Every instructor has experienced challenges associated with designing engaging, rigorous assignments. Maybe you spent a lot of time meticulously designing an assignment, but students didn’t perform as well on it as you’d hoped. Maybe you’re in the process of trying to create a new or innovative assignment and you’re not sure how to proceed. Whatever your assignment challenge, in this two-hour workshop, we’ll help you “hack” it. You will learn about some common assignment challenges and collaborate and receive feedback from colleagues in order to design, redesign, or improve your assignment. Participants should bring four copies of an existing assignment or four copies of a written draft of an idea for an assignment they think will be challenging.

Objectives: 

• Describe best practices for creating an engaging, educational assignment
• Examine an assignment in order to identify pedagogical and design strengths and challenges
• Create or revise an assignment in order to demonstrate research-informed pedagogy and design best practices