Adopting/Adapting the Common Assignment

There are all kinds of benefits to faculty adopting the common assignment for their courses but how do you go about it? What resources are there to help? This page curates resources for faculty looking to adopt the assignment in their courses. 

Assignment Template

The assignment template gives you an overview of the assignment which is essentially a three part process:

• Teach students the SIFT method (with Library help)

• Between classes students curate examples of information they find

• Students use SIFT to evaluate each other's curated examples

A version of the assignment template for online courses is also available. 

The assignment template is just an overview of the basics of the assignment. You will still need to communicate the assignment in your own words to your students and of course you may choose to further tweak it. See the examples below of how other faculty have done this to get ideas. 

Library Resources

The library is a key resource for that first part of the Curate and SIFT assignment - namely, teaching the SIFT technique to students. As the Foundation's librarian Anne Dempsey is a great resource for the Curate and SIFT assignment and is available to come to Foundations courses to run interactive sessions to help teach students this method. She has also  has created a LibGuide with many resources that can support all courses and modalities. 

Example Adoption/Adaption Resources from Pilot Faculty

Over the Summer of 2024 we had four faculty implement the Curate and SIFT assignment into their courses. These are some of the resources that they developed as part of that implementation. 

Faculty are invited to adopt the Curate and SIFT assignment in ways that work for them in their courses. The template is there to help where it can - for instance, to lighten the load of designing something new. Other faculty may choose to use the template as a starting place and customize the assignment to align with other elements of their courses more closely. 

Using the template as-is

• Patrick Beauchesne created this assignment guide for his students during summer of 2024 if you are looking for an example of how the assignment is presented to students. 

• Shelly Jarenski created a google doc that pulls together language that she used in her syllabus and in Canvas to describe the assignment. In addition to the assignment language, there are also examples of  student responses to Curate and SIFT prompts available at this link.

• Anna Muller also provided examples of student work from her summer 2024 class.  

Customizing the template

• Nadja Rottner customized the Curate and SIFT assignment to align more closely with her course outcomes of teaching research methods. She created this introductory Powerpoint for her 300-level foundations students during summer of 2024. If you are looking for a way to integrate the Curate and Sift method into a broader good research and digital literacy umbrella these are great examples. This also includes some first steps on how to productively use UM-Chat GPT.

Reflections from pilot faculty

We also put together this video with reflections from pilot faculty about how teaching with Curate and SIFT went over the Summer of 2024