a photo showing a human figure in action, performing a martial arts-type kick

It's Time to Design Your First Online Assignment

Assignment Overview

In our previous module, you prepared two Module Overview Pages in your Canvas sandbox course. Each module overview page includes a list of learning objectives that are aligned with your course level outcomes. For this activity, you will build upon one of those modules to design an assignment that aligns with one or more of the module-level objectives.

To complete this assignment, you will need to identify:

what your students will do
which module level objective(s) the assignment or discussion will assess
what tool(s) will be used
what materials students will need (if any)
how the assignment/discussion will foster student-student interactions (key for active learning!)
your assessment plan (you will create an analytic or holistic rubric to assess the assignment/discussion)

Your activity should be designed to incorporate student-student interaction at some point in the procedures for the activity. This may be at the culmination -- for example, will you have students share projects with the class and then engage with each others' work in a critical analysis or reflective discussion about what they've learned from one another? Or is the activity a group project or discussion that will incorporate student-student interactions throughout its stages?

When an online student begins to engage with an assignment/discussion online, she needs a clear understanding of what the activity will consist of. Often, it's tempting to jump right into a tool and start putting together an assignment (isn't it?) but if you do that, you are most likely going to need to back up and re-adjust several elements that you did not account for. Starting with a sketch -- or an outline for your activity -- is a great way to conceptualize your expectations, how the students will move through the activity (its procedures), materials they will need, and develop your assessment plan.

What you will need to prepare your online activity outline:

Learning Objectives the assignment/discussion will assess.
- What do you expect students to demonstrate in this assignment/discussion ?
  
  Identify at least one module-level objective from one of the two module overview pages you developed in our previous module.
Materials -
- Beyond the materials the students already use for the course, what will they need?
Procedures -
- Step-by-step instructions explaining what your students will do. This may seem unnecessary to you but working through an assignment/discussion at this level of detail is incredibly helpful (reflect on your own experiences as a student in this class!). You'll often unveil issues that you have not thought about. You may also make notes to yourself here about screenshots or videos you may want to develop later. Visuals help visual learners and will reduce the number of questions you receive!
Rubric -
- Developing a rubric allows you to communicate your expectations in advance to your students. In turn, they have a clear idea of what to do. Rubrics improves the quality of student work, reduce your grading time, and transparently share how your course's assignments/discussions are aligned with course outcomes.
- The rubric you provide for your assignment/discussion may incorporate a list of criteria and a measure of performance (analytic rubric -- not sure? Revisit the Rubric content in Module 3).
- Or you may simply include a list of criteria with a description what students are expected to do to demonstrate proficiency (holistic rubric - not sure? Revisit the Rubric content in Module 3).

Image credit: Kung Fu or Wushu by Ojie Paloma-CC-BY-NC-ND