Designing Effective Assignments

Many students arrive at college with little background or experience in writing. Although some do write extensively in high school, they still need clear and detailed assignments in order to perform well. Your assignments should reflect program outcomes, and also provide meaningful opportunities for students to explore and learn about new topics of interest to them. Also, your guidelines should explain your expectations clearly, while also providing the resources to ensure success.

Instructors follow a range of best practices when drafting and sharing their assignments. This post will explore those practices in detail. The composition director also maintains an evolving assignment gallery online, where instructors have uploaded materials. You can browse these assignments to get ideas for your own course, and to see how instructors illustrate the best practices described here. If you can't access this folder, send a request to the Composition Director.

Foundations of Effective Assignments

Inquiry should guide your assignment guidelines and expectations, especially ones requiring research. You should help students articulate questions and problems tied to their own observations and experiences, and then link these questions to conversations happening in public, workplace, or academic and scientific discourse communities. In other words, students need to conduct research into articles published on this topic in newspapers, magazines, and journals.

The most effective assignments offer students freedom to choose their own topics. You can decide on the genre and the other details such as length, number of sources. For example, some instructors may require students to write a literacy narrative, a food memoir, or a paper exploring an aspect of state or local history. These are great ideas, and they still give students room to decide what they'll write about. On the other hand, requiring students to write about a specific historical event takes away agency and stifle critical thinking. In short, it's never a good idea to mandate the assignment topic. Students must undergo the process of developing their own ideas and questions.

Consider a common assignment: the 5-page rhetorical analysis. True, this assignment does prescribe certain aspects of content by requiring students to engage in analysis using the rhetorical triangle, the appeals, the rhetorical situation, or Toulmin's method. But most rhetorical analysis assignments allow students to choose the essay or speech they plan to analyze, usually with teacher approval. A teacher might model rhetorical analysis by assigning readings that students discuss in class.

But imagine if a teacher required all of their students to submit a 5-page rhetorical analysis on Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" or MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. While these are exemplary models of rhetoric, forcing students to write 5 pages on one or the other removes agency. It creates a situation in which students are only performing empty motions of analysis to satisfy a teacher's preconceived notions about a text. Plus, the teacher now has to read 20 essays that make many of the same points. They may become frustrated and start grading unfairly, due to a sense of monotony and repetition that they brought on themselves.

A first-semester writing course usually does provide some restrictions on topic. For example, you can ask students to write about a particular theme: race, freedom of speech and censorship, or gender. These broad topics still allow a wide degree of agency. However, avoid prescribing the topic or subject of the papers. Too much restriction can lead to frustration and disengagement.

When you assign a paper, always indicate the genre you want students to write in and help them become familiar with it. You also need to scaffold the assignment with readings, short writing assignments, and peer review opportunities. Once you've assigned a paper, it's a good idea to spend several classes reading and critiquing published examples of the genre, as well as samples of student work. 

Common genres for first-year writing courses include literacy narratives, essays on prominent socio-political issues, rhetorical analysis, and research-based assignments. See the curricular guidelines post for a list of required assignments for each course.

Audiences & Contexts

It's important to establish context, purpose, and audience for each major writing project you assign to students. Discuss these issues in class, and provide some discussion about them in the official guidelines.

You should identify yourself as a primary reader of student essays. But discuss the role you plan to play. The most meaningful assignments situate the teacher as interlocutor and learner. As the instructor, you don't simply want students to write things they think you want to hear. They should take the opportunity to show you something you didn't know, or hadn't considered before. We may be experts in writing, but there are many things that students know that we don't. Furthermore, they can learn new things and share them with us through their research.

Classroom peers form the next most immediate audience. If you're creating an active community in which students learn from each other, then they can use these different backgrounds to help make rhetorical decisions. Any given classroom will see students of different economic class, gender, sexual identity, beliefs, and ethnicities. Students should learn to adapt their writing to these different audiences. In many ways, the classroom operates as a smaller, safer public space.

You should encourage students to think about how their writing could circulate beyond the classroom. Even if they are sharing particular drafts with you and their peers, the ultimate goal is to craft projects that they can continue developing and share in other contexts--undergraduate research conferences, internships, campus jobs, even family members.

Some students might even decide to turn research papers into videos, podcasts, or material for circulation through social media. For example, a student who works as an RA might begin research on sexual assault in your class, and then write a paper that she later turns into a PowerPoint or Prezi to share with other RAs in an effort to reduce risks on campus. Their engagement in these other contexts begins with preparation in your class.

Writing Your Assignments

Your assignment guidelines do more than offer a topic and due date. They convey your expectations and establish a path toward a concrete goal. Try to explain your expectations clearly, and don't leave room for ambiguity or misinterpretation. For example, a research paper assignment should briefly outline the basic organizational structure you want, and provide links to deeper explanations about thesis statements, source synthesis, citation, and other important components of research.

Avoid assumptions when it comes to your guidelines. Certain aspects of writing may seem like "no brainers" to you, but remember that many of your students may not know the importance of citation, or how to structure a thesis statements. Some students may not have even heard the term "thesis statement" until this year. That's why they're taking your class.

You need to explain in your guidelines what kinds of sources they should use, an estimate of how many citations they should provide, and how they should organize their papers. For example, ask yourself some of these questions when  you create your assignment:

• What do you want students to learn by completing this assignment?
• What are some published examples of what you want them to submit?
• Have you written a paper like this before yourself? (If not, you should.)
• What structure should the paper follow?
• How long should the paper be?
• Will students need to do outside research? What kind? Primary (interviews, observations, archives?) or secondary (articles from newspapers, magazines, journals)?
• What difficulties do you think your students will encounter? How can they overcome these obstacles?
• What processes could students follow to complete the paper? How many hours will it take them to complete?

Your assignment guidelines should state these expectations explicitly. Students come to college with a wide range of literacies and educational backgrounds. A few will have written 20-page papers. Others will have barely written a book report. Your guidelines should address these different backgrounds and anticipate the kinds of questions they'll have.

Formatting & Sharing Assignments

Remember that students are juggling work and expectations from at least four other instructors. You can help students by presenting your assignments in organized and eye-friendly documents, and by locating them in one central place. Your assignment should include the following information:

• Title of the Assignment
• Course & Semester
• Due dates for rough drafts, peer review, and revision
• One paragraph description of purpose
• Description of explicit expectations and criteria
• Outline of steps students should follow when research, outlining, drafting, or revising
• Brainstorming questions to help them select a topic
• A list of tips and suggestions
• Directions on where and how to submit drafts
• Links to other resources such as textbook chapters, websites, rubrics, and other materials related to the assignment

Beyond that, you should also embed your assignments in many different areas, like your course schedule. Give students different ways to access the same information.

You can distribute your assignments in a number of ways. Always make sure you make a digital copy available on your LMS (Blackboard or Google Classroom.) Some instructors still share paper copies of assignments. That's acceptable, but remember that paper can be lost. Also, you will likely need to alter or clarify your guidelines, or even extend due dates. Paper copies can lead to confusion if you need to make changes.

You should devote at least one class day to introducing a new major assignment. Provide a short explanation (5 minutes) and then give students a chance to read the guidelines in your presence. Also give them a chance to ask questions, and then have them complete some in-class work related to the assignment. Students may not think of questions immediately, but they will if you give them a task that prompts them to start thinking about the work in concrete ways.

You should avoid introducing major assignments at the end of class. This indirectly signals to students that the work is unimportant. It doesn't give anyone enough time to process the information. As a result, students may not put the amount of energy and attention to the work that you expect.

Assignments as Resources

Assignments also do more than outline expectations. They provide strategies and resources. You should also indicate to students what specific sources and databases they should use. Especially if you decide to give them a specific topic, such as state or local history, you'll need to meet with a librarian or information literacy specialist and give students names and links to databases, online archives, websites, or other materials you want them to consult.

For example: Imagine an instructor wants students to research the history of a food in the Arkansas region. Many students would not know where to begin to find this kind of information. Without effective infrastructure and guidance, students will likely grow frustrated and produce less than their best work.

Supporting Your Assignments with Classwork

Scaffold your assignments with readings and class discussions. Students tend to succeed when they have a wealth of examples to guide their rhetorical decisions. Although we don't want students to simply copy others' work, we do most of our basic learning through imitation. That's why many teachers try to provide at least 2-3 examples of student work for each assignment, as well as 3-4 readings from well-known or published writers.

These readings can serve as required assignments for the week following the introduction of a major paper. It's a good idea to make them the foundation of in-class discussion and group-work. You can even conduct practice peer review workshops on sample papers.

Sequencing Your Assignments

Be careful about requiring too many short papers. Short assignments need to inform and scaffold larger ones. For example, each major paper calls for shorter assignments such as free-writings, topic proposals, peer-critique memos, and miniature reflections. Other shorter assignments could involve short summaries of readings or mandatory discussion board posts.Some instructors have students keep a reading or reflection journal throughout the semester. A recurring project like this can be helpful, but you should resist the temptation to over-comment. Most experienced instructors simply monitor progress on these and tell students up front that they may only offer brief feedback on them. The primary benefit of journals is for students to have material for their reflection essays.


Decide carefully how you'll sequence your assignments. Students need at least 2 weeks to complete a draft, and 3 is ideal. That window gives everyone time to discuss readings and sample papers that familiarize them with the genre expectations, as well as ways in which they can deviate and innovate those conventions. The length of time also allows for brainstorming, topic proposals, and peer review workshops. It's best not to assign students a new paper until they've completely finished and submitted their current project. You might even want to wait on introducing new work until you've had time to read and provide feedback.