What are the best and worst writing assignments you've ever given your students?
Deborah Nolan (Statistics)
In a course I teach on sampling surveys, my students work in small groups to prepare a ten- to fifteen-page report describing a complex survey, such as the Current Population Survey or the National Crime Victimization Survey. The first time I assigned this project the results were disappointing. Too many papers read like abridged government documents. However, with closer supervision, this assignment is now quite successful.
To start them on the right track, I crafted a template for summarizing a survey. Students use the template to begin thinking about the survey’s design. They turn in the completed template, a draft description of the survey, and a copy of their main source well in advance of the project due date. I meet with each group to review these materials. At our meeting, we identify a few important aspects of the survey for more in-depth study, we discuss strategies for investigating these additional topics, and outline a plan for completion of the paper.
A second review of the paper near the final submission date gives an opportunity for us to focus on presentation. As a result, students hone their research and writing skills, and the projects are more ambitious and more rewarding for them.
Michael Mascuch (Rhetoric)
I asked students in an upper-division seminar to do “cultural analysis” by selecting a “symbolic form” and writing about “how it contributes to the reproduction of domination in its context.” I thought I was enabling my students’ creativity by allowing them to specify these terms for themselves. But the trouble with the assignment surfaced before the paper was due, in my overattended office hours, where I found myself having to explain the assignment to student after student. Most of the papers were awful since the assignment was so vague and confusing. This assignment produced the one case of plagiarism I have ever encountered in ten years of teaching at Berkeley. It was probably a desperate move on the part of a thoughtful student at his wit’s end over how to perform the impossible task I gave him.
My best assignments allow students to demonstrate their knowledge, skill, and creativity by giving them very specific tasks to perform. I am consistently amazed by how much one can accomplish in a focused and meaningful writing assignment.
Vincent Resh (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management)
I’ve had some that really surprised me. In a seminar on using aquatic organisms to detect water pollution, I asked the environmental engineers to write about why engineers solving water pollution problems should know something about aquatic insects. Every one of them wrote by answering a different question: Why aquatic entomologists should know something about engineering. This version became a standard writing assignment for the entomologists in future seminars!
There is an assignment I regretted. I had stream ecology students answer a cutesy question: Why should a scientist who studies lakes find his or her own thoughts interesting? Their responses indicated that I had given them the idea that a dichotomy exists between the study of lakes and streams, and that the study of one was better. My question brought about the opposite of the response I intended. I’ve never used a negative tone in making an assignment since.
Originally Published: Volume 1 – Number 2 (Fall 2000)