Assignment Design for Research and Writing

Degree of Originality

None    ♦     Some   ♦     100%!

• What role does originality carry in your assignment? Do you simply want to see that students are injecting novel aspects into an assignment, or do you want students to approach the topic in a completely original way? (Examples from you will be instructive.)
  • Consider if you want to move from summary to reflection to individual analysis/interpretation with different assignments to ease students into producing original work.
  • Consider that even an “open” topic, in order to show originality, may still require some parameters to help students feel comfortable. You can keep the topic open but ask for their strongest reaction, best use of an item, reasons why something won’t work, etc. to give students a framework in which they can be original.