Should students design their own summer projects? Can they design better projects than the teachers? While students may be aware of their own weaknesses and design projects to help themselves learn, students may often get stuck during certain parts of the project. These situations would become a disadvantage to the students due to their lack of prior knowledge about making projects to maximize learning. On the other hand, these situations would become advantages to students if teachers designed the project and were able to help the students to minimize time spent being stuck on certain parts of the project. Summer projects should be teacher-designed because teachers have sufficient experience with students in order to select the conditions for the project that are needed to help students learn during the summer, they would have sufficient knowledge about the project in order to quickly respond to student questions during the summer, and they can communicate with students and provide feedback in order to help students take maximum advantage of the summer project to learn.

Teachers have experience with students that would help them set conditons for the projects that would be beneficial for students to learn during the summer. For example, if students were required to report on historical events as part of a summer project and the teachers were aware that the students did not have enough experience finding credible sources, teachers would be able to provide a set of credible sources, such as textbooks and websites, that the students could use for their project. In this situation, teachers would be able to eliminate the need for students to find credible sources and students would be able to spend more time learning about the historical event they were reporting about. Teachers should design summer projects for students because they have the experience with students in order to anticipate and remove tasks that are irrelevant or detrimental to the learning of the students.

Teachers will be able to quickly answer questions related to the summer project, so that students minimize the time they spend being stuck on a certain part of the project. For example, if students were required to experiment on plants as part of a summer project, students could ask teachers about making the hypothesis or about conditions which the experiment should follow in order to achieve ideal results. In this situation, because the teachers designed the project, they would be able to anticipate these questions and provide the appropriate answers in order for students to complete the project. Teachers should be responsible for designing summer projects for students because they would have a better understanding of the project, and they would be able to quickly provide appropriate answers to student questions.

Teachers will be able to communicate with students more efficiently and provide meaningful feedback in order to help students take maximum advantage of the learning time during summer break. For example, if students were required to write an essay about a major theme in Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, students could share their thesis statements with their teachers, and the teachers would be able to provide references to different part of the novel for students to improve their thesis statements. In this situation, communication between students and teachers will enable the students to learn more about the novel by incorparating more parts of the novel into their essays. Teachers should design summer projects because they would be able to communicate effectively with students and provide feedback that allows students to spend more time improving their projects.

It is necessary for teachers to design summer projects because set conditions that allow students to continue learning during the summer, they can provide better answers to student questions, and they can provide meaningful feedback to students. Teachers are crucial to the design of summer projects because of the skills and experience that they bring when designing projects to help students learn during the summer. Therefore, teachers should be required to design summer projects instead of students, which will improve student learning.