Assigning Writing in Large Classes

I often hear people complain that they would love to assign more writing in their courses, but they cannot in their large lecture courses due to the time commitment it takes to work with this many students. Participants in the Spring 2022 Delta Writing course decided to confront this belief and explore ways that we can include writing in courses despite how large they might be. These participants agreed that they wanted to add writing elements to even the largest classes they might teach to help integrate writing throughout their students’ college experiences as well as give them a chance to demonstrate learning outside of tests and exams.

After multiple class discussions, faculty interviews and observations, and reading the resources included at the bottom of this page, our class came up with the following tips on how to include writing assignments in large classes to help integrate writing into more of the curriculum for our students.

Low Stakes Writing Assignments

As described in our section on low-stakes writing, writing does not have to always be formal pieces of writing graded with extensive feedback. Low-stakes writing can help students think through course concepts, and you do not need to spend as much time on them when you have larger classes.

• Use short, informal writing to check students’ understanding of course concepts
• Assign low-stakes, short assignments that allow students to be creative and connect their life experience with course concepts
• Allow students to use short writing assignments as notes during a test

Shorter Formal Assignments

Not every writing assignment needs to be 10+ pages. In fact, most of the writing that students will do after college will involve shorter, concise writing, so learning to convey an argument in fewer words is an important skill.

• Assign part of a larger paper, such as writing just the literature review or methods section of a paper
• Take turns asking students in lab or discussion groups to write short summaries of each lab/discussion meeting and allow them to share their own experience and opinion of the class in these
• Task students to write an abstract for an article they have to read for class or research
• Ask students to write multiple versions of a thesis statement for a paper they might write on course topics
• Integrate short microtheme papers (very short thesis-driven essays) into discussion and lecture. Students could read these aloud in class/groups and/or use them to help prepare for in-class discussions
• Have students write group papers so they learn how to work together on a writing project

Ease the Time Burden for Feedback and Assessment

Providing feedback on and grading assignments is probably the most time-consuming aspect of writing assignments. Changing your typical practices for larger classes can vastly help reduce the time you spend reading and providing feedback and comments on papers.

• Try a practice like “journal roulette” where you read and comment on only a subset of students’ writing for each assignment, but they never know when their turn will come up
• Give feedback on earlier stages of the writing process, even just first paragraphs or outlines, where you will have less to read and comment on and students will have more time to use and integrate that feedback
• Don’t feel the need to grade each writing assignment, or grade some for just completion
• Have students submit a short memo with their assignments reflecting on how they think they met and fell short of the writing requirements. This will help students learn through reflection and make grading quicker for you
• Consider having students grade one another’s work for lower-stakes assignments
• Try using a rubric when grading and then writing fewer comments

General Best Practices

Many of the tips from the rest of the sourcebook are also helpful for making writing go well for larger classes because it will make sure all students are starting from a stronger stance. For instance:

• Make sure assignment descriptions are very clear, and also explain the assignment and take questions in-class to help with clarity of expectations
• Require multiple drafts of different stages of the paper due throughout the semester with feedback from peers along the way to help scaffold their process
• Create a way for students to “publish” their writing, such as on a discussion board or course website to raise student motivation
• Provide models or examples to help students know what to aim towards

Additional resources:

Using Writing in Large Classes

Integrating Low-Stakes Writing in Larger Classes

Writing Assignments for Large Classes