Designing Meaningful Writing Assignments | Ohio College Teaching Consortium

This resource on designing meaningful writing assignments was was written and compiled by Mandy Olejnik, Ph.D., Assistant Director of Howe Writing Across the Curriculum at Miami University (Ohio).

Table Of Contents

Introduction to Designing Meaningful Writing Assignments
High-Stakes vs. Low-Stakes (or No-Stakes) Writing Assignments
Strategies Toward Creating Meaningful (Higher-Stakes) Writing Assignments
Strategies Toward Creating Meaningful (Lower-Stakes) Writing Assignments
Further Reading

Introduction to Designing Meaningful Writing Assignments

Writing is a useful tool for learning that can be utilized in your classroom, regardless of which subject you teach (or at which level). “Writing” can be broadly understood as anything that communicates meaning, including not only extended formal prose but all communication including charts, graphs, slides, and presentations. In this way, writing might present itself different across disciplines and contexts, but all disciplines write, and can design meaningful writing assignments to promote deep learning in the classroom.

In this resource, you can find researched-based strategies for designing meaningful writing assignments in your courses that promote deep learning.

High-Stakes vs. Low-Stakes (or No-Stakes) Writing Assignments

Writing in your classroom can be either high-stakes (usually longer and worth a substantial amount of points) or low-stakes (usually shorter and worth minimal points). Additionally, writing assignments can even be no-stakes and serve as an ungraded warm-up or reflective activity in class.

There are various reasons why you may wish to implement writing assignments of varying stakes into your classroom. Low-stakes writing is notably vital for students’ learning, as they can worry less about their grades and more on writing out their thoughts. For example, a low-stakes assignment might be for students to summarize an article read for class into a compact tweet that any lay-person could read or understand. The emphasis here is audience awareness of the assignment, even as it’s presented as something fun and much less intimidating than a formal report. Ultimately, not every writing assignment has to be high-stakes (like a more formal report laying out research findings on market analysis). When used in a low or even no-stakes manner, writing can be used as a generative means of learning that reinforces course concepts.

For more ideas about how to incorporate writing to learn activities into your classroom, check out the “What Is Writing to Learn?” page on the WAC Clearinghouse.

Strategies Toward Creating Meaningful (Higher-Stakes) Writing Assignments

Identify your learning goals for the course.

In all teaching contexts, assignments in a course should align with the instructor goals. Consider what you want students to learn, and how a writing assignment can help students learn. Any assignment you create should further your goals for student learning, not detract from them or over-complicate them. You can start by listing out your learning goals and the types of things students need to know about (declarative knowledge) vs. know how to do (procedural knowledge). Then, consider: how can your students work toward those goals? What can you design for them to show you what they’ve learned?

Scaffold major writing assignments into component parts.

Just like your own writing tasks in your professional lives, student writing assignments can be broken down into various parts from brainstorming ideas to drafting up initial drafts to getting feedback from a peer. Intentionally design your writing assignment in “steps” or “stages” that reflect a process of learning for students.

For an example, see the “Gerontology 602: Theory Project” assignment description under “Effective Writing Assignments” on the Howe Center for Writing Excellence’s Resources for Teaching Writing page.

Go beyond long, formal prose.

Writing, again, is capacious; it is not only long, formal prose but can also be shorter prose in a situated context, like website text or a series of tweets or an infographic. In your courses, consider what “genres” of writing people in your field/students’ future careers typically create, and if a writing assignment can ask students to interact with that genre.

Set clear expectations for students.

Design your assignment descriptions and other teaching materials to make your expectations clear, especially in terms of what writing “looks like” in your particular discipline. Writing varies across disciplines, and students experience many distinct types of writing throughout their higher education careers. Taking the time to not only lay out expectations in writing but also talk and discuss them with students during class time can help them better make sense of what you’re asking them to do.

Title “writing” assignments intentionally.

Just as disciplinary writing varies across disciplines, so too do the terms we associate with them, such as “essay” or “paper.” Be as descriptive as possible with your writing assignment titles, such as “Stakeholder Analysis” or “Marketing White Paper.” What kinds of things are students working on in your assignment, and how can the assignment’s title accurately reflect that?

When possible, consider having students work in teams.

Learning is inherently social, and many students will find themselves in workplace situations where they’ll create and compose text and other communicative acts together with others. Not all formal writing assignments have to be individual papers written in formal prose. What might a collaborative website assignment look like, where students can work on the design, written text, complementing images, and more? If it would work for your particular course and subject matter, explore some team-based writing options, and check out the OCTC’s resource page on conducting effective group and team work.

Create assessments that align with your learning outcomes.

When creating assessment materials like rubrics or other holistic instruments, base it on the learning outcomes you originally identified when creating the assignment. Assess students on being able to meet those outcomes, and have your expectations for the assignments likewise line up with your outcomes (for example, don’t prioritize higher-order thinning and then penalize students heavily for grammatical errors when that is neither an outcome or clearly-defined, important expectation).

Strategies Toward Creating Meaningful (Lower-Stakes) Writing Assignments

Build activities in before and around major writing assignments.

Lower-stakes writing assignments (like writing-to-learn writing activities) can promote student thinking toward a larger project. It may feel intimidating to write a literature review, for instance, but feel easier to write summaries of sources and then put them together in conversation via a literacy matrix grid. For an example of a synthesis grid, see this example from Florida International University.

Get creative with writing.

Have students try writing a poem, or writing to a different kind of audience, or even creating something visually or aurally. From young ages, students learn more when having fun with an assignment or course activity. Creativity can enhance learning at the college-level as well.

Make writing activities a regular practice.

Students can benefit tremendously from reflecting on their writing over time, or from being exposed to different kinds of generative writing prompts and activities. Consider featuring lower-stakes writing activities at the beginning or end of each unit, where students become used to writing becoming a means of them sharing what they’ve learned or expressing ways in which they’re still confused. Consistency can reinforce learning.

….But don’t bombard students with “busywork.”

Again, from a young age students are used to being assigned worksheets and homework and activities that weren’t fully contextualized for their learning. If you incorporate meaningful lower-stakes writing activities into your courses, articulate the importance of them, such as telling students you are asking them to reflect on their ideas now so that they have something written down that they can return to the following week when their project proposals are due.

Experiment with different modalities.

Just as higher-stakes writing assignments can take various forms, lower-stakes writing can as well, ranging from images to videos even to voice recordings and 3-D creations. Students can get creative in how they “compose” content for activities. Changing up the modality in which students “write” can make assignments seem less monotonous and more fun for students.

Assign these activities points.

Consider making a formal statement of the “value” of these lower-stakes activities by assigning a small amount of points to them. While some assignments (like opening freewrites) may not necessarily need to have points attached to them, others (like writing a few paragraphs of a paper for homework) can. You could have a specific category of assignment for these activities weighted into the overall course average, which also reflects the importance of these steps in students’ overall learning journeys.

Introduction to Designing Meaningful Writing Assignments

High-Stakes vs. Low-Stakes (or No-Stakes) Writing Assignments

Strategies Toward Creating Meaningful (Higher-Stakes) Writing Assignments

Strategies Toward Creating Meaningful (Lower-Stakes) Writing Assignments

Further Reading