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Written Assignment Best Practices Guide
Formal writing requires sustained focus on content and close attention to detail. For these reasons, written assignments can be an effective assessment tool in graduate courses when they are thoughtfully and purposefully designed. This guide provides recommendations for faculty who are looking to harness the pedagogical benefits of written assignments.
Game-Based Learning Experiences
Game-based learning (GBL) is a learning experience, or set of learning experiences, delivered through gameplay or game-like activities with defined learning outcomes. GBL is often confused with gamification, which is the application of game elements to a non-gaming experience. GBL engages students cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally, and socioculturally (Plass et al., 2015). Many factors should be considered when designing GBL, including narrative, player positioning, and interactive design (Dickey, 2005).
Accessing Open Educational Resources
While Open Educational Resources (OERs) can take on many forms, including assignments, videos, and articles, open textbooks have provided students with more affordable options for accessing and purchasing required course materials.
Copyright
From time to time instructors may want to include in their courses copyrighted materials like images, print content, audio recordings, or videos. The University of Minnesota Libraries define copyright as “the area of law that deals with creation, ownership, sale, and use of creative and expressive works.”
Backward Design
Backward design is, as the name suggests, a process for designing curricula, courses, and lectures by working backwards from big-picture learning goals. The concept, introduced by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005), suggests that instructors create assessments, activities, and course content that are explicitly aligned with the broader learning goals of the unit. This is different from the traditional content-driven approach to learning design, which focuses on course content first and only secondarily tries to align that content with learning goals.
Creating Learning Objectives
Learning objectives help inform students about what they will learn and how they will be assessed. Objectives are meant to align with course expectations. Therefore, any assigned exercises should be guided by the course’s specific learning objectives. Everything in the course should work together to ensure students master the course objectives.
Problem-Based Learning
Problem Based Learning is a teaching method used to facilitate student knowledge acquisition. This teaching method is often confused with Project Based Learning, which centers on students applying knowledge. The focus of Problem Based Learning is students acquiring the knowledge. Since the two methods use the same acronym, they are easily confused, but have different objectives for students.
Discussion Best Practices Guide
Discussions are an impactful way to build engagement and discourse in asynchronous online courses. When properly designed, discussions can encompass the three pillars of engagement: student-content, student-student, and student-instructor. Asynchronous discussions allow students time to reflect prior to participating, which can lead to deeper insights and richer discourse. Moreover, when participating in discussions, students have the opportunity to collaborate with others, participate in an online learning community, and gain insights from others’ unique experiences and perspectives (Ransdell, Borror & Su, 2018). Facilitating multiple types of engagement in an online course can improve student motivation, satisfaction, and achievement (Dailey-Hebert, 2018).
Rubric Best Practices Guide
When used effectively, rubrics facilitate clear and consistent assessment, enhancing the learning experience for both students and instructors. In the online classroom environment, where students do not have the frequent, physical access that a traditional classroom provides, rubrics can provide the added benefit of increasing student engagement with course material and clarifying an instructor's expectations (Keengwe, Adjei-Boateng, & Diteeyont, as cited in Haught, Ahern, & Ruberg, 2017). In fact, according to Martin & Bolliger (2018), online learners have reported that grading rubrics are highly important for learner-to-instructor engagement. For instructors, too, rubrics simplify the grading process, promoting consistency across students and terms. Eliminating the guesswork from grade determination, well-designed rubrics can save professors precious time and energy.