Student learning isn't over at the end of any given school year. Many schools require students to do schoolwork over the summer, like research or projects. Recently, some schools have allowed the students themselves to design the project they want to complete. While student designed projects have seen mixed results, they beg the question of whether students or teachers are better are designing projects for learning over summer break. While student-designed projects allow for a bit more creativity, it is clear that teachers should design projects because they have more knowledge about how to design projects, they describe to students how to complete said project, and they are more likely to design the project purely to help the student learn.

Summer projects designed by a teacher are created so that students can learn the material over break. Seeing how all teachers have a degree in teaching, they have a lot of knowledge on how to create a good assignment in certain scenarios. Even if they did not, they would still know more than the average student due to their experience in the classroom. A good example of a summer project done right is the summer assignment for incoming Generic_School freshmen. When they get accepted, they receive a few books in a package welcoming them to the university. They are then supposed to read the books over the summer so they can have a discussion with the author of the books when they get to school in the fall. While getting the author of a book is probably unreasonable for most high schools, it would be very easy to have students discuss the books in a seminar during the first two weeks of school.

When teachers grade projects, many follow a certain grading rubric to decide what grade a certain student has received on an assignment. However if a student designed a project, it would likely be much harder to grade for the teachers and complete for the students. A student designed project may have a messy grading rubric, a rubric that only grades off of completion, or even no rubric at all, opting for students to create a project with few guidelines. While such rubrics may create more chance of creativity due to a lack of specificity, more times than not it will only to the students not knowing what they are supposed to do to get a good grade. Speaking from personal experiences in school, it's incredibly frustrating when you don't know what you need to do on an assignment to get a good grade. Teachers would also have a bad time grading student designed projects, as it is harder to grade an assignment if they don't know what aspects of learning to grade or how to grade them. It would be better for a teacher to design a project so students know what to do in a project and teachers know how to grade it.

When designing a summer project, students would be at the end of a school year and burnt out with learning. When faced with another project at the end of the year, many students may lazily design projects that are easy to complete. Some examples of an easy project include reading a book without annotations or comprehension or creating a small research project that could be completed in a day. Although said projects could easily earn good grades, they don't help the student in learning the material over the break. If the students do not learn the material over break, then it defeats the purpose of having a project over summer break. An easy project with no nuance is a waste of time for everyone involved, as the teachers don't teach the student anything and students don't learn anything.

Learning material over the summer is important for students. Without it, many of them would forget the material over the break and come into the new school year completely empty headed. Teacher designed projects are by far the best way for students to learn new things over summer break. Although projects don't need to take up a majority of someone's time in the summer, a small amount of learning would allow students to take a much needed break while still retaining what they know from the previous year. Keeping the material in their head over the summer will help students become better learners. Helping students become better learners will help them succeed both in school and life.