to encourage further sharing and to underscore the intellectual work that goes into the design of effective assignments. Several disciplinary and professional associations have also gotten into the act, seeing work on assignment design as a useful and engaging route into more scholarly attention to teaching and learning. The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) has had the good fortune to play a role in these efforts (Hutchings, Jankowski, & Ewell, 2014). In 2012, as part of NIOLA's tracking campus engagement with the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP), NIOLA began an initiative aimed at supporting and learning from educators seeking to develop assignments that more effectively elicit 21st century proficiencies and habits of mind. Toward this end, NIOLA convened interested educators to review one another's draft assignments, hosting four such occasions over the first several years. The resulting assignments are now part of NILOA's searchable online "assignment library" (see www. assignmentlibrary.org). As interest in this work has grown, NILOA has provided guidance and facilitation for 26 different assignment design events, continued to add to the library, and created a toolkit of resources (see www.learningoutcome assessment.org/assignmenttoolkit.html) to support local efforts. The purpose in all of this given NILOA's mission, has been to advance more authentic, actionable forms of student learning outcomes assessment. This article reports that attention to assignments turns out to be remarkably fertile ground for improvement. Most immediately, it yields more effective assignments--assignments that do a better job of developing and eliciting important learning outcomes for students. What is also being seen as less immediate but equally consequential benefits from this work are --new practices migrating from one course to another, a greater appetite for talking about teaching and learning, more willingness to take pedagogical risks, and a more shared sense of purpose and responsibility for student learning. The article concludes by suggesting three emerging and future directions: inviting additional stakeholder groups (for instance student affairs professionals and local employers) into discussions of assignment design; making a more prominent place for students in this work; and using the energy around assignment design to forge more fruitful partnerships between assessment and professional development centers. |
| title | Fertile Ground: The Movement to Build More Effective Assignments |
| topic | Assignments Instructional Design Academic Achievement College Faculty College Students National Programs Scoring Rubrics Shared Resources and Services Educational Technology Professional Associations Graduation Requirements Educational Resources Teaching Methods Databases |
| url | https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1198572 |