Variations on Written Assignments

Both in a campus-based teaching situation as well as in an online teaching situation, issuing written assignements is a very feasible approach for designing learning activities.

Written assignments are one of the most common formats to enable students to acquire  knowledge and skills in a number of domains and for a number of learning outcomes ánd they allow teachers at the same time to support students in this learning process, assess their progress and assess the students' final level of attainement.

Written assignements can come in various forms. With a test one thinks more or less directly about some questions and answers, while an assignment is more like a task that a student has to carry out and that a tutor receives after completion, though intermediate results might also be required. There are many assignments to think of, from heavy to light. Below a number of different types of written assignments are listed. Hopefully this list will spark your imagination to think what kind of writing assignment fits best your learning goals.

• rewriting a 'difficult' article in easy-to-read Dutch;

• correcting incorrect definitions;

• assessing an article for its methodological quality;

• detecting shortcomings in a problem and improving it;

• identifying reasoning errors in an argument;

• separate opinions, interpretations and results in a text;

• formulating valid conclusions from a text provided;

• formulating recommendations for a memo;

• formulating different scenarios to achieve the same goal;

• writing a training programme;

• writing letters to various bodies or persons;

• writing a letter sent to a newspaper or magazine;

• formulating procedural proposals for the handling of reports or policy proposals;

• interpreting given facts in light of different theories;

• describing the degree of similarity between a given model and the reality;