Checklist for Designing Formal Writing Assignments

✓ Does the writing task clearly relate to the listed learning goals? Identifying learning goals and linking the writing task to these goals offers students greater clarity in why they’re being asked to write and how they can satisfactorily complete the assignment.

✓ Is the final writing assignment the culmination of smaller writing tasks that prepare students to be successful? Scaffolding or sequencing your final assignment helps students build the necessary skills and confidence to succeed with the tasks asked of them. This is especially true if students are writing in an unfamiliar genre, like a job-related document that they have not been exposed to yet. Smaller writing tasks can be informal, low-stakes writing that occur in- or out-of-class.

✓ Does the writing task allow students to make personal connections to the topic? Writing studies scholars Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller and Neal Lerner found that writing projects are meaningful when they “offer students opportunities to make personal connections to the topic, the processes, or the genre of writing.” Personal connections can be wide-ranging, too: writing about students’ passions, family or friends, communities, and more.

✓ Have you scheduled opportunities for students to receive feedback from you or peers? Giving students the opportunity to get feedback from you or peers—and, just as importantly, to offer feedback to their peers—can get students closer to meeting learning goals. Further, peer review has the added benefit of giving students the opportunity to encounter other students’ writing.

✓ Does the student have a clear task? A clear task may look like a “real world” writing scenario or a specific problem in your discipline. Designing an authentic scenario or disciplinary problem can avoid the problem of what John Bean calls “all-about” writing, where students dump all the information they know about a topic without organizing it properly.

✓ Does the student have a clear role or purpose? Asking the student to inhabit a particular role—for example, a civil engineer writing a construction proposal or a newspaper editor—can lead to greater understanding of the type of writing expected of students.

✓ Have you specified the audience or reader that the student should be writing to? Specifying the audience(s) for students gives them clarity around their readers’ background knowledge or expertise. Rather than writing to you to prove that they are knowledgeable, students can write more authentically when given a real-world audience.

✓ Have you identified the writing genre that the student should use? For example, you might ask students to produce a “letter to the editor,” which has a certain style (informal), certain characteristics (begins with “Dear” or “To”), and length requirements (250-300 words, generally). Make sure that students are familiar with the conventions of the type of writing you’re asking them to produce.

✓ Is the writing task inclusive of all learners? Offering students multiple different means of communicating their learning—for example, producing videos, podcasts, or mixed media compositions—can ensure that all students, including students with disabilities, have the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge or expertise with the writing task. Further, ensure that idiomatic or culturally-specific language is properly defined or explained.

✓ Have you provided the evaluation criteria? Students will know what to prioritize in their writing when you’ve provided evaluation criteria. Whether holistic or broken into discrete point totals, an assignment rubric should be presented to students with the assignment sheet.