Your assignments and activities should be aligned to support your students as build skills to meet your learning objectives. It is good practice to make these relationships clear to students by including information about each activity or assignment's relationship to course learning objectives. This is often called transparent design. Effective assignments are both transparent and aligned with learning objectives. This helps both you and students fully understand WHY students are completing an assignment and HOW they should do so.
Designing assignments is done throughout the term. The actions to take section is divided into what you need to do when building your course and what you can save for writing each assignment.
Actions
to Take
(Building
Your Course) | - Make a list of assignment types you want to assign to your students (essays, exams, homework, in-class activities, performances, quizzes, reading checks, reflections, etc.). Roughly sketch out when during the term these assignments will be due.
- Decide how each assignment type links to your course-level learning objectives:
- are they formative assessments (smaller-stakes activities to help students learn and practice)
- or are they summative assessments (final assessment of progress toward learning objectives)?
- Decide how you will combine student performance on your different assignments or assignment types to determine an overall final grade for students.
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Actions
To Take
(For Each
Assignment) | - (Transparent Design) Describe each assignment's learning objectives, the task students will do, and what successful completion of the assignment looks like. Our transparent design template (pdf) can help you develop this content.
- For repeated assignments (homework, quizzes, etc.) you can reuse pieces of your assignment with updated questions or tasks if the learning objectives remain the same.
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Questions
to Consider | - For each activity you ask students to do, how does it support a course learning objective? If it doesn't, what changes need to be made to it?
- For each assignment you ask students to do, which learning objectives is it assessing?
- How many low-stakes opportunities are students given to practice new skills or check their new understandings? How often are students given these opportunities?
- Is a high proportion of a student's final grade determined by one or two major assignments? Expanding the different ways that students can be evaluated and limiting high-stakes assignments are powerful way to support student learning.
- Do you think your assignment could be susceptible to being completed by AI? Check it out by running your assignment through an AI (OU has access to Microsoft Copilot, which should NOT use your prompts for AI training). If you have concerns about what AI returns check out our page on Activities, Assessment, and AI for more support.
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UO uses the learning management system Canvas, which has many options for creating and grading assignments. Taking advantage of its tools can help reduce your (and your TA's) grading workload. For many activity types in Canvas, you can grade directly in Canvas. All activity types will synch automatically to Canvas's gradebook, saving you from needing to keep a personal record of student scores.
Building assignments is an ongoing process throughout the term. The actions to take highlight important aspects to keep in mind as you build each assignment. If you've never used Canvas before, we encourage you to explore how to build activities in Canvas before the term begins.
Actions
to Take | - For each type of assignment, determine what type of activity in Canvas would work best for it:
- a quiz (series of individual questions),
- a discussion (students respond to a prompt and other students' responses),
- or an assignment (general type with many methods to assign grades for student work).
You can review these different types of activities on our Canvas How-To Guides.
- When building an activity in Canvas:
- include the elements of transparent design in the activity description,
- choose the correct assignment group to automatically group together similar assignments that contribute to overall course grade the same way,
- set both due-dates and "until" dates (students can submit work after the due-date up until the "until" date but they will be marked as late in the Canvas gradebook).
- modify due-dates for students with modified assignment deadline accommodations through the Accessible Education Center (AEC).
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Questions
to Consider | - Which of your planned assignments lend themselves to submitted through Canvas?
- Can you make your grading (or TA) grading more efficient by setting up assignment rubrics in Canvas?
- Will you use Canvas as a gradebook or use another means to communicate student progress?
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Teaching Excellence | - Providing students with timely feedback and storing student information (grades) in Canvas are both components of Professional Teaching.
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Students can only improve their work when they know what good things they are doing and what they still need to work on. Research-informed teaching, one pillar of teaching excellence at UO, includes providing prompt, constructive, and criteria-based feedback to students.
Consider these two quotes from UO students. Which you would rather hear your students say about your course?
“This instructor did an excellent job at supporting all the students in terms of the course assignments and exams. Efficient feedback was always provided to students, and she made sure every student was comfortable both with the course materials, as well as inside the classroom.”
“It took a while to get grades and feedback on writing assignments back. So much so that I am confused about what my final grade in the course will be.”
Actions
to Take | - Determine a strategy that works for you to provide timely, effective feedback to your students on assignments. This may involve your teaching team if they will participate in giving students feedback. Our upcoming Assessment and Grading Hub will have guidance for giving effective student feedback.
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Questions
to Consider | - What is your plan to grade assignments? How much time might be needed? Where does grading fit into your weekly workflow?
- How will you provide feedback to students?
- Do auto-graded assignments in Canvas or other systems provide clear explanations for the correct answers?
- How will you encourage your students to use the feedback you've given to them?
- How will you coordinate grading duties with any graduate employees working as teaching assistants for you? What is their weekly grading responsibility and how does it fit into the number of hours they are hired to work?
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Metacognition is the process of analyzing one's own learning and learning process. Research shows great student growth in course performance and motivation for learning when asked to complete metacognitive assignments as part of their coursework.
And metacognition isn’t just a tool for students. Student feedback is a powerful way to help you gauge how your course is going and hear what challenges with the material students are facing. Regular check ins with students about their experience in class can greatly help you meet their needs. UO has a default Midterm Teaching Experience Survey (M-SES) that can be used to collect student feedback about the course in week 4, but there are other ways to proceed!
Consider these two quotes from UO students. Are these statements you would want your students to agree with at the end of your course?
“Whenever we had a concern or a suggestion on how to improve the class often the instructor would brush it off instead of taking our concerns to heart about how some of the assignments were done.”
“The instructor wasn't every helpful when asking questions via emails and didn't seem to care about any feedback from the students through the term.”
Actions
to Take | - Decide when metacognitive activities may be best for your students, for example after each lesson, weekly, after major assignments. Our Active Learning and Metacognition page has examples of metacognitive activities that can you slot into your course.
- Adjust your assessment plans to include metacognitive activities. Consider how metacognition relates to your defined learning objectives.
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Questions
to Consider | - When are good times throughout the term to have students reflect on how they learn?
- Do you know how your students prepare for exams? Will their methods help them succeed? Do they agree with you on that?
- What sort of topics about your course are you curious about your students' opinions on?
- Does UO's Midterm Student Experience Survey (M-SES) provide you sufficient information to make changes to your course as it is going?
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