[D] Assignment Week 3

Based on what you’ve written and considered over the last two weeks, create a rough draft assignment sheet. Format it in a way that makes sense for you. Below are some guidelines to help you with drafting. Due Friday, 8/5.

1) Include a brief description of the assignment 

  • What are students making?
  • Will they create/edit an entire resources in one semester, or just a part of a resource?
  • What subject-specific topic does the assignment address?
  • What makes this assignment “open” (describe how this assignment can be re-used, revised, remixed etc.)?

2) Include guidelines and learning goals

  • What content or features of the resource-to-be-made/edited are essential?
  • What parts of the assignment do you want students to prioritize?
  • What are your responsibilities in this assignment and what are the students’? 

3) Include some (tentative) dates for when major milestones of the project need to be completed

10 thoughts on “[D] Assignment Week 3

  1. Kannaki Bharali

    I will teach Theories of Social Order (SOC 314) in Fall 2022. I plan to assign students to create a glossary. My responsibility is to provide the list of words to make sure that the glossary is built in the context of the course, rather than a general list of definitions. This will be a group assignment and students will be asked to choose the reading material and sign up in the first week. I plan to edit/reuse the glossary every semester. Each module will have a different list of words. I will inform the students that their work will be reused in the following semesters. I haven’t written the consent form for students to sign yet.

    Blackboard Wiki will be used to create the glossary. In BlackBoard Wiki, students can create, edit and track changes and additions, which allows for effective collaboration between multiple writers. I as an instructor can drill down to see information about contributions by any student.
    I will post the following items on Blackboard:

    Sign up Blackboard Wiki Link: Please sign up for a week in which you will be responsible to submit Glossary for one of the week’s reading/s. If all the slots are taken by the time you want to sign up, please contact me and I will assign you a week. Please sign up by August 29th (11:59 PM). The content will be topics, dates, and student names.

    Wiki Link in the module: Please use this link to collaborate with your group members to submit the glossary. The columns of this table are words, meaning, examples, images related to the concept, and citations.

    Grading rubric: The assignment will be graded according to the following criteria:
    Content: Demonstrates full knowledge of vocabulary. Covers definitions in depth and provides examples.
    Grammar: Few or no punctuation, spelling, or grammatical errors.
    Organization: information is well organized and logically ordered.
    Graphic/multimedia: graphics and the use of hyperlinks are innovative and enhance the presentation. Graphics are varied and appropriate for the content.

    Reply
    1. Bruce Shenitz (he/him/his)

      Hi Kannaki. It sounds like you’ve thought this through since we chatted a couple of weeks ago. I think it’s great that you’ve set out guidance (in the form of a rubric) and given thought to grading–which I know a number of people have raised as an issue in evaluating student-created OER work.

      Reply
    2. Michael Schoch (he/him/his) Post author

      Hi Kannaki,

      Echoing Bruce’s sentiment that your approach to grading seems like a good one for an open assignment. That’s to say, you’re grading them on the resources they make or help make. I also think your use of BlackBoard Wiki sounds like a really interesting but hopefully straightforward way to encourage collaborative comments and annotations.

      Reply
  2. Vedica Foster

    Based on what you’ve written and considered over the last two weeks, create a rough draft assignment sheet. Format it in a way that makes sense for you. Below are some guidelines to help you with drafting. Due Friday, 8/5.

    1) Include a brief description of the assignment
    Research topics on policies that governs the state of NY that has flaws and/or is not working to serve the public at large.
    What are students making?
    Will they create/edit an entire resources in one semester, or just a part of a resource?
    What subject-specific topic does the assignment address?
    My plan is to create a wikipedia site and have my students contribute to the assignment.
    Depending on what other wikipedia sites contain then we will edit or remix to suit our class.
    What makes this assignment “open” (describe how this assignment can be re-used, revised, remixed etc.)? Having it made public will allow others to remix, reuse or revised. I love the idea of adding more research as we go along. Since this is the first time, I am still brainstorming.
    2) Include guidelines and learning goals
    The guidelines will be the same as the outline for my current PAD 445 class and PAD 348. The goal still stays the same as far as completing a capstone project.
    What content or features of the resource-to-be-made/edited are essential? Research, policy and laws.
    What parts of the assignment do you want students to prioritize? Research
    What are your responsibilities in this assignment and what are the students’? Confirming and analysis research to make sure the sources are valid.
    3) Include some (tentative) dates for when major milestones of the project need to be completed
    I will attempt to have a solid outline by the end of the semester. My plan is to continue this Wikipedia page in the next couple of semesters.

    Reply
    1. Bruce Shenitz (he/him/his)

      Congratulations on planning such an ambitious project. One of the possibilities is that in scaling up to creating/editing a wikipedia page, you might consider working with students on a smaller project using Google docs for collaboration. You can always move from there to the Wikipedia platform.

      Reply
    2. Michael Schoch (he/him/his) Post author

      Hi Vedica,

      I agree with Bruce that this is ambitious, but I really like how you are explicit about the fact that you are in the brainstorming process and that part of this first piece of the assignment would be having students help generate an outline. Breaking the larger assignment into many smaller assignments in this way seems like a great strategy.

      Reply
  3. Kristin Englander

    This proposed assignment is for my Capstone seminar course (CJBS 415).
    1) Include a brief description of the assignment
    • What are students making? – Students will be completing a study guide for the midterm and final exam. I have had students contribute to this type of resource in the past, but I would just have the summaries posted in individual discussion boards. For this semester, I will create a pressbook for the course and students will post their summaries there.
    • Will they create/edit an entire resources in one semester, or just a part of a resource? Each student will select to be discussion leader for a set of readings throughout the semester. At the moment, this particular course section isn’t full (only 10 students are registered), so it will not be a full resource, unless the course more significantly fills up at before the start of the semester.
    • What subject-specific topic does the assignment address? Each student will choose a topic from the list of topics covered in the course – the topic come from the four general areas of the course (Criminology, Policing, Law & Policy, and Corrections).
    • What makes this assignment “open” (describe how this assignment can be re-used, revised, remixed etc.)? All students will sign up to be discussion leader for a given set of readings – the discussion leader will submit his or her summary the Sunday before the material is covered for a given week. The other students in the course will be asked to help edit their classmates summary in Pressbooks. The editing of others entries will be considered part of the class participation process.
    2) Include guidelines and learning goals
    • What content or features of the resource-to-be-made/edited are essential? Students must submit a clear, concise summary of the assigned readings prior to the class meeting. The hope is that upon lecture that week – some students will edit the resource – so students will have clear summaries for each of the class readings prior to the midterm and final exams. **Given the small class size at the moment – we likely won’t have complete summaries for all topics this semester.
    • What parts of the assignment do you want students to prioritize? The discussion leaders should focus on the reading itself – the editors should help make sure the content is clear and concise. The editors should also try to “flesh out” the summary by including material neglected by the discussion leader and/or that was emphasized in lecture.
    • What are your responsibilities in this assignment and what are the students’? I will help to coordinate the sign up for discussion leaders – I will also play the role of discussion leader for the first week of course material, so that students can see what is expected of them. I will gently remind students of their individual deadlines if they neglect to remember them. Students will have to complete the summary for the week that they sign up to be discussion leader. I am still debating how to best facilitate feedback and editing from the class – it is possible that I may assign one student to be “chief editor” for a given week and that he/she will be expected to complete the task, while their classmates help as needed. Or all students may be expected to contribute to the editing task each week. I have not decided which method would be work best yet.
    3) Include some (tentative) dates for when major milestones of the project need to be completed
    Each student will sign up to be discussion leader for a given topic and they are expected to submit their summary in Pressbooks the Sunday before the topic is due in class. Student editors will be encouraged to complete their editing within a week. There isn’t a set due date for the entire class for this assignment since each week there will be one or two discussion leaders contributing new summaries.

    Reply
    1. Bruce Shenitz (he/him/his)

      This sounds like a good fleshing out of what we discussed during our zoom session. As we discussed (I think!) it’s possible that you may want to pilot this project in Google Docs with the option of then ingesting it into Pressbooks along with the work of subsequent classes.

      Reply
    2. Michael Schoch (he/him/his) Post author

      Hi Kristin,

      I appreciated how this assignment isn’t just written, but verbal as well (because students are acting as discussion leaders). It also combines generative writing with revision, with students helping each other to refine their ideas. I like how you are already thinking about the logistics of assigning “chief editors” to build in accountability. This style of assignment could, I imagine, work in all kinds of classes!

      Reply
  4. Kristin Englander

    Michael & Bruce,

    Thank you for your feedback! Yes, upon further thought, it may make sense to use a google doc the first go around since most students are likely to be somewhat familiar with google docs – so it will be an easier transition.

    Thank you both for all of your help – have a great week!

    Reply

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