Assignment Design Charrette session
Assignment building is often done in a solitary way. The Assignment Design Charrette changes that. The charrette—a term borrowed from architecture education, denoting a collaborative design process—will be an opportunity to talk with others interested in trading ideas about the various tasks, projects, papers, and performances we create for our students.
The charrette aims to 1) stimulate ideas about how to strengthen the assignments, 2) think about how assignments can be intentionally linked to course, program, and institutional learning outcomes, and 3) open up a productive “trading zone” for discussion about learning and assessment.
Preparatory Work
Please come with an assignment you would like to develop for your online or hybrid course. It might be a draft assignment you are working on and would like to share with colleagues, one that has worked well but in need of a “refresh,” or one that has not worked as you hoped.
To facilitate informed and constructive discussion, we ask that you also prepare some reflections about the assignment, indicating:
- The purpose of the assignment — What outcomes/takeaways is it intended to foster and elicit?
- The context in which it is used —In what course or courses, with what students, at what point in the curriculum is the assignment used?
- Your experience with the assignment at this point — How have students responded? What do they do well? What do they find especially challenging?
- What you want to get out of this exercise — What kinds of feedback about the assignment would be useful from your colleagues?
- And, if you have time, some thoughts about the assignment evaluation criteria you plan to use.
During the Session
We will work in groups of two or three with each person taking a turn to share their assignment and reflections and receive suggestions from their fellow group members. Each person will have 10-15 minutes for their assignment review.
- Assignment author briefly reviews the assignment with the group, focusing on the above questions. Other group members should jot down notes, but not interrupt the author. (2 minutes)
- Group discussion of the assignment. The purpose of the discussion is to help the assignment author strengthen the assignment. (8 minutes)
- Each group member provides written feedback to the assignment author. Group members use the feedback form Download feedback form to give the assignment author suggestions. This time can be used by the assignment author to reflect on the discussion and write down some initial take-aways. (5 minutes)