"Nobody can write who never writes, just as one cannot swim who never swims."
- Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare to Teach
Before you develop a writing assignment, make sure you have decided how it will advance the learning objectives, or learning outcomes, of your course and how it will fit into the sequence of your course assignments. (See Developing a "W" Course Syllabus.)
This section discusses the development of a "prompt" or written
assignment sheet, something you should provide with every major graded
assignment.
Developing an assignment requires that you make some decisions before you produce a prompt:
Clarify the assignment's genre (i.e., the type of document) and audience; Clarify
your expectations in relation to your students' level of knowledge: Is
the task difficult enough to challenge but still within their reach?
In the written prompt, you must:
Communicate your expectations for the genre, audience, format, length, topic or task; Communicate your grading criteria (might be done as a separate grading rubric); Communicate
the amount of time available for completing the assignment and any
required steps to be completed before the final product is due; Communicate your expectations for research, including documentation style and number and type of sources.
After you have produced a written prompt, you should:
Read the assignment aloud in class. Solicit questions and feedback on the task. Clarify
the assignment and your expectations. Doing so can cut down on time you
will spend giving feedback or grading because students who understand
the assignment will write better and better fulfill your requirements.
Some
instructors bring a draft of their assignment to class, ask students to
critique it for clarity and completeness (what words do they need
defines? Do they understand basic terms such as "analyze" or
"summarize"? Do they understand the grading criteria?), then revise the
draft for final presentation and another round of discussion.
If your syllabus does not do so, specify:
Grading and responding policies; Grading symbols/notation you commonly use; Helpful
resources such as the University Writing Center, Aggie Honors Office,
or Evans Library, writing handbooks, or other reference materials.
Grading Policies:
Some instructors suggest a 24-hour cooling off period before students
dispute grades; others require written memos. It is also useful to
establish a policy that explains how you grade; for example, you may
want to set a limit on the amount of corrections you'll do of basic
grammar and punctuation. Or you may want to let students know that you
will not read papers with so many errors that you are distracted (in
which case you'll have to include conditions for resubmission).
Additional Resources
White, Edward M. "Assessment and the Design of Writing Assignments." Teaching and Assessing Writing: Recent Advances in Understanding, Evaluating, and Improving Student Performance. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Hobson, Eric H. "Designing and Grading Written Assignments." New Directions for Teaching and Learning 74 (Summer 1988): 51-57.
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Writing Instruction 
