Making connections - open-ended assignments in general education courses
Creators: name: Ericson, Rebecca
Publisher: name: Mason Publishing Group, George Mason University Libraries
Year: 2018

description: BRIEF SESSION DESCRIPTION:

In this mini-workshop you will consider ways to use open-ended assignments to encourage students to connect learning in their core courses with other disciplines, their own interests or their major. While there are challenges for students and faculty in open-ended assignments, there can be huge payoffs in student engagement and creativity.  You will have a chance to develop ideas about what this might look like in your class, how to encourage students who may be intimidated by such an undefined assignment, and, not least, how to grade such assignments. Participants will be able to structure an assignment in a course they teach that allows for flexibility and creativity on the part of the student and encourages students to make connections.  They will be able to design a rubric to assess the assignments even when the medium used and the content vary widely.

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FULL ABSTRACT:

Allowing students in a core natural science class to develop a project with class presentation based on their own interests that connected with the course was eye-opening.  While some opted for a traditional research project, others came up with everything from short teaching segments for elementary students, art projects, short stories, a linguistics project for deciphering communications from life forms on other planets, and even a musical composition centered on the Big Bang.  These were engaging, informative for all of us, and I believe a way of helping students forge connections among various areas of learning and interest.  The projects students presented to the class were considerably more engaging for the class than the typical power point or presi and informal evaluations of the project were almost universally positive.  

I get questions from other instructors like “How do you grade something like this, with all that variety?” and “How do you assess in an area that is not your area of expertise?”  I have answers for these, or at least starting points, but some of the questions that were more significant as I worked through the course with students had to do with student discomfort when presented with an open-ended experience.  

For the workshop I would like to do a short presentation with examples of some of the projects – from the more routine to the exciting and energizing and then discuss the drawbacks and difficulties, including grading, assessing and building confidence in the students.  

This was a class of 120 in a tiered lecture room and traditional format, so there were challenges beyond this project.  But most of them are relevant to a good many classes taught at the core course level where large class size and traditional lecture format are the rule.

I will have the participants come up with their own questions about this kind of assignment, then think about how it might work in a course in another discipline.  We will talk about the possibility of bounding the assignment in some way, whether format for presentation or subject matter, and will look at ways to do this on a small scale to begin with.  

Another aspect that is critical for success is assessment - we will work through designing a rubric that works for open-ended projects in a variety of formats and will think about how to motivate students who may be talking the course to “check the box” and fulfill a requirement.  I asked for submissions early in the second half of the semester which allowed me to grade the written portion (which was a requirement for all projects) and then to select some of the most interesting projects.  I then asked these students if they would like to present them to the class for extra credit.  If the classroom had been an active learning space we could have done some as presentations some as a kind of gallery walk depending on what students chose to do to present their materials. 

Participants will be able to structure an assignment in a course they teach that allows for flexibility and creativity on the part of the student and encourages students to make connections.  They will be able to design a rubric to assess the assignments even when the medium used and the content vary widely.
description: Innovations in Teaching &amp; Learning Conference Proceedings, Vol 10 (2018): Small Changes, Big Impact: 10 Years of ITL