Tip: Multiple Ways to Show Mastery
Offering students choice about how to organize and communicate what they’ve learned while emphasizing the same core skills.
Three weeks ago I shared thoughts on planning for flexibility by designing for online delivery of content and activities, and then I wrote about creating more low-stakes assignments - two small steps towards more flexible, student-centered design choices can help students be more successful. I skipped a week to write about ways we can show respect for our students’ religious and cultural observances for the start of Ramadan last Tuesday, but now I am back to student-centered design with some ideas for allowing students multiple ways of demonstrating mastery of course content & skills.
Creative assignment choices allow more students to demonstrate mastery of key course concepts while maintaining high standards for student learning outcomes.
Take a typical high-stakes course assignment & and re-think its purpose and goals
What learning outcomes are demonstrated by successful completion?
How else could students demonstrate these outcomes?
A key assignment in the courses I teach is learning to write a research paper. I shared some alternatives to the traditional research paper in a post last summer where I walked through how a research paper-type assignment could be re-imagined within different disciplines. My students are typically learning the research process for the first time in my course, and so my goals are less about the topic of what they are researching and more about the development of research skills and written communication skills.
For my students then, the goals of writing a research paper might be to demonstrate critical thinking & communication skills and apply foundational research skills to address a research question. To demonstrate that they have met these objectives, what could they do other than a traditional research paper?
Interview an expert: Students could draft questions based on research, and then conduct the interview or write logical responses if “interviewing” someone no longer alive or simply not available
Create a poster or infographic: After researching a topic, students could present it as a poster or infographic that other students will use to learn about the topic
Simulations of real-life projects: Use research to prepare a grant or research proposal, marketing or business plan, or solution to a problem.
Are these (or the other examples) really so different from a research paper? Not terribly, no. Which is the point - students are still learning the same core skills, they just have some choices about how to organize and communicate what they’ve learned.
