assignment of design

All You Need To Know About The Assignment Of Design Rights

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Industrial design

Industrial designs are part of the aesthetic sector, but they're also meant to be used as a blueprint for the production of industrial or handcrafted goods. The ornamental or aesthetic part of a practical object that must appeal to the sense of sight and may consist of the shape, pattern, and/or colour of the article is known as industrial design. To be protected, an industrial design must be new and original. For a period of five, ten, or fifteen years, industrial designs are protected against unlawful duplication or replication.

According to Section 2(d) of the Designs Act, 2000, design refers to "only the features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornament or composition of lines or color or a combination thereof applied to any article, whether two dimensional or three dimensional or in both forms, by any industrial process or means, whether manual, mechanical or chemical, separate or combined, which in the finished article appeal to and are judged solely by the eye," but it excludes "any mode or principle or construction", as defined in clause (v) of sub-section of Section 2 of the Trade and Merchandise Marks Act, 1958, property mark or artistic works as defined under Section 2(c) of the Copyright Act, 1957.

Assignment of Design rights

Assignment is a legal phrase that refers to the transfer of rights, property, or other benefits from one person to another (the "assignor"). Both contract and property law make use of this term. The term can relate to either the act of transferring or the transferred rights/property/benefits.

Section 30 of the Design Act of 2000( Hereinafter referred to as "Act"), as amended by Rules 32, 33, 34, and 35 of the Design Rules of 2001, recognizes design assignment contracts and establishes a method for their recording. Section 30(1) of the Design Act provides that if a person acquires the copyright in a registered design through assignments, transmission, or other legal means, he may apply to the Controller in the specified form to register his title. According to Section 30(3) of the Design Act of 2000, an assignment must be in writing, and the agreement between the parties must be reduced to the form of an instrument embodying all of the terms and conditions governing their rights and obligations, and the application for registration of title under such instrument must be filed in the prescribed manner with the Controller within the stipulated time-that is, within six months of the execution date. The person registered as the proprietor of the design has the absolute right to assign the design rights, according to Section 30(4) of the Design Act of 2000.

Only if the design's Copyright is statutorily recognised under the requirements of the Designs Act, 2000, is it protected. Similarly, third-party rights obtained through assignments or licences are only effective if they are properly registered in accordance with the Act's requirements and the Rules enacted thereunder. Under design law, there is no concept of a common law licence.

Assignment of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout Design

An electronic circuit made on the surface of semiconductor material is known as a semiconductor integrated circuit. Integrated circuits have transformed the field of electronics by being employed in practically all electronic devices currently in use. The sheer quantity of electronic appliances we use on a daily basis demonstrates the significance of semiconductor integrated circuits or chips in today's environment.

The layout or arrangement of the chip determines its ability to perform a specific function. As a result, a second enactment was required to protect the chip designer's investment. In India, the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layouts Design Act of 2000 would provide this protection.This was done in accordance with India's commitments under the TRIPS Agreement.

'An assignment in writing by act of the parties concerned,' according to Section 2(b) of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout-Design Act, 2000. According to Section 19 of the Act, the registration of the design, as well as all subsequent assignments, will serve as prima facie evidence of its validity.

Assignments and Transmissions are covered in Chapter V of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layouts Design Act, 2000. Section 20 of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layouts Design Act of 2000 gives the owner of a layout design the authority to assign the layout design and to issue effective receipts for any money received in exchange for the assignment.This is subject to the provisions of the aforementioned Act, as well as any rights that appear to be vested in another person based on the register. A registered layout-design is assignable and transmissible with or without the goodwill of the business involved under Section 21 of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layouts Design Act, 2000.According to Section 22 of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layouts Design Act, 2000, when an integrated circuit layout is assigned without goodwill, the assignment will not take effect unless the assignee applies to the Registrar for directions with respect to the assignment not later than six months from the date on which the assignment is made or within such extended period, if any, not exceeding three months in the aggregate, as the Registrar may allow. The assignee must register the title with the registrar, according to Section 23 of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layouts Design Act, 2000.If the matter is still before the registrar or an appeal from an order therefrom is pending, Section 24 of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layouts Design Act, 2000 prohibits the assignee from utilizing the registration as proof of title.

These rights can be assigned with the help of Assignment Agreements

Assignment agreements deal with the transfer of intellectual property rights from one person or organisation to another. An Intellectual Property Agreement (IP Agreement) or an Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement is a documented and enforceable contract that completes and formalizes a purchase and sale of intellectual property rights between two organisations. Copyrights, trademarks, and/or patents are examples of intellectual property that can be purchased. Assignment agreements differ from licence agreements in that an assignment agreement transfers ownership of intellectual property from the assignor to the assignee, whereas a licence agreement merely allows the licensee to use the intellectual property for a certain time.

An assignment agreement cannot be compared to a negotiating document since in a negotiation, the transferee may obtain a superior title than the transferor, which cannot occur in an assignment/transfer.

An assignment agreement may include a complete and exclusive sale of the rights, granting the assignee complete ownership of the intellectual property rights to exploit them in any way, shape, or form it sees fit, subject to any constraints set forth in the agreement. These contracts are governed in India under the Indian Contract Act of 1872 and the Indian Stamp Act of 1899.

Process of Assignment under Designs Act, 2000

• After a design is registered, an application for ownership under Rule 33 of the Design Rules, 2001 must be made to the Controller for the registration of title in the new owner's name.
• The agreement of assignment must be written, and all of the parties' concerns should be provided in the form of the instrument comprising all of the terms and conditions, according to Rule 37 of the Design Rules.
• After all requirements have been completed and the assignment of rights has been registered with the register of designs, the assignment of rights will be enforceable from that date.
• Within six months of the instrument's implementation date, a title registration application must be submitted. This period can be extended for an additional six months.

The Design Act of 2000 and the Copyright Act of 1957 protect the rights of the original designer and deal with the transfer of rights to succeeding owners. The Assignment Agreement assists two parties in transferring intellectual property rights to one another for product development and commercial purposes. Section 30 of the Design Act and Rules 32-35 of the Design Rules, 2001 deal with design assignment agreements. If they are not carefully written as required by law, these assignment agreements give birth to legal and equitable rights in law and raise a slew of concerns.As a result, it's a good idea to include Assignment Agreement terms that handle concerns like governing law, jurisdiction, and Alternative Dispute Resolution to ensure that disagreements are resolved quickly. It is a legally binding agreement that must adhere to all applicable laws. The enforceability of assignment agreements encourages these individuals to develop innovative technologies that benefit society in the long run. In addition to adhering to these Rules, it is critical to ensure that the agreement properly identifies who owns what. The task must be specific, as well as the duration for which the individual will be the owner of the intellectual property.This would serve as a safeguard in the event of a potential dispute over the Design's ownership.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

Intellectual Property

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One of the best ways for students to determine what they know, think, and believe about a given subject is to write about it. To support students in their writing, it is important to provide them with a meaningful writing task, one that has an authentic purpose, clear guidelines, and engages students in their learning. In this section, you can read about key principles of assignment design, review examples of effective writing assignments, and use a checklist to guide your own designs. You can also consult with a Writing Across the Curriculum Program team member . We’re happy to think with you about your writing assignment, whether it is in the inkling stage or undergoing a few minor tweaks.

What makes an assignment effective?

A good deal of educational research points to the benefits of writing assignments that exhibit the following features:

Meaningful tasks. A task is given meaning by its relevance to and alignment with the learning aims in the course. What counts as meaningful in one course context might not be meaningful in another. As Eodice, Geller, and Lerner (2016) have shown, meaningful writing assignments do occur across all disciplines and they are typically ones that “offer students opportunities to engage with instructors, peers, and texts and are relevant to past experiences and passions as well as to future aspirations and identities.”

Maximized learning time. As Linda Suskie argues, effectiveness is determined by the “learning payoff,” not by size of the assignment. Will students learn four times as much on an assignment that takes 20 hours outside of class than one that takes 5? Longer research-based assignments and elaborate class activities (mock conferences, debates, poster sessions, etc.) can greatly maximize learning, but there must be an appropriate level of writing and learning time built into the task. Term papers are much more effective when students have time to draft and revise stages of the assignment, rather than turning in one final product at the end.

Logical sequencing. A writing task that includes discrete stages (research, drafting, review, revising, etc.) is more likely to be an effective learning experience than one that only specifies the final product. Furthermore, these stages are more effective when they are scaffolded so simpler tasks precede more complex tasks. For example, a well-sequenced 10-12 page essay assignment might involve discrete segments where students generate a central inquiry question, draft and workshop a thesis statement, produce a first draft of the essay, give and receive feedback on drafts, and submit a revision. Read more about sequencing assignments . 

Clear criteria will help students connect an assignment’s relevance to larger scale course outcomes. The literature on assignment design strongly encourages instructors to make the grading criteria explicit to students before the assignment is collected and assessed. A grading scheme or rubric that is handed out along with the assignment can provide students with a clear understanding of the weighted expectations and, thus help them decide what to focus on in the assignment. It becomes a teaching tool, not just an assessment tool.

Forward-thinking activities more than backward-thinking activities. Forward-thinking activities and assignments ask students to apply their learning rather than simply repeat it. The orientation of many writing prompts is often backward, asking students to show they learned X, Y, and Z. As L. Dee Fink (2013) points out, forward-thinking assignments and activities look ahead to what students will be able to do in the future having learned about X, Y, and Z. Such assignments often utilize real-world and scenario-based problems, requiring students to apply their learning to a new situation. For Grant Wiggins (1998) , questions, problems, tests, and assignments that are forward-thinking often:

• Require judgment and innovation. Students have to use knowledge and skills to solve unstructured problems, not just plug in a routine.
• Ask students to do the subject. Beyond recitation and replication, these tasks require students to carry out explorations, inquiry, and work within specific disciplines.
• Replicate workplace and civic contexts. These tasks provide specific constraints, purposes, and audiences that students will face in work and societal contexts.
• Involve a repertoire of skills and abilities rather than the isolation of individual skills. 

Feel free to use this assignment checklist , which draws on the principles and research described on this page.

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Teaching Commons > Teaching Guides > Assignment Design

Assignment Design

Here's a short list of some general assignment design strategies that apply to a wide variety of disciplines.

A number of strategies for deterring plagiarism are discussed, including asking your students to write about current topics relevant to your course and staging essay assignments throughout the quarter.

​Integrative learning occurs when students make connections among ideas and experiences in order to transfer learning to new contexts.​

Strategies for Effective Assignment Design

As students progress through their degree programs, it becomes increasingly important for them to learn the major genres, research strategies, and writing conventions of their field. Because writing expectations vary across disciplinary and professional contexts, students benefit from transparent explanation of what those expectations are, how to achieve them, and why they’re important. This can be accomplished through carefully designed formal assignments.

Experts in Writing across the Curriculum argue that students learn most successfully when formal assignments engage them with “authentic research projects that promote disciplinary ways of inquiry and argument and are written in real disciplinary genres. [1]  from the National Survey of Student Engagement shows that deep learning depends less on the amount of writing assigned in a course than on the design of the writing assignments themselves. According to this and other research, effective assignments have the following three features: [2]  a meaning-constructing task, clear explanations of expectations, and interactive components.

Engage students in meaning-making

A meaning-constructing task asks students to bring their own critical thinking to bear on problems that matter to both the writer and the intended audience. A meaning-constructing task typically presents students with a disciplinary problem, asks them to formulate their own problems, or otherwise engages them in active critical thinking in a specific rhetorical context.

Provide clear expectations

Effective assignments clearly present the instructor’s expectations for a successful performance. Ideally, the assignment prompt also explains the purpose of the assignment in terms of the course’s learning goals and presents the instructor’s evaluation criteria.

Include interactive components

Interactive activities situate writing as a process of inquiry and discovery, promote productive talk about the writer’s emerging ideas, and encourage multiple drafts and global revision.

Create a Rhetorical Context

Creating a rhetorical context for your assignments means considering the role students will play in their writing, the audience they are meant to address, the format (or genre) of the writing task, and the task they are meant to accomplish. The mnemonic RAFT is helpful to recall these four components. [3]

Having a role helps students understand the kind of change they hope to bring about in their audience’s view of the subject matter. Without a specific role to play other than “student,” writers in your class might assume that their purpose is simply to regurgitate information to the instructor.

Specifying an audience goes hand-in-hand with establishing the student’s role. By identifying an audience, the instructor can help students see how their writing might influence a reader’s stance.

Format/Genre

By specifying a genre (e.g., experimental report, op-ed piece, proposal), the assignment helps students transfer earlier genre knowledge to the current task and make decisions about document design, organization, and style. It also helps instructors clarify expectations about length, citation style, etc. More important still, the rhetorical awareness enabled by writing in a specific genre also creates an awareness of a discourse community at work. To students, college writing assignments often appear to be an isolated transaction between student and teacher. Students assume that strange features of the assignment reflect the idiosyncrasies of the instructor rather than the conventions of a larger community. When instructors assign authentic genres there is an opportunity to make discourse community values and expectations explicit.

Task (Problem-Focused)

The task itself sets forth the subject matter of the assignment. Unlike topic-focused tasks (e.g., research/write about X), which can lead to unfocused papers that merely report information, a truly engaging task is typically embedded in disciplinary “problems” and disciplinary ways of thinking and argumentation. A problem-focused task should give students agency to bring their own critical thinking to bear on the subject matter—that is, to engage them in making their own meaning.

Use Transparent Assignment Design

Often an assignment that seems clear to you can be confusing to your students. While designing your assignments, ask yourself what might be unclear to your students—what assumptions might you be making about their procedural or background knowledge? Scholar Mary Ann Winkelmas

Align writing activities and assignments clearly with learning objectives

The goal of transparent assignment design is to “to make learning processes explicit and equally accessible for all students” (winkelmes et al., 2019, p. 1)., make clear the purpose, task, and criteria for success., for more information visit tilt (transparency in teaching and learning).

Example: Less Transparent

Assignment from an Introductory Communications Course

1. Select a professional in your prospective academic discipline and/or career filed that is considered an expert in an area in which you are interested 2. Secure an interview with the professional for a date and time that is convenient for both of you. 3. Prepare 8-10 questions to ask the professional about their knowledge of a particular academic discipline/career field. 4. Conduct a 20-30 minute, face-to-face interview to gather knowledge that will help you make an informed decision about the major/career you are considering. You will want to audio/video record the interview with the interviewee’s permission 5. Prepare a typed transcript of the questions and answers using the audio/ video recording 6. Write a 400-500 word reflection paper in which you address the following items: a. Who you selected and why? b. What you learned from them that is most interesting? c. What this assignment helped you learn about your major/career decision? 7. What questions you still have? 8. Submit the typed transcript and reflection paper to your instructor

Revised EXAMPLE: More Transparent

Communications 100E, Interview Assignment Used by permission of Katharine Johnson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Due dates: - Sept 30 - Draft interview questions - October 15 - Transcript of interviews - November 17 - Report

Purpose : The purpose of this assignment is to help you make an informed decision about the major/career you are considering.

Skills : This assignment will help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in school and professional life: - Accessing and collecting information from appropriate primary and secondary sources - Synthesizing information to develop informed views - Composing a well-organized, clear, concise report to expand your knowledge on a subject in your major.

Knowledge : This assignment will also help you to become familiar with the following important content knowledge in this discipline: - Issues facing professionals in a field - Scholarly research formats for documenting sources and creating reference pages (i.e., bibliographies).

Task : To complete this assignment you should: 1. Secure an interview with two professionals in hour prospective academic discipline and/or career field who are considered experts. 2. Schedule the interviews with the professionals at a date and time that is convenient for both of you. 3. Prepare 8-10 questions to ask the professionals about their expertise in a particular academic or career field. The questions must be based on a review of the filed using 5 credible sources as defined by the librarian in our research module. Sources should be cited using APA formatting. 4. Conduct a 2 -3 -minute, face-to-face interview with each professional to gather knowledge that will help you make an informed decision about the major/career you are considering. You will want to audio/video record the interview with the interviewee’s permission. 5. Prepare a typed transcript of the interviews 6. Compare and contrast the information provided by both professionals in an 8-page (1.5 spaced, 12point Times New Roman font, 1 inch margins) report that documents the advantages and disadvantages of a career in the selected field.

Criteria for success : Please see the attached rubric.Type your textbox content here.

Information Literacy Skills Needed for Research Writing

Asking students to engage authentic, discipline-specific problems requires a kind of dismantling of the commonly encountered “research paper” culture in which students think of research as going to the library to find sources that can be summarized, paraphrased, and quoted. To move from “research paper” culture to a culture in which research projects are written in disciplinary genres, instructors need to help students develop the following skills related to information literacy: [4]

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Consider the Novice-Expert Framework

Consider backward design

• Bean and Melzer, p. 64-65 ↵
• All of this section excerpted and paraphrased from Bean and Melzer, pp. 66-68 ↵
• All of this section excerpted and paraphrased from Bean and Melzer, pp. 200-202 ↵
• Bizup, Joseph. “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review, 2008, Vol.27 (1), p.72-86. DOI: 10.1080/07350190701738858 ↵

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Sections: General Principles of Assignment Design Additional Resources

General Principles of Assignment Design

Assignments: Make Them Effective, Engaging, and Equitable. At their best, assignments are one of the most important learning experiences for students in a course. Students grapple with course content, deepen their understanding, form new ideas, connections, and questions, and show how they are achieving the course or program learning outcomes. Assignments can also affirm students' social identities, interests, and abilities in ways that foster belonging and academic success.

Characteristics of Effective, Engaging, and Equitable Assignments

• Address the central learning outcomes/objectives of your courses. This ensures the relevancy of the assignment (students won’t wonder why they’re doing it) and provides you with an assessment of student learning that tells you about the progress your students are making.
• Interesting and challenging . What assignments are most memorable to you? Chances are they asked you to apply knowledge to an interesting problem or to do it in a creative way. Assignments can be seen as more relevant when they connect to a real world problem or situation, or when students imagine they are presenting the information to a real world audience (e.g., policy makers), or when they can bring in some aspect of their own experience. Assignments can also be contextualized to reflect the values or priorities of the institution.
• Purpose: Why are you asking students to do the assignment? How does it connect with course learning objectives and support broader skill development that students can draw upon well after your class is over? Often the purpose is very clear to us but we don’t always spell it out for our students.
• Tasks: What steps will students need to take to complete the assignment successfully? Laying this out helps students organize what they need to do and when.
• Criteria for Success: What does excellence look like? This can be described through text or a rubric that aligns expectations with the key elements of the assignment.
• Utility value: How can you make adjustments that allow students to perceive the assignment has more value, either professionally, academically, or personally?
• Inclusive content: Is the assignment equally accessible to all students? If examples are drawn from the dominant culture, they are less accessible to students from other cultures. Structuring assignments so that content is equally familiar to all students reduces educational equity gaps by limiting the effects of prior knowledge and privilege.
• Flexibility and variety: Consider how much flexibility and variety you’re offering in your assignments. This allows students to show what they have learned regardless of their academic strengths or familiarity with particular assignment types. Can students choose among different formats for how they’ll present their assignment (paper, podcast or infographic); is there variety in formats across all the course assignments? Multi-modal assignments allow students to represent what they know in various ways and are therefore more equitable by design.
• Support assignments with instructional activities. Planning learning activities that support students’ best work on their assignments is another critical component. This can include having students read model articles in the style in which you are asking them to prepare their own assignment, discuss or apply the rubric to a sample paper, or break the assignment into smaller pieces so that students can get feedback from you or peers on how they are progressing. Another way to support students is to make clear the role of tools like ChatGPT: if it’s used, how can students use it effectively and responsibly? More generally, all major assignments provide opportunities for important discussions about academic integrity and its relevance to work in one’s discipline, higher education, and personal development.
• Provide opportunities for feedback and revision (especially if high-stakes) . Students may receive feedback on their progress or drafts in a variety of ways: peer, faculty, or a library partner. The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning identifies four characteristics of effective feedback: Targeted and Concise; Focused; Action-Oriented; and Timely.

For assignments that ask students to write in the style of a particular discipline and draw upon research, SCU’s Success in Writing, Information, and Research Literacy (SWIRL) project has developed guidance for faculty in assignment design and instruction to improve student writing and critical use of information. 

You can download the WRITE assignment design tool and learn more at the SWIRL website. Members of the SWIRL team welcome individual consultations with faculty on assignment design. You are welcome to contact them for feedback on any assignment you’re designing.

Additional Resources:

Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2021). Feedback for Learning. Columbia University. Retrieved [February 26, 2024] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/feedback-for-learning/

Hobbs H. T., Singer-Freeman K. E., Robinson C. (2021). Considering the effects of assignment choices on equity gaps. Research and Practice in Assessment, 16 (1), 49–62.

SWIRL : For assignments that ask students to write in the style of a particular discipline and draw upon research, SCU’s Success in Writing, Information, and Research Literacy (SWIRL) project has developed guidance for faculty in assignment design and instruction to improve student writing and critical use of information. You can download the WRITE assignment design tool and learn more at the SWIRL website. 

Transparency in Higher Education Project: Examples and Resources. Copyright © 2009-2023 M.A. Winkelmes. Retrieved [February 26, 2024] from   https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources

Winkelmes, M., Boye, A., & Tapp, S. (Eds.). (2019). Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership. Stylus Publishing.

Page authors: Chris Bachen

Last updated: March 5, 2024

Assignment Design and Assessment

Assignments are a major part of pedagogy. Designing assignments can therefore be one of the most influential elements of classroom teaching. Thoughtful assignment design can support student learning by helping students practice meaningful tasks that carry on into their careers or across the curriculum.

The graphic below illustrates how assessment can provide a continuous process of planning, measuring, analyzing results, and using the results to make informed decisions that lead to improvements. Because learning is a process that is driven by the products it produces at each stage, it is important to think about how assignments are designed and assessed so that they can support student learning.

Below are several videos describing a range of assessment techniques:

Transparency in Assignments

Transparent assignments promote students’ conscious understanding of how they learn. Research from the Transparency in Teaching and Learning Project has shown that when students understand the task, its purpose, and the criteria for evaluating their work, they are more motivated. That doesn’t mean we don’t give students challenging work, rather, that we help them understand the struggles we design for them.

Our adaptation of Palmer’s transparent assignment template is a great tool for helping faculty think through how to make the learning process clear to students.

Click on the links below for exemplary assignments from a range of disciplines at UCF.

• Humanities Assignment
• Business Assignment
• Public Administration Assignment
• Public Speaking Assignment and Evaluation Sheet
• Biomedical Science Assignment and Peer Review Sheet
• General Group Project Assignment

More Information About Assessment

For information about UCF’s Academic Learning Compacts (ALCs), see Operational Excellence and Assessment Support .

Read more about providing students with effective feedback here: https://lsa.umich.edu/sweetland/instructors/teaching-resources/giving-feedback-on-student-writing.html

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, creating assignments.

Here are some general suggestions and questions to consider when creating assignments. There are also many other resources in print and on the web that provide examples of interesting, discipline-specific assignment ideas.

Consider your learning objectives.

What do you want students to learn in your course? What could they do that would show you that they have learned it? To determine assignments that truly serve your course objectives, it is useful to write out your objectives in this form: I want my students to be able to ____. Use active, measurable verbs as you complete that sentence (e.g., compare theories, discuss ramifications, recommend strategies), and your learning objectives will point you towards suitable assignments.

Design assignments that are interesting and challenging.

This is the fun side of assignment design. Consider how to focus students’ thinking in ways that are creative, challenging, and motivating. Think beyond the conventional assignment type! For example, one American historian requires students to write diary entries for a hypothetical Nebraska farmwoman in the 1890s. By specifying that students’ diary entries must demonstrate the breadth of their historical knowledge (e.g., gender, economics, technology, diet, family structure), the instructor gets students to exercise their imaginations while also accomplishing the learning objectives of the course (Walvoord & Anderson, 1989, p. 25).

Double-check alignment.

After creating your assignments, go back to your learning objectives and make sure there is still a good match between what you want students to learn and what you are asking them to do. If you find a mismatch, you will need to adjust either the assignments or the learning objectives. For instance, if your goal is for students to be able to analyze and evaluate texts, but your assignments only ask them to summarize texts, you would need to add an analytical and evaluative dimension to some assignments or rethink your learning objectives.

Name assignments accurately.

Students can be misled by assignments that are named inappropriately. For example, if you want students to analyze a product’s strengths and weaknesses but you call the assignment a “product description,” students may focus all their energies on the descriptive, not the critical, elements of the task. Thus, it is important to ensure that the titles of your assignments communicate their intention accurately to students.

Consider sequencing.

Think about how to order your assignments so that they build skills in a logical sequence. Ideally, assignments that require the most synthesis of skills and knowledge should come later in the semester, preceded by smaller assignments that build these skills incrementally. For example, if an instructor’s final assignment is a research project that requires students to evaluate a technological solution to an environmental problem, earlier assignments should reinforce component skills, including the ability to identify and discuss key environmental issues, apply evaluative criteria, and find appropriate research sources.

Think about scheduling.

Consider your intended assignments in relation to the academic calendar and decide how they can be reasonably spaced throughout the semester, taking into account holidays and key campus events. Consider how long it will take students to complete all parts of the assignment (e.g., planning, library research, reading, coordinating groups, writing, integrating the contributions of team members, developing a presentation), and be sure to allow sufficient time between assignments.

Check feasibility.

Is the workload you have in mind reasonable for your students? Is the grading burden manageable for you? Sometimes there are ways to reduce workload (whether for you or for students) without compromising learning objectives. For example, if a primary objective in assigning a project is for students to identify an interesting engineering problem and do some preliminary research on it, it might be reasonable to require students to submit a project proposal and annotated bibliography rather than a fully developed report. If your learning objectives are clear, you will see where corners can be cut without sacrificing educational quality.

Articulate the task description clearly.

If an assignment is vague, students may interpret it any number of ways – and not necessarily how you intended. Thus, it is critical to clearly and unambiguously identify the task students are to do (e.g., design a website to help high school students locate environmental resources, create an annotated bibliography of readings on apartheid). It can be helpful to differentiate the central task (what students are supposed to produce) from other advice and information you provide in your assignment description.

Establish clear performance criteria.

Different instructors apply different criteria when grading student work, so it’s important that you clearly articulate to students what your criteria are. To do so, think about the best student work you have seen on similar tasks and try to identify the specific characteristics that made it excellent, such as clarity of thought, originality, logical organization, or use of a wide range of sources. Then identify the characteristics of the worst student work you have seen, such as shaky evidence, weak organizational structure, or lack of focus. Identifying these characteristics can help you consciously articulate the criteria you already apply. It is important to communicate these criteria to students, whether in your assignment description or as a separate rubric or scoring guide . Clearly articulated performance criteria can prevent unnecessary confusion about your expectations while also setting a high standard for students to meet.

Specify the intended audience.

Students make assumptions about the audience they are addressing in papers and presentations, which influences how they pitch their message. For example, students may assume that, since the instructor is their primary audience, they do not need to define discipline-specific terms or concepts. These assumptions may not match the instructor’s expectations. Thus, it is important on assignments to specify the intended audience http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm (e.g., undergraduates with no biology background, a potential funder who does not know engineering).

Specify the purpose of the assignment.

If students are unclear about the goals or purpose of the assignment, they may make unnecessary mistakes. For example, if students believe an assignment is focused on summarizing research as opposed to evaluating it, they may seriously miscalculate the task and put their energies in the wrong place. The same is true they think the goal of an economics problem set is to find the correct answer, rather than demonstrate a clear chain of economic reasoning. Consequently, it is important to make your objectives for the assignment clear to students.

Specify the parameters.

If you have specific parameters in mind for the assignment (e.g., length, size, formatting, citation conventions) you should be sure to specify them in your assignment description. Otherwise, students may misapply conventions and formats they learned in other courses that are not appropriate for yours.

A Checklist for Designing Assignments

Here is a set of questions you can ask yourself when creating an assignment.

• Provided a written description of the assignment (in the syllabus or in a separate document)?
• Specified the purpose of the assignment?
• Indicated the intended audience?
• Articulated the instructions in precise and unambiguous language?
• Provided information about the appropriate format and presentation (e.g., page length, typed, cover sheet, bibliography)?  
• Indicated special instructions, such as a particular citation style or headings?  
• Specified the due date and the consequences for missing it?
• Articulated performance criteria clearly?
• Indicated the assignment’s point value or percentage of the course grade?
• Provided students (where appropriate) with models or samples?

Adapted from the WAC Clearinghouse at http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm .

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Browse Course Material

Course info, instructors.

• Prof. Matthew Kressy
• Prof. Steven Eppinger
• Prof. Thomas Roemer
• Prof. Warren Seering

Departments

• Sloan School of Management
• Mechanical Engineering

As Taught In

• Operations Management
• Systems Design

Learning Resource Types

Product design and development, assignments.

This page contains both a set of sample assignments from the class as well as the assignment guidelines. These assignments culminate in a final project, examples of which can be seen in the projects section.

Sample Assignments

Sample assignments from previous semesters.

All sample assignments are courtesy of the students named and used with permission.

Sample Assignment 1 - Design Project Proposal I ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 1 - Design Project Proposal II ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 1 - Design Project Proposal III ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 1 - Design Project Proposal IV ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 2 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 3 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF - 1.2MB )

Sample Assignment 4 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 5 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 6 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF - 3.3MB )

Sample Assignment 7 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF )

Assignment Guidelines

Assignment 1: project proposal.

Assignment 1 is the only individual assignment for this class. Only students that complete this assignment will be allowed to stay enrolled in this class. Please refer also to the Guidelines for Projects in the projects section, to assist you with both, identifying appropriate project proposals and selecting among the proposed projects. Exercises 2 and 3 in chapter 4 of the textbook can also serve as a starting point for project proposals.

Assignment 1a: Proposal Handout

Prepare a project proposal in any format that fits on one 8.5x11 page (one side only). Sample proposals from previous classes are available above. We will photocopy the proposals and distribute them in Ses #3. Proposals should include:

• A brief, descriptive project title (2-4 words). This is critical!
• The 3 nearest competitors (existing solutions) and price.
• Your name, phone number, email, department/degree program, and year.
• A description of the product opportunity you have identified. Your description may include any of the following: Documentation of the market need, shortcomings of existing competitive products, and definition of the target market and its size.
• Please do not present any of your own product ideas or solutions at this point; our strict focus in this phase of the course is on the market opportunity and not on solution concepts.

Assignment 1b: Proposal Presentation

Prepare a 50-second presentation to be delivered in class. Your presentation should include:

• A verbal or visual demonstration of the product opportunity you have described in your proposal. Given that the audience will be able to read your proposal at their leisure, you might spend your time explaining the richness of the market opportunity and demonstrating the existing competitive products.
• Convincing arguments why your classmates should vote for your product proposal.
• Any special skills or assets you have (marketing expertise, access to a shop, materials, electronics wizardry, etc.)

Showing one or two overhead slides is recommended. You may also use video. However, note that the 50-second time constraint will be ruthlessly enforced. A low tech approach is therefore typically more efficient.

Assignment 1c: Project Preferences

Submit your project preferences on a project selection card. List the ten projects you would most like to work on, in order of preference. If you would like to work with a particular group of classmates (up to 4), you should all list the exact same project preferences and clip your cards together. We will assign the rest of the team. Team and project assignments will be sent by email to the class no later than the next week. You are not required to select your own project proposal. However, if your proposal is selected, you will only be assigned to it if you have listed it with a high enough preference.

Team Assignments

With the exception of Assignment 8, all team assignments must be handed in at the beginning of the class session in which they are due. Assignment 8 does not require the submission of any written material; instead the teams will show their α-prototype to their advisors. The assignments are intended to pace the development process for your product. Since there is virtually no slack in this schedule the assignments must be completed on or before the scheduled due date in order to maintain the project schedule. All, but the first assignment, are to be completed as a team.

Guidelines for Team Assignments

Please adhere to the following guidelines for your team assignments:

• Be concise. Most assignments can be completed in very few pages. One exception to this guideline is concept sketches, which should be formatted with one concept per page.
• Please provide a short (less than one page) description of the process your group adopted in completing the assignment. However, there is no need to repeat a summary of the textbook if you adopt the exact approach in the text. In particular, please comment on what worked well and what did not.
• Combine all your work in one Microsoft® PowerPoint® file. (Occasionally, we will ask teams to give ad hoc presentations of their homework to exhibit best practices and pitfalls).
• Hand in three copies for your team so that the course faculty can provide comments. Keep a copy for your records.

Assignment 2: Mission Statement and Customer Needs List

• Describe your team’s processes for getting organized and for identifying customer needs. Comment on this process and on your results.
• Write a mission statement for your project team as described in chapter 3. From now on, please include your mission statement on all remaining assignments . If you have decided to change your mission statement, please indicate so and explain your reasoning.
• Develop an organized list of customer needs for your product as described in chapter 4.
• Also hand in a copy of the original project proposal from Ses #3, even if you have already modified the description of this opportunity in your team’s mission.
• You do not need to have completed an importance survey by this time, although if you feel the need to further understand preferences and tradeoffs, you should do this soon and turn it in for review.

Assignment 3: Concept Sketches, Target Specifications and Patent Review

• Describe some of the steps of your concept generation and target specifications processes. Comment on the process and the results.
• Hand in sketches and bullet-point descriptions of 10 to 20 alternative concepts for your product. For each sketch, note which of the important customer needs it addresses and which it does not.
• Choose a few (perhaps 3 or 4) critical customer needs from your list. For these critical few, prepare a list of the target specifications and provide documentation to support these decisions.
• Perform a preliminary patent review searching on United States Patent and Trademark Office for any prior art and related ideas. Briefly describe the 3 closest matches and attach appropriate material from the Web site.

Assignment 4: Preliminary Concept Selection and Schedule

• Hand in sketches of the two or three concepts you believe are most promising.
• Show the concept selection matrix (screening or scoring) that you used to make these choices. Include a simple description or sketch of each of the concept alternatives considered.
• Prepare a list of the key uncertainties or questions you still need to address to determine the viability of your product. For each one, specify an associated plan of action (such as analysis, mock ups, interviews, experiments, etc.).
• Draft a schedule in Gantt-chart form (see p. 335 of the text) showing the plan of work to complete the project over the next two months. Include at least the following activities: detail design, materials and components selection, vendor selection, procurement of materials and components, testing, and completion of assignments.
• Describe your team’s process. Comment on the process and the results.

Assignment 5: Review: Final Concept and Model

• For the Faculty Project Consulting in Ses #13, bring in and discuss some form of proof of concept to demonstrate that you will be able to overcome your key challenges.
• Prepare a 15-minute presentation of your (single) selected product concept. The presentation should include a review of your mission statement, customer needs, selected concept, and your key target specifications.
• As part of your presentation, demonstrate some form of “proof-of-concept” prototype model.
• Hand in a one-page description and sketch of your selected concept.

Assignment 6: Drawings, Plans, and Revised Schedule

• Prepare an assembly drawing of the alpha prototype you intend to build. An assembly drawing shows all the parts in their assembled positions.
• Prepare dimensioned sketches of each piece part for your planned prototype. Include documentation showing how you arrived at critical dimensions (a stress calculation may be needed, for example).
• Include a bill of materials indicating whether the prototype parts will be purchased or fabricated, and a description of the assembly process. Indicate the material and fabrication process you have selected for each prototype part.
• Provide photocopies of the vendor specification sheets for the purchased materials and components. On catalog pages, identify which items you have selected for purchase.
• List the Web resources and vendors you have found to be helpful.
• Make a drawing or sketch of the production version of the product. Describe the differences between the prototype you will build and the production product. Briefly explain how the production product would be manufactured.
• Summarize the important decisions you have made since the previous assignment. Describe your prototyping plans. By this time, you should have price quotes and should be ready to place orders for any parts to be fabricated or purchased.
• Revise the schedule of your project work for the remaining weeks. Include your planned design work, vendor interactions, prototyping, testing, redesign, photography, and preparation of the presentation.

Assignment 7: Financial Model

• Prepare a financial model. Explain the scenario you are analyzing (startup activity, established manufacturer, etc.). Document the assumptions you have made in the analysis. Note that you will require estimates for the production tooling and variable costs.
• Perform a sensitivity analysis of the key financial uncertainties you face.
• Describe your team’s process, including a brief status report on your prototyping and testing progress.

Assignment 8: Alpha Prototype

• You should be testing your product prototype by this time. Show your prototype hardware to your team advisor and faculty during the Faculty Project Consulting. No report is to be turned in this week.

Assignment 9: Final Presentation and Demonstration

• Prepare a 20-minute presentation describing and demonstrating your product. Your presentation should concentrate on the product itself, although you may wish to emphasize any particularly impressive portions of your development process. An effective presentation includes color photographs or video presentation along with a live display of the hardware. This presentation should be of the quality you would make to convince a top management group to purchase the rights to your product or to fund its final development and launch. A panel of experts will observe your presentations and evaluate the products. Be prepared to answer questions about all aspects of your project.
• Create and demonstrate a Web page designed to promote your product (optional).
• Turn in a copy of the (slide) presentation (and files for the optional Web page).
• Turn in several high-quality digital photos of the prototype hardware. Be sure to include photos of the product in use.

Team Surveys

In the middle and at the end of the semester, each student must fill out a survey of his or her team and its members. The purpose of the evaluations is threefold. First, they help teams spot unbefitting team dynamics early on and take corresponding corrective action. Second, they present an opportunity to provide and receive individual feedback and determine personal strength and growth opportunities. Third, they are part of a long term study on the effectiveness on product development teams.

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Designing Assignments

Designing effective writing assignments is a key component of integrating writing into your course. This page provides resources to help you learn how to design assignments that will provide your students with new and exciting avenues to learning through writing.

Also see: Integrating Writing into Your Course for general resources related to integrating writing into your (non-writing) course.

GENERAL RESOURCES

Assignment Design (Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning) “Making a few revisions to your writing assignments can make a big difference in the writing your students will produce. The most effective changes involve specifying what you would like students to do in the assignment and suggesting concrete steps students can take to achieve that goal.”

A Brief Guide to Designing Essay Assignments (Gordon Harvey, Harvard College Writing Program) (PDF) This Harvard Writing Project Brief Guide provides three quick and easy steps to designing an assignment and helping students execute it.

Designing Assignments and Presenting Them to Students (Univ. of Toronto Writing) “Here are some ways to help students learn your subject through writing about it, while developing their writing skills at the same time. Designing your assignments with learning in mind is the single most important way you can support students’ development as writers.”

Designing Writing Assignments (Traci Gardner, National Council of Teachers of English) (PDF) “Effective student writing begins with well-designed classroom assignments. In Designing Writing Assignments , veteran educator Traci Gardner offers practical ways for teachers to develop assignments that will allow students to express their creativity and grow as writers and thinkers while still addressing the many demands of resource-stretched classrooms.”

Teaching Guide: Designing Writing Assignments (Writing@CSU) “Our teaching guides are designed for writing teachers and for teachers of other subjects who want to use writing and speaking activities in their classrooms. To view our guides, click on the links below.”

• Five Principles
• Guidelines for Writing Assignments
• Resource: Checksheets
• Resource: Sample grading criteria
• Sample assignments
• Teacher Comments
• Working Backwards from Goals
• Writing Should Meet Teaching Goals

Tips for Writing an Assignment and Teaching it to Students (University of Wisconsin – Madison, Writing Across the Curriculum) “Here are some suggestions to keep in mind as you write your assignment handouts, as well as suggestions for other activities that prepare students to write.”

• Columbia University in the City of New York
• Office of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation
• University Policies
• Columbia Online
• Academic Calendar
• Resources and Technology
• Resources and Guides

Getting Started with Creative Assignments

Creative teaching and learning can be cultivated in any course context to increase student engagement and motivation, and promote thinking skills that are critical to problem-solving and innovation. This resource features examples of Columbia faculty who teach creatively and have reimagined their course assessments to allow students to demonstrate their learning in creative ways. Drawing on these examples, this resource provides suggestions for creating a classroom environment that supports student engagement in creative activities and assignments.  

On this page:

• The What and Why of Creative Assignments

Examples of Creative Teaching and Learning at Columbia

• How To Get Started

Cite this resource: Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2022). Getting Started with Creative Assignments. Columbia University. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/creative-assignments/

The What and Why of Creative Assignments  

Creative assignments encourage students to think in innovative ways as they demonstrate their learning. Thinking creatively involves combining or synthesizing information or course materials in new ways and is characterized by “a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk-taking” (AAC&U). It is associated with imagination and originality, and additional characteristics include: being open to new ideas and perspectives, believing alternatives exist, withholding judgment, generating multiple approaches to problems, and trying new ways to generate ideas  (DiYanni, 2015: 41). Creative thinking is considered an important skill alongside critical thinking in tackling contemporary problems. Critical thinking allows students to evaluate the information presented to them while creative thinking is a process that allows students to generate new ideas and innovate.

Creative assignments can be integrated into any course regardless of discipline. Examples include the use of infographic assignments in Nursing (Chicca and Chunta, 2020) and Chemistry (Kothari, Castañeda, and McNeil, 2019); podcasting assignments in Social Work (Hitchcock, Sage & Sage, 2021); digital storytelling assignments in Psychology (Sheafer, 2017) and Sociology (Vaughn and Leon, 2021); and incorporating creative writing in the economics classroom (Davis, 2019) or reflective writing into Calculus assignment ( Gerstle, 2017) just to name a few. In a 2014 study, organic chemistry students who elected to begin their lab reports with a creative narrative were more excited to learn and earned better grades (Henry, Owens, and Tawney, 2015). In a public policy course, students who engaged in additional creative problem-solving exercises that included imaginative scenarios and alternative solution-finding showed greater interest in government reform and attentiveness to civic issues (Wukich and Siciliano, 2014).

The benefits of creative assignments include increased student engagement, motivation, and satisfaction (Snyder et al., 2013: 165); and furthered student learning of course content (Reynolds, Stevens, and West, 2013). These types of assignments promote innovation, academic integrity, student self-awareness/ metacognition (e.g., when students engage in reflection through journal assignments), and can be made authentic as students develop and apply skills to real-world situations.  

When instructors give students open-ended assignments, they provide opportunities for students to think creatively as they work on a deliverable. They “unlock potential” (Ranjan & Gabora and Beghetto in Gregerson et al., 2013) for students to synthesize their knowledge and propose novel solutions. This promotes higher-level thinking as outlined in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy’s “create” cognitive process category: “putting elements together to form a novel coherent whole or make an original product,” this involves generating ideas, planning, and producing something new. 

The examples that follow highlight creative assignments in the Columbia University classroom. The featured Columbia faculty taught creatively – they tried new strategies, purposefully varied classroom activities and assessment modalities, and encouraged their students to take control of what and how they were learning (James & Brookfield, 2014: 66).

Dr. Cruz changed her course assessment by “moving away from high stakes assessments like a final paper or a final exam, to more open-ended and creative models of assessments.”  Students were given the opportunity to synthesize their course learning, with options on topic and format of how to demonstrate their learning and to do so individually or in groups. They explored topics that were meaningful to them and related to the course material. Dr. Cruz noted that “This emphasis on playfulness and creativity led to fantastic final projects including a graphic novel interpretation, a video essay that applied critical theory to multiple texts, and an interactive virtual museum.” Students “took the opportunity to use their creative skills, or the skills they were interested in exploring because some of them had to develop new skills to produce these projects.” (Dr. Cruz; Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning , Season 3, Episode 6). Along with their projects, students submitted an artist’s statement, where they had to explain and justify their choices. 

Dr. Cruz noted that grading creative assignments require advanced planning. In her case, she worked closely with her TAs to develop a rubric that was shared with students in advance for full transparency and emphasized the importance of students connecting ideas to analytical arguments discussed in the class. 

Watch Dr. Cruz’s 2021 Symposium presentation. Listen to Dr. Cruz talk about The Power of Blended Classrooms in Season 3, Episode 6 of the Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning podcast. Get a glimpse into Dr. Cruz’s online classroom and her creative teaching and the design of learning experiences that enhanced critical thinking, creativity, curiosity, and community by viewing her Voices of Hybrid and Online Teaching and Learning submission.

As part of his standard practice, Dr. Yesilevskiy scaffolds assignments – from less complex to more complex – to ensure students integrate the concepts they learn in the class into their projects or new experiments. For example, in Laboratory 1, Dr. Yesilevskiy slowly increases the amount of independence in each experiment over the semester: students are given a full procedure in the first experiment and by course end, students are submitting new experiment proposals to Dr. Yesilevskiy for approval. This is creative thinking in action. Students not only learned how to “replicate existing experiments, but also to formulate and conduct new ones.”

Watch Dr. Yesilevskiy’s 2021 Symposium presentation. 

How Do I Get Started?: Strategies to Support Creative Assignments

The previous section showcases examples of creative assignments in action at Columbia. To help you support such creative assignments in your classroom, this section details three strategies to support creative assignments and creative thinking. Firstly, re-consider the design of your assignments to optimize students’ creative output. Secondly, scaffold creative assignments using low-stakes classroom activities that build creative capacity. Finally, cultivate a classroom environment that supports creative thinking.     

Design Considerations for Creative Assignments 

Thoughtfully designed open-ended assignments and evaluation plans encourage students to demonstrate their learning in authentic ways. When designing creative assignments, consider the following suggestions for structuring and communicating to your students about the assignment. 

Set clear expectations . Students may feel lost in the ambiguity and complexity of an open-ended assignment that requires them to create something new. Communicate the creative outcomes and learning objectives for the assignments (Ranjan & Gabora, 2013), and how students will be expected to draw on their learning in the course. Articulare how much flexibility and choice students have in determining what they work on and how they work on it. Share the criteria or a rubric that will be used to evaluate student deliverables. See the CTL’s resource Incorporating Rubrics Into Your Feedback and Grading Practices . If planning to evaluate creative thinking, consider adapting the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ creative thinking VALUE rubric . 

Structure the project to sustain engagement and promote integrity. Consider how the project might be broken into smaller assignments that build upon each other and culminate in a synthesis project. The example presented above from Dr. Yesilevskiy’s teaching highlights how he scaffolded lab complexity, progressing from structured to student-driven. See the section below “Activities to Prepare Students for Creative Assignments” for sample activities to scaffold this work. 

Create opportunities for ongoing feedback . Provide feedback at all phases of the assignment from idea inception through milestones to completion. Leverage office hours for individual or group conversations and feedback on project proposals, progress, and issues. See the CTL’s resource on Feedback for Learning . Consider creating opportunities for structured peer review for students to give each other feedback on their work. Students benefit from learning about their peers’ projects, and seeing different perspectives and approaches to accomplishing the open-ended assignment. See the CTL’s resource Peer Review: Intentional Design for Any Course Context . 

Share resources to support students in their work. Ensure all students have access to the resources they will need to be successful on the assigned project. Connect students with campus resources that can help them accomplish the project’s objectives. For instance, if students are working on a research project – connect them to the Library instruction modules “ From Books to Bytes: Navigating the Research Ecosystem ,” encourage them to schedule a consultation with a specialist for research support through Columbia Libraries , or seek out writing support. If students will need equipment to complete their project, remind them of campus resources such as makerspaces (e.g., The Makerspace @ Columbia in Room 254 Engineering Terrace/Mudd; Design Center at Barnard College); borrowing equipment (e.g., Instructional Media and Technology Services (IMATS) at Barnard; Gabe M. Wiener Music & Arts Library ). 

Ask students to submit a self-reflection with their project. Encourage students to reflect on their process and the decisions they made in order to complete the project. Provide guiding questions that have students reflect on their learning, make meaning, and engage their metacognitive thinking skills (see the CTL’s resource of Metacognition ). Students can be asked to apply the rubric to their work or to submit a creative statement along with their work that describes their intent and ownership of the project.

Collect feedback from students and iterate. Invite students to give feedback on the assigned creative project, as well as the classroom environment and creative activities used. Tell students how you will use their suggestions to make improvements to activities and assignments, and make adjustments to the classroom environment. See the CTL’s resource on Early and Mid-Semester Student Feedback . 

Low-Stakes Activities to Prepare Students for Creative Assignments

The activities described below are meant to be scaffolded opportunities leading to a larger creative project. They are low-stakes, non-graded activities that make time in the classroom for students to think, brainstorm, and create (Desrochers and Zell, 2012) and prepare them to do the creative thinking needed to complete course assignments. The activities can be adapted for any course context, with or without the use of technology, and can be done individually or collaboratively (see the CTL’s resource on Collaborative Learning to explore digital tools that are available for group work). 

Brainstorming 

Brainstorming is a process that students can engage in to generate as many ideas as possible related to a topic of study or an assignment topic (Sweet et al., 2013: 87). As they engage in this messy and jugement-free work, students explore a range of possibilities. Brainstorming reveals students’ prior knowledge (Ambrose et al., 2010: 29). Brainstorm activities are useful early on to help create a classroom culture rooted in creativity while also serving as a potential icebreaker activity that helps instructors learn more about what prior knowledge and experiences students are bringing to the course or unit of study. This activity can be done individually or in groups, and in class or asynchronously. Components may include:

• Prompt students to list off (individually or collaboratively) their ideas on a whiteboard, free write in a Google Doc or some other digital space. 
• Provide formative feedback to assist students to further develop their ideas.
• Invite students to reflect on the brainstorm process, look over their ideas and determine which idea to explore further.

Mind mapping

A mind map, also known as a cognitive or concept map, allows students to visually display their thinking and knowledge organization, through lines connecting concepts, arrows showing relationships, and other visual cues (Sweet et al., 2013: 89; Ambrose et al. 2010: 63). This challenges students to synthesize and be creative as they display words, ideas, tasks or principles (Barkley, 2010: 219-225). A mind mapping activity can be done individually or in groups, and in class or asynchronously. This activity can be an extension of a brainstorming session, whereby students take an idea from their brainstormed list and further develop it. 

Components of a mind mapping activity may include:

• Prompt students to create a map of their thinking on a topic, concept, or question. This can be done on paper, on a whiteboard, or with digital mind mapping or whiteboard tools such as Google Drawing.
• Provide formative feedback on the mind maps.
• Invite students to reflect on their mind map, and determine where to go next.

Digital storytelling

Digital storytelling involves integrating multimedia (images, text, video, audio, etc.) and narrative to produce immersive stories that connect with course content. Student-produced stories can promote engagement and learning in a way that is both personal and universal (McLellan, 2007). Digital storytelling contributes to learning through student voice and creativity in constructing meaning (Rossiter and Garcia, 2010). 

Tools such as the CTL-developed Mediathread as well as EdDiscussion support collaborative annotation of media objects. These annotations can be used in writing and discussions, which can involve creating a story. For freeform formats, digital whiteboards allow students to drop in different text and media and make connections between these elements. Such storytelling can be done collaboratively or simply shared during class. Finally, EdBlogs can be used for a blog format, or Google Slides if a presentation format is better suited for the learning objective.

Asking questions to explore new possibilities

Tap into student imagination, stimulate curiosity, and create memorable learning experiences by asking students to pose “What if?” “why” and “how” questions – how might things be done differently; what will a situation look like if it is viewed from a new perspective?; or what could a new approach to solving a problem look like? (James & Brookfield, 2014: 163). Powerful questions are open-ended ones where the answer is not immediately apparent; such questions encourage students to think about a topic in new ways, and they promote learning as students work to answer them (James & Brookfield, 2014: 163). Setting aside time for students to ask lots of questions in the classroom and bringing in questions posed on CourseWorks Discussions or EdDiscussion sends the message to students that their questions matter and play a role in learning. 

Cultivate Creative Thinking in the Classroom Environment

Create a classroom environment that encourages experimentation and thinking from new and diverse perspectives. This type of environment encourages students to share their ideas without inhibition and personalize the meaning-making process. “Creative environments facilitate intentional acts of divergent (idea generation, collaboration, and design thinking) and convergent (analysis of ideas, products, and content created) thinking processes.” (Sweet et al., 2013: 20)

Encourage risk-taking and learning from mistakes . Taking risks in the classroom can be anxiety inducing so students will benefit from reassurance that their creativity and all ideas are welcome. When students bring up unexpected ideas, rather than redirecting or dismissing, seize it as an opportunity for a conversation in which students can share, challenge, and affirm ideas (Beghetto, 2013). Let students know that they can make mistakes, “think outside of the box” without penalty (Desrochers and Zell, 2012), and embrace failure seeing it as a learning opportunity.

Model creative thinking . Model curiosity and how to ask powerful questions, and encourage students to be curious about everything (Synder et al., 2013, DiYanni, 2015). Give students a glimpse into your own creative thinking process – how you would approach an open-ended question, problem, or assignment? Turn your own mistakes into teachable moments. By modeling creative thinking, you are giving students permission to engage in this type of thinking.

Build a community that supports the creative classroom environment. Have students get to know and interact with each other so that they become comfortable asking questions and taking risks in front of and with their peers. See the CTL’s resource on Community Building in the Classroom . This is especially important if you are planning to have students collaborate on creative activities and assignments and/or engage in peer review of each other’s work. 

Plan for play. Play is integral to learning (Cavanagh, 2021; Eyler, 2018; Tatter, 2019). Play cultivates a low stress, high trust, inclusive environment, as students build relationships with each. This allows students to feel more comfortable in the classroom and motivates them to tackle more difficult content (Forbes, 2021). Set aside time for play (Ranjan & Gabora, 2013; Sinfield, Burns, & Abegglen, 2018). Design for play with purpose grounded in learning goals. Create a structured play session during which students experiment with a new topic, idea, or tool and connect it to curricular content or their learning experience. Play can be facilitated through educational games such as puzzles, video games, trivia competitions, scavenger hunts or role-playing activities in which students actively apply knowledge and skills as they act out their role (Eyler, 2018; Barkley, 2010). For an example of role-playing games explore Reacting to the Past , an active learning pedagogy of role-playing games developed by Mark Carnes at Barnard College. 

The CTL is here to help!

CTL consultants are happy to support instructors as they design activities and assignments that promote creative thinking. Email [email protected] to schedule a consultation.

Ambrose et al. (2010). How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Barkley, E. F., Major, C. H., and Cross, K. P. (2014). Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty . 

Barkley, E. F. (2010) Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty.

Beghetto, R. (2013). Expect the Unexpected: Teaching for Creativity in the Micromoments. In M.B. Gregerson, H.T. Snyder, and J.C. Kaufman (Eds.). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer. 

Cavanagh, S. R. (2021). How to Play in the College Classroom in a Pandemic, and Why You Should . The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 9, 2021.

Chicca, J. and Chunta, K, (2020). Engaging Students with Visual Stories: Using Infographics in Nursing Education . Teaching and Learning in Nursing. 15(1), 32-36.

Davis, M. E. (2019). Poetry and economics: Creativity, engagement and learning in the economics classroom. International Review of Economics Education. Volume 30. 

Desrochers, C. G. and Zell, D. (2012). Gave projects, tests, or assignments that required original or creative thinking! POD-IDEA Center Notes on Instruction. 

DiYanni, R. (2015). Critical and creative thinking : A brief guide for teachers . John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. 

Eyler, J. R. (2018). How Humans Learn. The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching. West Virginia University Press. 

Forbes, L. K. (2021). The Process of Play in Learning in Higher Education: A Phenomenological Study. Journal of Teaching and Learning. Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 57-73. 

Gerstle, K. (2017). Incorporating Meaningful Reflection into Calculus Assignments. PRIMUS. Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies. 29(1), 71-81.

Gregerson, M. B., Snyder, H. T., and Kaufman, J. C. (2013). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer. 

Henry, M., Owens, E. A., and Tawney, J. G. (2015). Creative Report Writing in Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory Inspires Non Majors. Journal of Chemical Education , 92, 90-95.

Hitchcock, L. I., Sage, T., Lynch, M. and Sage, M. (2021). Podcasting as a Pedagogical Tool for Experiential Learning in Social Work Education. Journal of Teaching in Social Work . 41(2). 172-191.

James, A., & Brookfield, S. D. (2014). Engaging imagination : Helping students become creative and reflective thinkers . John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Jackson, N. (2008). Tackling the Wicked Problem of Creativity in Higher Education.

Jackson, N. (2006). Creativity in higher education. SCEPTrE Scholarly Paper , 3 , 1-25.

Kleiman, P. (2008). Towards transformation: conceptions of creativity in higher education.

Kothari, D., Hall, A. O., Castañeda, C. A., and McNeil, A. J. (2019). Connecting Organic Chemistry Concepts with Real-World Context by Creating Infographics. Journal of Chemistry Education. 96(11), 2524-2527. 

McLellan, H. (2007). Digital Storytelling in Higher Education. Journal of Computing in Higher Education. 19, 65-79. 

Ranjan, A., & Gabora, L. (2013). Creative Ideas for Actualizing Student Potential. In M.B. Gregerson, H.T. Snyder, and J.C. Kaufman (Eds.). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer. 

Rossiter, M. and Garcia, P. A. (2010). Digital Storytelling: A New Player on the Narrative Field. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. No. 126, Summer 2010. 

Sheafer, V. (2017). Using digital storytelling to teach psychology: A preliminary investigation. Psychology Learning & Teaching. 16(1), 133-143. 

Sinfield, S., Burns, B., & Abegglen, S. (2018). Exploration: Becoming Playful – The Power of a Ludic Module. In A. James and C. Nerantzi (Eds.). The Power of Play in Higher Education . Palgrave Macmillan.

Reynolds, C., Stevens, D. D., and West, E. (2013). “I’m in a Professional School! Why Are You Making Me Do This?” A Cross-Disciplinary Study of the Use of Creative Classroom Projects on Student Learning. College Teaching. 61: 51-59.

Sweet, C., Carpenter, R., Blythe, H., and Apostel, S. (2013). Teaching Applied Creative Thinking: A New Pedagogy  for the 21st Century. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press Inc. 

Tatter, G. (2019). Playing to Learn: How a pedagogy of play can enliven the classroom, for students of all ages . Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

Vaughn, M. P. and Leon, D. (2021). The Personal Is Political Art: Using Digital Storytelling to Teaching Sociology of Sexualities. Teaching Sociology. 49(3), 245-255. 

Wukich, C. and Siciliano, M. D. (2014). Problem Solving and Creativity in Public Policy Courses: Promoting Interest and Civic Engagement. Journal of Political Science Education . 10, 352-368.

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• Overview of all CTL Resources and Technology

Assignment Design

Carefully crafted assignments are a critical part of the teaching, learning, and assessment process. Thus, developing powerful, clear assignments is one of the most consequential tasks that faculty undertake in their work as educators. While many considerations go into designing effective assignments, these webpages and resources are focused on designing effective assignments for program learning outcomes assessment .

Value of Assignment Design

When carefully structured, assignments elicit knowledge and skills that faculty and programs deem important and help communicate expectations to students. Effective assignments also engage students to give their best effort. In this way, assignments yield direct evidence of authentic student accomplishment. Additionally, faculty-developed assignments may provide more information for program improvement, and more valid assessment, than other forms of assessment (such as externally developed standardized tests). But to yield these benefits, assignments must be carefully thought through and designed.

Assignment Design at WSU

WSU faculty and programs identify their own assignments within frameworks of good practice. Assignments send a signal to students about what the instructor considers worth learning in a course, and also offer feedback on how well students are meeting expectations. Generally speaking, assignments should focus on one or more of the course learning outcomes, and key assignments in a course may also be aligned with program learning outcomes. Descriptions of course assignments are required on course syllabi at WSU, see  Required Syllabus Elements for more information.

Assignment Design Resources and Toolkits

The following resources are provided to assist faculty and programs in designing and refining assignments to more effectively foster and assess student learning, while increasing possibilities for student success. In addition to general suggestions and good practices to consider when creating assignments, ACE provides resources for faculty on particular aspects of assignment design:

• General Assignment Design Good Practices
• Transparent Assignment Design
• Integrative Capstone Assignment Design

ACE Services for Assignment Design

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• March 28 Faculty Panel – Capstone Courses: Developing and Refining the Culminating Experience for Seniors
• Faculty Creation and Validation of a Microbiology Concept Inventory (School of Molecular Biosciences)
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Designing assignments.

Making a few revisions to your writing assignments can make a big difference in the writing your students will produce. The most effective changes involve specifying what you would like students to do in the assignment and suggesting concrete steps students can take to achieve that goal.

Clarify what you want your students to do…and why they’re doing it

Kerry Walk, former director of the Princeton Writing Program, offers these principles to consider when designing a writing assignment (condensed and adapted from the original): “At least one sentence on your assignment sheet should explicitly state what you want students to do. The assignment is usually signaled by a verb, such as “analyze,” “assess,” “explain,” or “discuss.” For example, in a history course, after reading a model biography, students were directed as follows: ‘Your assignment is to write your own biographical essay on Mao, using Mao’s reminiscences (as told to a Western journalist), speeches, encyclopedia articles, a medical account from Mao’s physician, and two contradictory obituaries.’ In addition, including a purpose for the assignment can provide crucial focus and guidance. Explaining to students why they’re doing a particular assignment can help them grasp the big picture—what you’re trying to teach them and why learning it is worthwhile. For example, ‘This assignment has three goals: for you to (1) see how the concepts we’ve learned thus far can be used in a different field from economics, (2) learn how to write about a model, and (3) learn to critique a model or how to defend one.’”

Link course writing goals to assignments

Students are more likely to understand what you are asking them to do if the assignment re-uses language that you’ve already introduced in class discussions, in writing activities, or in your Writing Guide. In the assignment below, Yale professor Dorlores Hayden uses writing terms that have been introduced in class:

Choose your home town or any other town or city you have lived in for at least a year. Based upon the readings on the history of transportation, discuss how well or how poorly pedestrian, horse-drawn, steam- powered, and electric transportation might have served your town or city before the gasoline automobile. (If you live in a twentieth-century automobile-oriented suburb, consider rural transportation patterns before the car and the suburban houses.) How did topography affect transportation choices? How did transportation choices affect the local economy and the built environment? Length, 1000 words (4 typed pages plus a plan of the place and/or a photograph). Be sure to argue a strong thesis and back it up with quotations from the readings as well as your own analysis of the plan or photograph.

Give students methods for approaching their work

Strong writing assignments not only identify a clear writing task, they often provide suggestions for how students might begin to accomplish the task. In order to avoid overloading students with information and suggestions, it is often useful to separate the assignment prompt and the advice for approaching the assignment. Below is an example of this strategy from one of Yale’s English 114 sections:

Assignment: In the essays we have read so far, a debate has emerged over what constitutes cosmopolitan practice , loosely defined as concrete actions motivated by a cosmopolitan philosophy or perspective. Using these readings as evidence, write a 5-6-page essay in which you make an argument for your own definition of effective cosmopolitan practice.

Method: In order to develop this essay, you must engage in a critical conversation with the essays we have read in class. In creating your definition of cosmopolitan practice, you will necessarily draw upon the ideas of these authors. You must show how you are building upon, altering, or working in opposition to their ideas and definitions through your quotation and analysis of their concepts and evidence.

Questions to consider:  These questions are designed to prompt your thinking. You do not need to address all these questions in the body of your essay; instead, refer to any of these issues only as they support your ideas.

• How would you define cosmopolitan practice? How does your definition draw upon or conflict with the definitions offered by the authors we have read so far?
• What are the strengths of your definition of cosmopolitan practice? What problems does it address? How do the essays we have read support those strengths? How do those strengths address weaknesses in other writers’ arguments?
• What are the limitations or problems with your definition? How would the authors we have read critique your definition? How would you respond to those critiques?

Case Study: A Sample Writing Assignment and Revision

A student responding to the following assignment felt totally at sea, with good reason:

Write an essay describing the various conceptions of property found in your readings and the different arguments for and against the distribution of property and the various justifications of, and attacks on, ownership. Which of these arguments has any merits? What is the role of property in the various political systems discussed? The essay should concentrate on Hobbes, Locke, and Marx.

“How am I supposed to structure the essay?” the student asked. “Address the first question, comparing the three guys? Address the second question, doing the same, etc.? … Do I talk about each author separately in terms of their conceptions of the nation, and then have a section that compares their arguments, or do I have a 4 part essay which is really 4 essays (two pages each) answering each question? What am I going to put in the intro, and the conclusion?” Given the tangle of ideas presented in the assignment, the student’s panic and confusion are understandable.

A better-formulated assignment poses significant challenges, but one of them is not wondering what the instructor secretly wants. Here’s a possible revision, which follows the guidelines suggested above:

[Course Name and Title]

[Instructor’s Name]

Due date: Thursday, February 24, at 11:10am in section

Length: 5-6pp. double-spaced

Limiting your reading to the sourcebook, write a comparative analysis of Hobbes’s, Locke’s, and Marx’s conceptions of property.

The purpose of this assignment is to help you synthesize some difficult political theory and identify the profound differences among some key theorists.

The best papers will focus on a single shared aspect of the theorists’ respective political ideologies, such as how property is distributed, whether it should be owned, or what role it serves politically. The best papers will not only focus on a specific topic, but will state a clear and arguable thesis about it (“the three authors have differing conceptions of property” is neither) and go on to describe and assess the authors’ viewpoints clearly and concisely.

Note that this revised assignment is now not only clearer than the original; it also requires less regurgitation and more sustained thought.

For more information about crafting and staging your assignments, see “ The Papers We Want to Read ” by Linda Simon, Social Studies; Jan/Feb90, Vol. 81 Issue 1, p37, 3p. (The link to Simon’s article will only work if your computer is on the Yale campus.) See also the discussion of Revising Assignments in the section of this website on Addressing Plagiarism .

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Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center

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How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?

Prepared by allison boye, ph.d. teaching, learning, and professional development center.

Assessment is a necessary part of the teaching and learning process, helping us measure whether our students have really learned what we want them to learn. While exams and quizzes are certainly favorite and useful methods of assessment, out of class assignments (written or otherwise) can offer similar insights into our students' learning.  And just as creating a reliable test takes thoughtfulness and skill, so does creating meaningful and effective assignments. Undoubtedly, many instructors have been on the receiving end of disappointing student work, left wondering what went wrong… and often, those problems can be remedied in the future by some simple fine-tuning of the original assignment.  This paper will take a look at some important elements to consider when developing assignments, and offer some easy approaches to creating a valuable assessment experience for all involved.

First Things First…

Before assigning any major tasks to students, it is imperative that you first define a few things for yourself as the instructor:

• Your goals for the assignment . Why are you assigning this project, and what do you hope your students will gain from completing it? What knowledge, skills, and abilities do you aim to measure with this assignment?  Creating assignments is a major part of overall course design, and every project you assign should clearly align with your goals for the course in general.  For instance, if you want your students to demonstrate critical thinking, perhaps asking them to simply summarize an article is not the best match for that goal; a more appropriate option might be to ask for an analysis of a controversial issue in the discipline. Ultimately, the connection between the assignment and its purpose should be clear to both you and your students to ensure that it is fulfilling the desired goals and doesn't seem like “busy work.” For some ideas about what kinds of assignments match certain learning goals, take a look at this page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons.
• Have they experienced “socialization” in the culture of your discipline (Flaxman, 2005)? Are they familiar with any conventions you might want them to know? In other words, do they know the “language” of your discipline, generally accepted style guidelines, or research protocols?
• Do they know how to conduct research?  Do they know the proper style format, documentation style, acceptable resources, etc.? Do they know how to use the library (Fitzpatrick, 1989) or evaluate resources?
• What kinds of writing or work have they previously engaged in?  For instance, have they completed long, formal writing assignments or research projects before? Have they ever engaged in analysis, reflection, or argumentation? Have they completed group assignments before?  Do they know how to write a literature review or scientific report?

In his book Engaging Ideas (1996), John Bean provides a great list of questions to help instructors focus on their main teaching goals when creating an assignment (p.78):

1. What are the main units/modules in my course?

2. What are my main learning objectives for each module and for the course?

3. What thinking skills am I trying to develop within each unit and throughout the course?

4. What are the most difficult aspects of my course for students?

5. If I could change my students' study habits, what would I most like to change?

6. What difference do I want my course to make in my students' lives?

What your students need to know

Once you have determined your own goals for the assignment and the levels of your students, you can begin creating your assignment.  However, when introducing your assignment to your students, there are several things you will need to clearly outline for them in order to ensure the most successful assignments possible.

• First, you will need to articulate the purpose of the assignment . Even though you know why the assignment is important and what it is meant to accomplish, you cannot assume that your students will intuit that purpose. Your students will appreciate an understanding of how the assignment fits into the larger goals of the course and what they will learn from the process (Hass & Osborn, 2007). Being transparent with your students and explaining why you are asking them to complete a given assignment can ultimately help motivate them to complete the assignment more thoughtfully.
• If you are asking your students to complete a writing assignment, you should define for them the “rhetorical or cognitive mode/s” you want them to employ in their writing (Flaxman, 2005). In other words, use precise verbs that communicate whether you are asking them to analyze, argue, describe, inform, etc.  (Verbs like “explore” or “comment on” can be too vague and cause confusion.) Provide them with a specific task to complete, such as a problem to solve, a question to answer, or an argument to support.  For those who want assignments to lead to top-down, thesis-driven writing, John Bean (1996) suggests presenting a proposition that students must defend or refute, or a problem that demands a thesis answer.
• It is also a good idea to define the audience you want your students to address with their assignment, if possible – especially with writing assignments.  Otherwise, students will address only the instructor, often assuming little requires explanation or development (Hedengren, 2004; MIT, 1999). Further, asking students to address the instructor, who typically knows more about the topic than the student, places the student in an unnatural rhetorical position.  Instead, you might consider asking your students to prepare their assignments for alternative audiences such as other students who missed last week's classes, a group that opposes their position, or people reading a popular magazine or newspaper.  In fact, a study by Bean (1996) indicated the students often appreciate and enjoy assignments that vary elements such as audience or rhetorical context, so don't be afraid to get creative!
• Obviously, you will also need to articulate clearly the logistics or “business aspects” of the assignment . In other words, be explicit with your students about required elements such as the format, length, documentation style, writing style (formal or informal?), and deadlines.  One caveat, however: do not allow the logistics of the paper take precedence over the content in your assignment description; if you spend all of your time describing these things, students might suspect that is all you care about in their execution of the assignment.
• Finally, you should clarify your evaluation criteria for the assignment. What elements of content are most important? Will you grade holistically or weight features separately? How much weight will be given to individual elements, etc?  Another precaution to take when defining requirements for your students is to take care that your instructions and rubric also do not overshadow the content; prescribing too rigidly each element of an assignment can limit students' freedom to explore and discover. According to Beth Finch Hedengren, “A good assignment provides the purpose and guidelines… without dictating exactly what to say” (2004, p. 27).  If you decide to utilize a grading rubric, be sure to provide that to the students along with the assignment description, prior to their completion of the assignment.

A great way to get students engaged with an assignment and build buy-in is to encourage their collaboration on its design and/or on the grading criteria (Hudd, 2003). In his article “Conducting Writing Assignments,” Richard Leahy (2002) offers a few ideas for building in said collaboration:

• Ask the students to develop the grading scale themselves from scratch, starting with choosing the categories.

• Set the grading categories yourself, but ask the students to help write the descriptions.

• Draft the complete grading scale yourself, then give it to your students for review and suggestions.

A Few Do's and Don'ts…

Determining your goals for the assignment and its essential logistics is a good start to creating an effective assignment. However, there are a few more simple factors to consider in your final design. First, here are a few things you should do :

• Do provide detail in your assignment description . Research has shown that students frequently prefer some guiding constraints when completing assignments (Bean, 1996), and that more detail (within reason) can lead to more successful student responses.  One idea is to provide students with physical assignment handouts , in addition to or instead of a simple description in a syllabus.  This can meet the needs of concrete learners and give them something tangible to refer to.  Likewise, it is often beneficial to make explicit for students the process or steps necessary to complete an assignment, given that students – especially younger ones – might need guidance in planning and time management (MIT, 1999).
• Do use open-ended questions.  The most effective and challenging assignments focus on questions that lead students to thinking and explaining, rather than simple yes or no answers, whether explicitly part of the assignment description or in the  brainstorming heuristics (Gardner, 2005).
• Do direct students to appropriate available resources . Giving students pointers about other venues for assistance can help them get started on the right track independently. These kinds of suggestions might include information about campus resources such as the University Writing Center or discipline-specific librarians, suggesting specific journals or books, or even sections of their textbook, or providing them with lists of research ideas or links to acceptable websites.
• Do consider providing models – both successful and unsuccessful models (Miller, 2007). These models could be provided by past students, or models you have created yourself.  You could even ask students to evaluate the models themselves using the determined evaluation criteria, helping them to visualize the final product, think critically about how to complete the assignment, and ideally, recognize success in their own work.
• Do consider including a way for students to make the assignment their own. In their study, Hass and Osborn (2007) confirmed the importance of personal engagement for students when completing an assignment.  Indeed, students will be more engaged in an assignment if it is personally meaningful, practical, or purposeful beyond the classroom.  You might think of ways to encourage students to tap into their own experiences or curiosities, to solve or explore a real problem, or connect to the larger community.  Offering variety in assignment selection can also help students feel more individualized, creative, and in control.
• If your assignment is substantial or long, do consider sequencing it. Far too often, assignments are given as one-shot final products that receive grades at the end of the semester, eternally abandoned by the student.  By sequencing a large assignment, or essentially breaking it down into a systematic approach consisting of interconnected smaller elements (such as a project proposal, an annotated bibliography, or a rough draft, or a series of mini-assignments related to the longer assignment), you can encourage thoughtfulness, complexity, and thoroughness in your students, as well as emphasize process over final product.

Next are a few elements to avoid in your assignments:

• Do not ask too many questions in your assignment.  In an effort to challenge students, instructors often err in the other direction, asking more questions than students can reasonably address in a single assignment without losing focus. Offering an overly specific “checklist” prompt often leads to externally organized papers, in which inexperienced students “slavishly follow the checklist instead of integrating their ideas into more organically-discovered structure” (Flaxman, 2005).
• Do not expect or suggest that there is an “ideal” response to the assignment. A common error for instructors is to dictate content of an assignment too rigidly, or to imply that there is a single correct response or a specific conclusion to reach, either explicitly or implicitly (Flaxman, 2005). Undoubtedly, students do not appreciate feeling as if they must read an instructor's mind to complete an assignment successfully, or that their own ideas have nowhere to go, and can lose motivation as a result. Similarly, avoid assignments that simply ask for regurgitation (Miller, 2007). Again, the best assignments invite students to engage in critical thinking, not just reproduce lectures or readings.
• Do not provide vague or confusing commands . Do students know what you mean when they are asked to “examine” or “discuss” a topic? Return to what you determined about your students' experiences and levels to help you decide what directions will make the most sense to them and what will require more explanation or guidance, and avoid verbiage that might confound them.
• Do not impose impossible time restraints or require the use of insufficient resources for completion of the assignment.  For instance, if you are asking all of your students to use the same resource, ensure that there are enough copies available for all students to access – or at least put one copy on reserve in the library. Likewise, make sure that you are providing your students with ample time to locate resources and effectively complete the assignment (Fitzpatrick, 1989).

The assignments we give to students don't simply have to be research papers or reports. There are many options for effective yet creative ways to assess your students' learning! Here are just a few:

Journals, Posters, Portfolios, Letters, Brochures, Management plans, Editorials, Instruction Manuals, Imitations of a text, Case studies, Debates, News release, Dialogues, Videos, Collages, Plays, Power Point presentations

Ultimately, the success of student responses to an assignment often rests on the instructor's deliberate design of the assignment. By being purposeful and thoughtful from the beginning, you can ensure that your assignments will not only serve as effective assessment methods, but also engage and delight your students. If you would like further help in constructing or revising an assignment, the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center is glad to offer individual consultations. In addition, look into some of the resources provided below.

Online Resources

“Creating Effective Assignments” http://www.unh.edu/teaching-excellence/resources/Assignments.htm This site, from the University of New Hampshire's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning,  provides a brief overview of effective assignment design, with a focus on determining and communicating goals and expectations.

Gardner, T.  (2005, June 12). Ten Tips for Designing Writing Assignments. Traci's Lists of Ten. http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/034.shtml This is a brief yet useful list of tips for assignment design, prepared by a writing teacher and curriculum developer for the National Council of Teachers of English .  The website will also link you to several other lists of “ten tips” related to literacy pedagogy.

“How to Create Effective Assignments for College Students.”  http:// tilt.colostate.edu/retreat/2011/zimmerman.pdf     This PDF is a simplified bulleted list, prepared by Dr. Toni Zimmerman from Colorado State University, offering some helpful ideas for coming up with creative assignments.

“Learner-Centered Assessment” http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/tips/learner_centered_assessment.html From the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo, this is a short list of suggestions for the process of designing an assessment with your students' interests in mind. “Matching Learning Goals to Assignment Types.” http://teachingcommons.depaul.edu/How_to/design_assignments/assignments_learning_goals.html This is a great page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons, providing a chart that helps instructors match assignments with learning goals.

Additional References Bean, J.C. (1996). Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fitzpatrick, R. (1989). Research and writing assignments that reduce fear lead to better papers and more confident students. Writing Across the Curriculum , 3.2, pp. 15 – 24.

Flaxman, R. (2005). Creating meaningful writing assignments. The Teaching Exchange .  Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008 from http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Sheridan_Center/pubs/teachingExchange/jan2005/01_flaxman.pdf

Hass, M. & Osborn, J. (2007, August 13). An emic view of student writing and the writing process. Across the Disciplines, 4. 

Hedengren, B.F. (2004). A TA's guide to teaching writing in all disciplines . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Hudd, S. S. (2003, April). Syllabus under construction: Involving students in the creation of class assignments.  Teaching Sociology , 31, pp. 195 – 202.

Leahy, R. (2002). Conducting writing assignments. College Teaching , 50.2, pp. 50 – 54.

Miller, H. (2007). Designing effective writing assignments.  Teaching with writing .  University of Minnesota Center for Writing. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008, from http://writing.umn.edu/tww/assignments/designing.html

MIT Online Writing and Communication Center (1999). Creating Writing Assignments. Retrieved January 9, 2008 from http://web.mit.edu/writing/Faculty/createeffective.html .

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Teaching Topic

Assignment Design

A good assignment helps the professor and students pursue the learning goals of the course. Rather than starting with a prefabricated assignment, then, this is another opportune moment for backward design ; ideally, you start with your course goals and think creatively to devise work that will help you meet them. In practice, this means that a good assignment generally does two things: it reinforces important learning and offers an opportunity for the professor to assess the quality of that learning.

Considering your course goals

Seattle University English Professor John Bean, in his book Engaging Ideas , recommends asking yourself the following questions as you prepare to design an assignment:

• What are the main units or modules in my course?
• What are my main learning objectives for each of these modules and for the whole course? What are the chief concepts and principles that I want students to learn in each unit or module?
• What thinking skills am I trying to develop within each unit or module and throughout the whole course?
• Based on previous students’ experience, what are the most difficult aspects of my course for students?
• If I could change my students’ study habits, what would I most like to change?
• What difference do I want my course to make in my students’ lives—in their sense of self, their values, their ways of thinking? What is my unique stamp on this course? Ten years later, what do I want them to remember most about my course?

As you proceed, be clear (with yourself and, subsequently, with your students) on your specific goals for the students ( Learning Goals page ). It’s daunting to attempt to design an assignment that taps “critical thinking” (in all its possible forms), but it’s quite possible to craft something more focused, if your goal is also more focused. For example, if you want students to be able to come to conclusions amidst potentially contradictory information, you could assign a literature review that asks students to consider, weigh, and critique various scientific studies in order to summarize what we know about a particular phenomenon; if, on the other hand, “critical thinking” means (to you) the ability to question ideas effectively, you could ask students to deconstruct and evaluate an opinion piece. If you want students to gain an understanding of what it’s like to work in your field, you can get specific with that, too; would a poster presentation make the most sense, or the performance of an experiment, or an essay that conforms to your discipline’s manual of style? If you want students to have an “understanding of the topic,” does that mean the ability to produce facts when asked (which might call for a test, or a Q & A session following a presentation), or does it mean the ability to see gaps in the field’s understanding (which might warrant a practice grant proposal)? Determine exactly what you want from your students, and design the assignment to get at that exact thing.

Another consideration is the complexity of the learning goal . If you’re looking for something fairly complex, you could design assignments to build slowly toward the final outcome. For example, if you want students to be able to write a full-blown psychology research paper by the end of the semester, it might help to break that down into smaller chunks, asking them to put together an introduction first, and then a method section, and so on, each time giving them feedback so that they’re ultimately ready to successfully put together something complete. If the final project is a complicated performance, perhaps students could demonstrate successful singing separately from successful movement on the stage, and only then integrate the two.

Once you’ve determined the goals that will be the focus of the assignment, there’s no reason to keep them to yourself, of course. Share them with your students so that they’ll know the reason for the assignment, and how to focus their efforts.

Reinforcing learning

If designed well, an assignment gives students a chance to rehearse, practice, and integrate the most important knowledge and skills they’ve picked up thus far in the class—and even to learn new things . This is what makes it the opposite of busywork. First of all, if the assignment is truly germane to the subject matter and goals of the course, it’ll by necessity push students to review relevant material. Then, by asking students to restate, transform, and apply that material, the work will deepen understanding. An essay might require students to synthesize various readings or theories; a presentation demands that learners find ways to express ideas in their own words; a research proposal strengthens one’s grasp of concepts by pushing toward the application of those concepts. Along the way you might be interested in developing new knowledge or skills; for example, maybe you want students to investigate a topic but also practice the ability to work effectively with others; group work, if structured well, can help people attain interpersonal as well as academic goals. Blogging can, too.

It bears noting that, in many cases, students will need more than one round of practice in order to master what they need to master. Consider whether your second assignment should resemble your first in order to give them adequate experience before moving on to new things.

To this end, also consider whether more frequent, smaller assignments might lead to more practice opportunities (and perhaps more learning) than fewer, higher-stakes assignments.

Giving instructions

As mentioned above, it’s important to let students know what your goals and expectations are for any given assignment . It can be especially helpful to give these instructions in multiple formats, including aloud and in writing. A written version of instructions, according to John Bean, has several advantages: “(1) it meets the need of sensing or concrete learners…(2) it gives all students something to refer to late at night when their class notes no longer seem so clear; (3) if your institution has a writing center, it helps writing consultants understand what the professor is looking for…(4) most importantly, it helps professors identify potential problems with the assignment and thus clarify its purpose and focus.” He further argues that assignment instructions should be clear about the nature of the task, the audience, format, expectations for students’ work process (e.g., revisions, group work, etc.), and the assessment criteria you’ll be applying.

It’s also important to avoid busywork for the teacher, and busywork happens when you end up grading something that tells you little to nothing important about students’ learning, just for the sake of having something to grade. Instead, aim to assign students work that demands relevant and informative performances . The bottom line is to assign work that allows students to demonstrate what you really want to see. An open-book take-home exam isn’t a great way to assess memorization of concepts, but it can be an excellent way to see what students do with those concepts when they have time to review them and gather their thoughts.

This is another place where rubrics come in handy, for you and for the students. Designing the rubric (and see our Assessment Portal for more on this) helps you to get clear on what you’re looking for, and—if you discover that your assignment, as originally designed, won’t give you much that’s worth grading—might even cause you to revise the assignment before sharing it with the students. Then, when the rubric is in students’ hands, it will (ideally) guide them to produce an assignment that will reveal what they’re capable of.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that “assessment” is not synonymous with “grading” ( Grading page ). It may be that you want to assign grades to each of your students’ assignments, or it may be that you want to use them simply to gather information (and you might, for example, give students full credit for effortful work rather than grades based on their relative effectiveness at the task).

• Sherry Linkon, English 750: Humanities in the Community — a reflection assignment based on group coursework, with a clear statement about the goal of the assignment—”The point is not to complain (though some complaining may feel good) but to identify how the choices you and your colleagues make, not only about your event but in your interactions as a team, affect the project and your relationships”—as well as an articulation of grading criteria.
• Joshua Meredith, Human Resources Management 700: Workplace Ethics — a combination oral and take-home written midterm exam , with a clear grading rubric.
• Deb Sivigny, Theater and Performing Studies 170: Principles of Design — a hands-on project asking students to design—and redesign—business cards reflecting, in terms of content and form, what these students “claimed as their own.”)
• Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila, Anthropology 342: Masculinities — a final paper with multiple options for approaches and clear instructions on what each section of the paper should be doing. “Over time you will develop your own system for reading, taking notes and writing. However, despite differences between people’s approaches to essay writing, every good essay should follow this basic structure.”)
• Sabrina Wesley-Nero, Education, Inquiry, and Justice 401: Capstone — a final proposal in which students are asked “to use the PEDIJ as a springboard toward how you define ‘what’s next’ and how what you’ve learned in EDIJ can impact education, educational equity, and/or education equality,” with a clear rubric provided.)

Additional resources

• Bean, John C. (2001). Engaging Ideas . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Dartmouth University Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. Syllabus and Assignment Design .
• Weimer, Maryellen. How Assignment Design Shapes Student Learning . Faculty Focus, April 2015.

The Cowbell

News and Resources from UWGB's Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning

Assignment Design

There’s a fine line between assignment design and assessment strategies . In short, designing good assignments is one means of assessing your students’ learning on a larger scale.

Assignments help measure student learning in your course. Effective assignment design in your course involves aligning your assignments with learning outcomes. When assignments and outcomes are aligned, good grades and good learning go hand in hand ( https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/assessments.html ).

Assessments fall into one of two categories, formative or summative .

Formative assessments are typically low-stakes and help students identify their strengths and weaknesses so that they can improve their learning. Routine formative assessments also help instructors identify the areas where students are struggling and adapt their teaching accordingly.

Summative assessments evaluate student learning (such as at the end of a unit of instruction). Summative assessments are generally higher stakes (like midterm exams and final projects).

Assignments are what students actually ‘do’ as part of those assessments.

Incorporating a mix of assignment activities in your course can help students practice and demonstrate their mastery of outcomes in multiple ways. Consider ways you can design your assignments so that they better mirror the application of knowledge in real-world scenarios. Assignments designed in this way are often referred to as Authentic Assessments ( Authentic-assessment.pdf (uwex.edu)). One type of highly authentic assessment is the long-term project which challenges students to solve a problem or complete a challenge requiring the application of course concepts ( Project_Based_Learning.pdf (uwex.edu) ).

More details and examples can be found in the tabbed content box below. Please also consider signing up for a CATL consultation with one of our instructional designers for some personalized assistance in developing your ideas for assignments and ensuring that they align with your course outcomes .

(Adapted from Carnegie Mellon's:  Design and Teach a Course )

Assessments should provide instructors and students with evidence of how well students have mastered the course outcomes.

There are two major reasons for aligning assessments with learning outcomes.

• Alignment increases the probability that we will provide students with the opportunities to learn and practice knowledge and skills that instructors will require students know in the objectives and in the assessments. (Teaching to the assessment is a  good  thing.)
• When instructors align assessments with outcomes, students are more likely to translate "good grades" into "good learning." Conversely, when instructors misalign assessments with objectives, students will focus on getting good grades on the assessments, rather than focusing on mastering the material that the instructor finds important.

Instructors may use different types of assessments to measure student proficiency in a learning objective. Moreover, instructors may use the same activity to measure different objectives. To ensure a more accurate assessment of student proficiency, many instructional designers recommend that you use different kinds of activities so that students have multiple ways to practice and demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

Formative assessment

The goal of formative assessment is to  monitor student learning  to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative assessments are generally  low stakes , which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:

• draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic
• submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture
• turn in a research proposal for early feedback

Summative assessment

The goal of summative assessment is to  evaluate student learning  at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

Summative assessments are often  high stakes , which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a senior recital

Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

Formative Assessments:

• Reading quizzes
• Concept map
• Muddiest point
• Pro/con grid
• Focused paraphrasing
• Reflective journal
• Virtual lab/game
• Webconference
• Debate (synchronous or asynchronous)
• Participant research
• Peer review

Summative Assessments:

• Presentation
• Portfolio project

Carnegie Mellon University on Aligning Assessments with Objectives with examples.

Items to consider when weighing your assessment options:

If you are thinking about using discussions, be sure to think about the following:.

• What kind of questions/situations do you want the students to discuss? Is it complex enough to allow students to build knowledge beyond the textbook? Will the discussion help students meet your objectives (and develop an answer for your essential questions)?
• What are your expectations for discussions? Should students participate (post) a certain number of times, with a certain number of words, and reply to a certain number of people?
• What is your role in the discussion (traffic cop, the person who clarifies issues, will you respond to every post)?

If you are thinking about using quizzes, be sure to think about the following:

• What type of questions will help your students meet the objectives of the course? Are you going to grade essay questions or just let the computer grade multiple choice questions?
• What is the place for academic integrity? Are you going to randomize questions, randomize answers, restrict time, restrict the answers that students can see after completing the exam?
• How are you going to populate your quiz? Are you going to write the questions or use questions that come from a textbook publisher?

If you are thinking of using essays, be sure to think about the following:

• Will these essays/papers help students to meet the course objectives, which ones? Is the length of the essay appropriate?
• What do you think about plagiarism checkers such as TurnItIn?
• To what extent will you allow students to submit drafts, and will you provide feedback on drafts, or will you use a peer review system?

Other items to consider:

• Are you thinking about using an alternative assignment? If so, you may want to talk with an instructional technologist or designer.
• Consider the type of feedback you will provide for each assignment. What should students expect from you; how will you communicate those expectations; and how soon will you provide feedback (realistically)?

Further resources

Small teaching online.

This book (requires UWGB login) contains many tips that are easy to integrate into your distance education class. The chapter on “ surfacing backward design” contains many tips for assessment for online classes, many of which are adaptable to all distance modalities.

CATL Resources

• Collaborative Learning Assignments  (Toolbox article)
• Administering Tests and Quizzes (including alternatives) (Toolbox article)
• Writing Good Multiple Choice Questions ( TeAch Tuesday , YouTube)

Tip sheets from UW-System

UW-System put together some tip sheets for common sticking points in assessment for distance education.

• Writing effective multiple choice questions
• Authentic assessments
• Unproctored online assessments
• Project-based learning

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More From Forbes

The 20 most expensive cities for expats—according to a 2024 study.

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Hong Kong ranks as the most expensive city for expats in 2024.

Thinking about living abroad or taking a work assignment in another country? Many factors come into play when it comes to an international move—considerations such as which countries are the safest in the world and how a country’s tourism economy ranks on a global scale . Cost of living is also a highly weighted consideration for most people. But which countries are most expensive for expats? Mercer, a leading consulting firm in human resources and financial services, released its 2024 cost of living survey , revealing that Hong Kong remains the most expensive city in the world for international employees.

“The comprehensive ranking serves as a valuable compass, providing guidance through the intricate landscape of living expenses in cities worldwide,” according to Mercer. This year’s methodology evaluated 226 cities, stacking up the comparative costs of more than 200 items in each location, including housing, transportation, food, clothes, household goods, and entertainment.

Singapore, Marina Bay, Garden By the bay, botanic garden, Supertree Grove and Cloud Forest

Of the top 10 most expensive cities for expats, half are located in Western Europe, Mercer points out, with Switzerland being home to four. But it's Southeast Asia cities that headline the list of the most expensive places for international workers to live, with Singapore following Hong Kong.

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Generally speaking, the higher-ranking cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Switzerland cities have expensive housing markets, high transportation costs and higher prices for goods and services that combine to drive up the cost of living.

Seven U.S. cities are in this year’s top 20 most expensive cities for expats, with New York City and Los Angeles landing in the top 10. But North America’s biggest year-to-year changes occurred in Mexico, with the country’s capital Mexico City jumping up 46 places to No. 33 and Monterrey, in northeastern Mexico, moving up 40 places to No. 115.

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Dubai is the most expensive city in the Middle East for expats, according to Mercer's 2024 'Cost of ... [+] Living' report.

High inflation has led to the most significant increases in living costs in Istanbul (No. 130) and African cities like Accra (No. 98), Addis Ababa (No. 138), and Cairo (168).

These are the most expensive cities for expats in 2024:

No. 1: Hong Kong, China

No. 2: Singapore

No. 3: Zurich, Switzerland

No. 4: Geneva, Switzerland

No. 5: Basel, Switzerland

No. 6: Bern, Switzerland

No. 7: New York City, New York, United States

No. 8: London, United Kingdom

No. 9: Nassau, Bahamas

No. 10: Los Angeles, California, United States

No. 11: Copenhagen, Denmark

No. 12: Honolulu, Hawaii, United States

No. 13: San Francisco, California, United States

No. 14: Bangui, Central African Republic

No. 15: Dubai, United Arab Emirates

No. 16: Tel Aviv, Israel

No. 17: Miami, Florida, United States

No. 18: Djibouti

No. 19: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

No. 20: Chicago, Illinois, United States

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