importance of assignment for teachers

A survey conducted by the Associated Press has revealed that around 58% of parents feel that their child has been given the right amount of assignments. Educators are thrilled that the majority has supported the thought of allocating assignments, and they think that it is just right.

However, the question arises when students question the importance of giving assignments for better growth. Studies have shown that students often get unsuccessful in understanding the importance of assignments.

What key purpose does an assignment have? They often question how an assignment could be beneficial. Let us explain why a teacher thinks it is best to allot assignments. The essential functions of assigning tasks or giving assignments come from many intentions. 

What is the Importance of Assignment- For Students 

The importance of the assignment is not a new concept. The principle of allocating assignments stems from students’ learning process. It helps teachers to evaluate the student’s understanding of the subject. Assignments develop different practical skills and increase their knowledge base significantly. As per educational experts, mastering a topic is not an impossible task to achieve if they learn and develop these skills.  

Cognitive enhancement 

While doing assignments, students learn how to conduct research on subjects and comprise the data for using the information in the given tasks. Working on your assignment helps you learn diverse subjects, compare facts, and understand related concepts. It assists your brain in processing information and memorizing the required one. This exercise enhances your brain activity and directly impacts cognitive growth. 

Ensured knowledge gain   

When your teacher gives you an assignment, they intend to let you know the importance of the assignment. Working on it helps students to develop their thoughts on particular subjects. The idea supports students to get deep insights and also enriches their learning. Continuous learning opens up the window for knowledge on diverse topics. The learning horizon expanded, and students gained expertise in subjects over time.      

Improve students’ writing pattern 

Experts have revealed in a study that most students find it challenging to complete assignments as they are not good at writing. With proper assistance or teacher guidance, students can practice writing repetitively.

It encourages them to try their hands at different writing styles, and gradually they will improve their own writing pattern and increase their writing speed. It contributes to their writing improvement and makes it certain that students get a confidence boost. 

Increased focus on studies 

When your teachers allocate a task to complete assignments, it is somehow linked to your academic growth, especially for the university and grad school students. Therefore, it demands ultimate concentration to establish your insights regarding the topics of your assignments.

This process assists you in achieving good growth in your academic career and aids students in learning concepts quickly with better focus. It ensures that you stay focused while doing work and deliver better results.         

Build planning & organization tactics

Planning and task organization are as necessary as writing the assignment. As per educational experts, when you work on assignments, you start planning to structurize the content and what type of information you will use and then organize your workflow accordingly. This process supports you in building your skill to plan things beforehand and organize them to get them done without hassles.   

Adopt advanced research technique

Assignments expand the horizon of research skills among students. Learners explore different topics, gather diverse knowledge on different aspects of a particular topic, and use useful information on their tasks. Students adopt advanced research techniques to search for relevant information from diversified sources and identify correct facts and stats through these steps.  

Augmenting reasoning & analytical skills 

Crafting an assignment has one more sign that we overlook. Experts have enough proof that doing an assignment augments students’ reasoning abilities. They started thinking logically and used their analytical skills while writing their assignments. It offers clarity of the assignment subject, and they gradually develop their own perspective about the subject and offer that through assignments.     

Boost your time management skills 

Time management is one of the key skills that develop through assignments. It makes them disciplined and conscious of the value of time during their study years. However, students often delay as they get enough time. Set deadlines help students manage their time. Therefore, students understand that they need to invest their time wisely and also it’s necessary to complete assignments on time or before the deadline.  

What is the Importance of Assignment- Other Functions From Teacher’s Perspective: 

Develop an understanding between teacher and students  .

Teachers ensure that students get clear instructions from their end through the assignment as it is necessary. They also get a glimpse of how much students have understood the subject. The clarity regarding the topic ensures that whether students have mastered the topic or need further clarification to eliminate doubts and confusion. It creates an understanding between the teaching faculty and learners. 

Clarity- what is the reason for choosing the assignment 

The Reason for the assignment allocated to students should be clear. The transparency of why teachers have assigned the task enables learners to understand why it is essential for their knowledge growth. With understanding, the students try to fulfill the objective. Overall, it fuels their thoughts that successfully evoke their insights. 

Building a strong relationship- Showing how to complete tasks 

When a teacher shows students how to complete tasks, it builds a strong student-teacher relationship. Firstly, students understand the teacher’s perspective and why they are entrusted with assignments. Secondly, it also encourages them to handle problems intelligently. This single activity also offers them the right direction in completing their tasks within the shortest period without sacrificing quality. 

Get a view of what students have understood and their perspective 

Assigning a task brings forth the students’ understanding of a particular subject. Moreover, when they attempt an assignment, it reflects their perspective on the specific subject. The process is related to the integration of appreciative learning principles. In this principle, teachers see how students interpret the subject. Students master the subject effectively, whereas teachers find the evaluation process relatively easy when done correctly. 

Chance to clear doubts or confusion regarding the assignment  

Mastering a subject needs practice and deep understanding from a teacher’s perspective. It could be possible only if students dedicate their time to assignments. While doing assignments, students could face conceptual difficulties, or some parts could confuse them. Through the task, teachers can clear their doubts and confusion and ensure that they fully understand what they are learning.   

Offering individualistic provisions to complete an assignment 

Students are divergent, and their thoughts are diverse in intelligence, temperaments, and aptitudes. Their differences reflect in their assignments and the insight they present. This process gives them a fair understanding of students’ future and their scope to grow. It also helps teachers to understand their differences and recognize their individualistic approaches.  

Conclusion:

You have already become acquainted with the factors that translate what is the importance of assignments in academics. It plays a vital role in increasing the students’ growth multifold. 

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Classroom Assignments Matter. Here’s Why.

As a former classroom teacher, coach, and literacy specialist, I know the beginning of the school year demands that educators pay attention to a number of competing interests. Let me suggest one thing for teachers to focus on that, above all else, can close the student achievement gap: the rigor and quality of classroom assignments.

Digging into classroom assignments is revealing. It tells a story about curricula, instruction, achievement, and education equity. In the process, it uncovers what teachers believe about their students, what they know and understand about their standards and curricula, and what they are willing to do to advance student learning and achievement. So, when educators critically examine their own assignments (and the work students produce), they have an opportunity to gain powerful insight about teaching and learning — the kind of insight that can move the needle on student achievement. This type of analysis can identify trends across content areas such as English/language arts, science, social studies, and math.

At Ed Trust, we undertook such an analysis of 4,000 classroom assignments and found that students are being given in-school and out-of-school assignments that don’t align with grade-level standards, lack sufficient opportunities and time for writing, and include tasks that require low-level thinking and work production. We’ve seen assignments with little-to-no meaningful discussion and those with teachers over-supporting students, which effectively rob students of the kind of challenging thinking that leads to academic growth. And we’ve seen assignments where the reading looked like stop-and-go traffic, overrun with prescribed note-taking, breaking down students’ ability to build reading flow and deep learning.

These findings served as the basis for our second Equity in Motion convening. For three days this summer, educators from across the country explored the importance of regular and thoughtful assignment analysis. They found that carefully developed assignments have the power to make a curriculum last in students’ minds. They saw how assignments reveal whether students are grasping curricula, and if not, how teachers can adapt instruction. They also saw how assignments give clues into their own beliefs about students, which carry serious equity implications for all students, especially those who have been traditionally under-served. Throughout the convening, educators talked about the implications of their assignments and how assignments can affect overall achievement and address issues of equity. If assignments fall short of what standards demand, students will be ill-equipped to achieve at high levels.

The main take-away from this convening was simple but powerful: Assignments matter!

I encourage all teachers to take that message to heart. This school year, aim to make sure your assignments are more rigorous, standards-aligned, and authentically relevant to your students. Use our Literacy Analysis Assignment Guide to examine your assignments — alone, or better yet, with colleagues — to ensure you’re delivering assignments that propel your students to reach higher and achieve more. Doing this will provide a more complete picture of where your students are in their learning and how you can move them toward skill and concept mastery.

Remember this: Students can do no better than the assignments they receive.

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Why Should You Use Writing Assignments in Your Teaching?

Brad hughes, director, writing across the curriculum, university of wisconsin-madison.

Why should you use writing assignments in your teaching? That’s an important question. Even though this is a Writing Across the Curriculum website, designed to encourage faculty to incorporate writing into their teaching, let’s be honest—there are many reasons why you might not want to assign writing in your courses. And many of those reasons have to do with limits on your time. Designing writing assignments and responding to student writing take valuable time—lots of time if you do them carefully. The larger the enrollment is in your classes, the more time responding to student papers takes. You have lots of important course content to cover, so you have limited time for building in a sequence of writing assignments and some instruction around those assignments. . . .

You also need to remember that writing assignments  take substantial time for your students to do well. And not all of your students are well prepared to succeed with the writing you assign. This list could go on; the challenges can be formidable.

Yet countless faculty—in every discipline across the university—make writing an integral part of their teaching and reap benefits from doing so. Why? Here are some of the many reasons writing is an especially effective means for students to learn.

• Writing deepens thinking and increases students’ engagement with course material.
• Well-designed writing assignments prompt students to think more deeply about what they’re learning. Writing a book review, for example, forces students to read more thoroughly and critically. As an old saying goes, “How do I know what I think until I hear what I say or see what I’ve written?”
• In fact, research done by Richard Light at Harvard confirms that “students relate writing to intensity of courses. The relationship between the amount of writing for a course and students’ level of engagement—whether engagement is measured by time spent on the course, or the intellectual challenge it presents, or students’ self-reported level of interest in it—is stronger than any relationship we found between student engagement and any other course characteristic” ( The Harvard Assessment Seminars , Second Report, 1992, 25).
• Research done by the Association of American Colleges and Universities demonstrates that writing-intensive courses are a high-impact practice in undergraduate education (George D. Kuh, High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter , 2008).
• Research done by Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner ( The Meaningful Writing Project , 2017) demonstrates that certain writing projects can be especially meaningful parts of undergraduate education.
• Writing can improve our relationship with our students. When students write papers, we get to know them and their thinking better; they’re more likely to talk with us after class, or come to our office hours to share a draft or seek advice.
• Writing gives us a window into our students’ thinking and learning. Through our students’ writing, we can take pleasure in discovering that students see things in course readings or discussion we didn’t see; students make connections we ourselves hadn’t made. And through our students’ writing, we also discover what confuses our students. Admittedly, we’re not always eager to discover the gaps in our students’ knowledge or understanding, but it’s our job to expand that knowledge and improve students’ thinking.
• Writing assignments can improve our classroom discussions. By helping students keep up with readings, regular writing assignments can prepare students to participate in discussion.
• Writing assignments provide us with an opportunity to teach students to organize ideas, develop points logically, make explicit connections, elaborate ideas, argue points, and situate an argument in the context of previous research-all skills valued in higher education.
• Students remember what they write about-because writing slows thinking down and requires careful, sustained analysis of a subject. No matter how many years it’s been, most of us can remember some paper we wrote as undergraduates, the writing of which deepened our knowledge of a particular subject.
• Students and professors remember what they’ve written, in part, because writing individualizes learning. When a student becomes really engaged with a writing assignment, she has to make countless choices particular to her paper: how to focus the topic, what to read, what to make the central argument, how to organize ideas, how to marshal evidence, which general points to make, how to develop and support general ideas with particulars, how to introduce the topic, what to include and what to omit, which style and tone to adopt. . . .
• Finally, though it’s much more than this, writing is a skill—a skill that atrophies when it isn’t practiced regularly. Because learning to write well is difficult and because it requires sustained and repeated practice, we need to ensure our undergraduates write regularly, throughout the curriculum, in all majors. It’s the responsibility of all of us to ensure that students learn to think and write clearly and deeply.

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Designing Assignments for Learning

The rapid shift to remote teaching and learning meant that many instructors reimagined their assessment practices. Whether adapting existing assignments or creatively designing new opportunities for their students to learn, instructors focused on helping students make meaning and demonstrate their learning outside of the traditional, face-to-face classroom setting. This resource distills the elements of assignment design that are important to carry forward as we continue to seek better ways of assessing learning and build on our innovative assignment designs.

On this page:

Rethinking traditional tests, quizzes, and exams.

• Examples from the Columbia University Classroom
• Tips for Designing Assignments for Learning

Reflect On Your Assignment Design

Connect with the ctl.

• Resources and References

Cite this resource: Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2021). Designing Assignments for Learning. Columbia University. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/teaching-with-technology/teaching-online/designing-assignments/

Traditional assessments tend to reveal whether students can recognize, recall, or replicate what was learned out of context, and tend to focus on students providing correct responses (Wiggins, 1990). In contrast, authentic assignments, which are course assessments, engage students in higher order thinking, as they grapple with real or simulated challenges that help them prepare for their professional lives, and draw on the course knowledge learned and the skills acquired to create justifiable answers, performances or products (Wiggins, 1990). An authentic assessment provides opportunities for students to practice, consult resources, learn from feedback, and refine their performances and products accordingly (Wiggins 1990, 1998, 2014). 

Authentic assignments ask students to “do” the subject with an audience in mind and apply their learning in a new situation. Examples of authentic assignments include asking students to: 

• Write for a real audience (e.g., a memo, a policy brief, letter to the editor, a grant proposal, reports, building a website) and/or publication;
• Solve problem sets that have real world application; 
• Design projects that address a real world problem; 
• Engage in a community-partnered research project;
• Create an exhibit, performance, or conference presentation ;
• Compile and reflect on their work through a portfolio/e-portfolio.

Noteworthy elements of authentic designs are that instructors scaffold the assignment, and play an active role in preparing students for the tasks assigned, while students are intentionally asked to reflect on the process and product of their work thus building their metacognitive skills (Herrington and Oliver, 2000; Ashford-Rowe, Herrington and Brown, 2013; Frey, Schmitt, and Allen, 2012). 

It’s worth noting here that authentic assessments can initially be time consuming to design, implement, and grade. They are critiqued for being challenging to use across course contexts and for grading reliability issues (Maclellan, 2004). Despite these challenges, authentic assessments are recognized as beneficial to student learning (Svinicki, 2004) as they are learner-centered (Weimer, 2013), promote academic integrity (McLaughlin, L. and Ricevuto, 2021; Sotiriadou et al., 2019; Schroeder, 2021) and motivate students to learn (Ambrose et al., 2010). The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning is always available to consult with faculty who are considering authentic assessment designs and to discuss challenges and affordances.   

Examples from the Columbia University Classroom 

Columbia instructors have experimented with alternative ways of assessing student learning from oral exams to technology-enhanced assignments. Below are a few examples of authentic assignments in various teaching contexts across Columbia University. 

• E-portfolios: Statia Cook shares her experiences with an ePorfolio assignment in her co-taught Frontiers of Science course (a submission to the Voices of Hybrid and Online Teaching and Learning initiative); CUIMC use of ePortfolios ;
• Case studies: Columbia instructors have engaged their students in authentic ways through case studies drawing on the Case Consortium at Columbia University. Read and watch a faculty spotlight to learn how Professor Mary Ann Price uses the case method to place pre-med students in real-life scenarios;
• Simulations: students at CUIMC engage in simulations to develop their professional skills in The Mary & Michael Jaharis Simulation Center in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Helene Fuld Health Trust Simulation Center in the Columbia School of Nursing; 
• Experiential learning: instructors have drawn on New York City as a learning laboratory such as Barnard’s NYC as Lab webpage which highlights courses that engage students in NYC;
• Design projects that address real world problems: Yevgeniy Yesilevskiy on the Engineering design projects completed using lab kits during remote learning. Watch Dr. Yesilevskiy talk about his teaching and read the Columbia News article . 
• Writing assignments: Lia Marshall and her teaching associate Aparna Balasundaram reflect on their “non-disposable or renewable assignments” to prepare social work students for their professional lives as they write for a real audience; and Hannah Weaver spoke about a sandbox assignment used in her Core Literature Humanities course at the 2021 Celebration of Teaching and Learning Symposium . Watch Dr. Weaver share her experiences.  

​Tips for Designing Assignments for Learning

While designing an effective authentic assignment may seem like a daunting task, the following tips can be used as a starting point. See the Resources section for frameworks and tools that may be useful in this effort.  

Align the assignment with your course learning objectives 

Identify the kind of thinking that is important in your course, the knowledge students will apply, and the skills they will practice using through the assignment. What kind of thinking will students be asked to do for the assignment? What will students learn by completing this assignment? How will the assignment help students achieve the desired course learning outcomes? For more information on course learning objectives, see the CTL’s Course Design Essentials self-paced course and watch the video on Articulating Learning Objectives .  

Identify an authentic meaning-making task

For meaning-making to occur, students need to understand the relevance of the assignment to the course and beyond (Ambrose et al., 2010). To Bean (2011) a “meaning-making” or “meaning-constructing” task has two dimensions: 1) it presents students with an authentic disciplinary problem or asks students to formulate their own problems, both of which engage them in active critical thinking, and 2) the problem is placed in “a context that gives students a role or purpose, a targeted audience, and a genre.” (Bean, 2011: 97-98). 

An authentic task gives students a realistic challenge to grapple with, a role to take on that allows them to “rehearse for the complex ambiguities” of life, provides resources and supports to draw on, and requires students to justify their work and the process they used to inform their solution (Wiggins, 1990). Note that if students find an assignment interesting or relevant, they will see value in completing it. 

Consider the kind of activities in the real world that use the knowledge and skills that are the focus of your course. How is this knowledge and these skills applied to answer real-world questions to solve real-world problems? (Herrington et al., 2010: 22). What do professionals or academics in your discipline do on a regular basis? What does it mean to think like a biologist, statistician, historian, social scientist? How might your assignment ask students to draw on current events, issues, or problems that relate to the course and are of interest to them? How might your assignment tap into student motivation and engage them in the kinds of thinking they can apply to better understand the world around them? (Ambrose et al., 2010). 

Determine the evaluation criteria and create a rubric

To ensure equitable and consistent grading of assignments across students, make transparent the criteria you will use to evaluate student work. The criteria should focus on the knowledge and skills that are central to the assignment. Build on the criteria identified, create a rubric that makes explicit the expectations of deliverables and share this rubric with your students so they can use it as they work on the assignment. For more information on rubrics, see the CTL’s resource Incorporating Rubrics into Your Grading and Feedback Practices , and explore the Association of American Colleges & Universities VALUE Rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education). 

Build in metacognition

Ask students to reflect on what and how they learned from the assignment. Help students uncover personal relevance of the assignment, find intrinsic value in their work, and deepen their motivation by asking them to reflect on their process and their assignment deliverable. Sample prompts might include: what did you learn from this assignment? How might you draw on the knowledge and skills you used on this assignment in the future? See Ambrose et al., 2010 for more strategies that support motivation and the CTL’s resource on Metacognition ). 

Provide students with opportunities to practice

Design your assignment to be a learning experience and prepare students for success on the assignment. If students can reasonably expect to be successful on an assignment when they put in the required effort ,with the support and guidance of the instructor, they are more likely to engage in the behaviors necessary for learning (Ambrose et al., 2010). Ensure student success by actively teaching the knowledge and skills of the course (e.g., how to problem solve, how to write for a particular audience), modeling the desired thinking, and creating learning activities that build up to a graded assignment. Provide opportunities for students to practice using the knowledge and skills they will need for the assignment, whether through low-stakes in-class activities or homework activities that include opportunities to receive and incorporate formative feedback. For more information on providing feedback, see the CTL resource Feedback for Learning . 

Communicate about the assignment 

Share the purpose, task, audience, expectations, and criteria for the assignment. Students may have expectations about assessments and how they will be graded that is informed by their prior experiences completing high-stakes assessments, so be transparent. Tell your students why you are asking them to do this assignment, what skills they will be using, how it aligns with the course learning outcomes, and why it is relevant to their learning and their professional lives (i.e., how practitioners / professionals use the knowledge and skills in your course in real world contexts and for what purposes). Finally, verify that students understand what they need to do to complete the assignment. This can be done by asking students to respond to poll questions about different parts of the assignment, a “scavenger hunt” of the assignment instructions–giving students questions to answer about the assignment and having them work in small groups to answer the questions, or by having students share back what they think is expected of them.

Plan to iterate and to keep the focus on learning 

Draw on multiple sources of data to help make decisions about what changes are needed to the assignment, the assignment instructions, and/or rubric to ensure that it contributes to student learning. Explore assignment performance data. As Deandra Little reminds us: “a really good assignment, which is a really good assessment, also teaches you something or tells the instructor something. As much as it tells you what students are learning, it’s also telling you what they aren’t learning.” ( Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode 337 ). Assignment bottlenecks–where students get stuck or struggle–can be good indicators that students need further support or opportunities to practice prior to completing an assignment. This awareness can inform teaching decisions. 

Triangulate the performance data by collecting student feedback, and noting your own reflections about what worked well and what did not. Revise the assignment instructions, rubric, and teaching practices accordingly. Consider how you might better align your assignment with your course objectives and/or provide more opportunities for students to practice using the knowledge and skills that they will rely on for the assignment. Additionally, keep in mind societal, disciplinary, and technological changes as you tweak your assignments for future use. 

Now is a great time to reflect on your practices and experiences with assignment design and think critically about your approach. Take a closer look at an existing assignment. Questions to consider include: What is this assignment meant to do? What purpose does it serve? Why do you ask students to do this assignment? How are they prepared to complete the assignment? Does the assignment assess the kind of learning that you really want? What would help students learn from this assignment? 

Using the tips in the previous section: How can the assignment be tweaked to be more authentic and meaningful to students? 

As you plan forward for post-pandemic teaching and reflect on your practices and reimagine your course design, you may find the following CTL resources helpful: Reflecting On Your Experiences with Remote Teaching , Transition to In-Person Teaching , and Course Design Support .

The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is here to help!

For assistance with assignment design, rubric design, or any other teaching and learning need, please request a consultation by emailing [email protected] . 

Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework for assignments. The TILT Examples and Resources page ( https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources ) includes example assignments from across disciplines, as well as a transparent assignment template and a checklist for designing transparent assignments . Each emphasizes the importance of articulating to students the purpose of the assignment or activity, the what and how of the task, and specifying the criteria that will be used to assess students. 

Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) offers VALUE ADD (Assignment Design and Diagnostic) tools ( https://www.aacu.org/value-add-tools ) to help with the creation of clear and effective assignments that align with the desired learning outcomes and associated VALUE rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education). VALUE ADD encourages instructors to explicitly state assignment information such as the purpose of the assignment, what skills students will be using, how it aligns with course learning outcomes, the assignment type, the audience and context for the assignment, clear evaluation criteria, desired formatting, and expectations for completion whether individual or in a group.

Villarroel et al. (2017) propose a blueprint for building authentic assessments which includes four steps: 1) consider the workplace context, 2) design the authentic assessment; 3) learn and apply standards for judgement; and 4) give feedback. 

References 

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., & DiPietro, M. (2010). Chapter 3: What Factors Motivate Students to Learn? In How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching . Jossey-Bass. 

Ashford-Rowe, K., Herrington, J., and Brown, C. (2013). Establishing the critical elements that determine authentic assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 39(2), 205-222, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2013.819566 .  

Bean, J.C. (2011). Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom . Second Edition. Jossey-Bass. 

Frey, B. B, Schmitt, V. L., and Allen, J. P. (2012). Defining Authentic Classroom Assessment. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. 17(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.7275/sxbs-0829  

Herrington, J., Reeves, T. C., and Oliver, R. (2010). A Guide to Authentic e-Learning . Routledge. 

Herrington, J. and Oliver, R. (2000). An instructional design framework for authentic learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(3), 23-48. 

Litchfield, B. C. and Dempsey, J. V. (2015). Authentic Assessment of Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 142 (Summer 2015), 65-80. 

Maclellan, E. (2004). How convincing is alternative assessment for use in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 29(3), June 2004. DOI: 10.1080/0260293042000188267

McLaughlin, L. and Ricevuto, J. (2021). Assessments in a Virtual Environment: You Won’t Need that Lockdown Browser! Faculty Focus. June 2, 2021. 

Mueller, J. (2005). The Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Enhancing Student Learning through Online Faculty Development . MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 1(1). July 2005. Mueller’s Authentic Assessment Toolbox is available online. 

Schroeder, R. (2021). Vaccinate Against Cheating With Authentic Assessment . Inside Higher Ed. (February 26, 2021).  

Sotiriadou, P., Logan, D., Daly, A., and Guest, R. (2019). The role of authentic assessment to preserve academic integrity and promote skills development and employability. Studies in Higher Education. 45(111), 2132-2148. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1582015    

Stachowiak, B. (Host). (November 25, 2020). Authentic Assignments with Deandra Little. (Episode 337). In Teaching in Higher Ed . https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/authentic-assignments/  

Svinicki, M. D. (2004). Authentic Assessment: Testing in Reality. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 100 (Winter 2004): 23-29. 

Villarroel, V., Bloxham, S, Bruna, D., Bruna, C., and Herrera-Seda, C. (2017). Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 43(5), 840-854. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2017.1412396    

Weimer, M. (2013). Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice . Second Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Wiggins, G. (2014). Authenticity in assessment, (re-)defined and explained. Retrieved from https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/authenticity-in-assessment-re-defined-and-explained/

Wiggins, G. (1998). Teaching to the (Authentic) Test. Educational Leadership . April 1989. 41-47. 

Wiggins, Grant (1990). The Case for Authentic Assessment . Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation , 2(2). 

Wondering how AI tools might play a role in your course assignments?

See the CTL’s resource “Considerations for AI Tools in the Classroom.”

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Use what-why-how prompts to increase assignment clarity.

Creating assignments that clearly convey what students should do, why the assignment is important, and how to complete it pays off in three key ways: 

• Fewer questions from students about what they should do and how they should do it
• Better-quality work demonstrating student learning and the achievement of desired outcomes.
• Helps instructors design assignments that are aligned with their learning goals. 

The format is as follows:

Here's what I want you to do: Instructor explains what the assignment is. 

Here's why I want you to do it:  Instructor explains the rationale behind the assignment. Instructor explains why this assignment will contribute to the student's success in class and beyond. Consider referencing stated course outcomes and learning goals, as well as benefits in "real life."

Here's how to do it:  Instructor explains how to do the assignment, providing detailed instructions, rubrics, checklists, and exemplars in order to help students clearly see and understand the expectations for the assignment.

Darby, F. (2019). Small teaching online: Applying learning science in online classes. Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Brand.

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Assignments Matter: Making the Connections That Help Students Meet Standards

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What exactly is an "assignment" and why does it matter? How can educators ensure that their teaching meets the rigorous demands of the Common Core State Standards, so that all students are well prepared for college or careers?

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Part 1: Why and What

Why Assignments Matter

Part 2: In the Classroom

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Gen ed writes, writing across the disciplines at harvard college, teaching the elements of writing assignments.

Overview: How Unpacking the Elements Translates into Lesson Planning

In Unpacking the Elements we try to break down prompts into the essential features common to nearly every assignment (writing or not), and in doing so the goal was primarily two-fold: to help instructors identify the role of each element in their own assignments and how clearly each element is communicated in their prompts; and to give students and instructors a shared, simple vocabulary for talking about the goals and expectations of assignments.  In this section, the goal is to move from designing effective prompts and sharing them with students to using prompts as a road map for teaching in the classroom. If you’ve done the assignment prompt decoder and thought about elements in a specific prompt, you were maybe left with a few questions. For example:  

• What does it look like to teach each element and give students practice with them?
• What is the best order to teach the elements in?
• How can I scaffold smaller exercises or give students feedback along the way?
• What’s the timing of all of this look like within the framework of a real term?

In the pages of this section we take up these questions, first laying out more generally how teaching through the elements looks in the classroom before taking a deeper dive into a handful of the more common—and increasingly complex—types of academic writing assignments. For each kind of assignment, you’ll find sample timelines and sequences, along with out-of-the-box activities and generalizable advice on teaching with writing (“tips” and “pitfalls to avoid”). 

The advice and examples in this section are meant to be flexible enough to adapt to a wide range of real-life teaching scenarios and pedagogical approaches, but they all reflect a handful of guiding principles about the interrelated ways that assignment prompts "work": they create the context for learning experiences by serving as a touchstone for student-teacher discussions about the specific goals and expectations of the learning experience at hand, and they help keep instructors and students alive to what those goals and expectations are—and how their time together is an ongoing, well-supported engagement with them.

Three Key Principles for Teaching Writing in the Classroom

Students should always be “writing the paper”.

If your lesson plan is drawn from the actual assignment students are working on at any point in the term (whether it’s a smaller “now” response paper or a smaller part of a “bigger” project due in six weeks), then nearly every homework assignment or in-class activity is writing the paper. The purpose of section will always be more clear if students recognize that every meeting is a chance to practice relevant skills or make progress on an assignment. And of course, that recognition is only possible if students understand what the goals of the assignment they're working on are, what skills are relevant to meeting those goals, and what kinds of steps reflect progress toward them. With that in mind, it’s helpful to start with the Assignment Decoder for Students . 

Prompts don’t (and shouldn’t be asked to) speak for themselves

The assignment prompt decoders linked throughout this site are meant to give course heads, TFs & TAs, and students a way of assessing how clearly a prompt is communicating its elements. For course heads and instructors, this might lead to a revision of the prompt or clarifications in class or meetings of the teaching team. For students, it might lead to questions in section, emails to an instructor, or asking a fellow student for input. Whatever doing the decoder leads to—and whether or not the decoder is used at all—it’s crucial to keep in mind that prompts don’t speak for themselves, no matter how clear they are: they’re a framework for, and hopefully an invitation to discussion about what it will look and feel like to do an assignment well. But what about a really clear prompt—doesn’t it save class time if students can just read it on their own? It’s a fair question, and the fair response is that we can’t know whether students have understood the really clear prompt unless we have a discussion with them about it. At that point, of course, we’re back to discussing the prompt, and the upside is this: spending class time working through prompts is actually a reliably efficient way to make subsequent classes more effective. 

You can’t do it all, and you don’t need to

If you and your students are on the same page about the goals and priorities of an assignment, then you’re freed up to engage in some backward design triage: How much time is there until the likely deadline? How many sections are there to work with? What are the essential elements that need teaching and practice? What’s a good place to start? When giving feedback, it’s almost as unhelpful to just write “A-” without comments as it is to fill the margins with comments or append a novella’s worth of reflection to the end of a student’s essay. In both cases, it’s unclear what the rubric for feedback is and how they reflect the priorities of this assignment. And the same goes for teaching this assignment: You should find the sequence of in-class activities and formative assessments that best balance what’s necessary for students to succeed with what’s possible given the time and bandwidth available to you and your students. The general advice and sample trajectories for assignments in this section are meant to make that balance feel both attainable and much more than “good enough”—it’s what great teachers aim for. 

• DIY Guides for Analytical Writing Assignments

• Types of Assignments
• Unpacking the Elements of Writing Prompts
• The Steps of Teaching the Most Common Types of Writing Assignments
• Giving Feedback to Students

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• AACU VALUE Rubrics

Using rubrics

A rubric is a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment. Rubrics can be used for a variety of assignments: research papers, group projects, portfolios, and presentations.  

Why use rubrics? 

Rubrics help instructors: 

• Assess assignments consistently from student-to-student. 
• Save time in grading, both short-term and long-term. 
• Give timely, effective feedback and promote student learning in a sustainable way. 
• Clarify expectations and components of an assignment for both students and course teaching assistants (TAs). 
• Refine teaching methods by evaluating rubric results. 

Rubrics help students: 

• Understand expectations and components of an assignment. 
• Become more aware of their learning process and progress. 
• Improve work through timely and detailed feedback. 

Considerations for using rubrics 

When developing rubrics consider the following:

• Although it takes time to build a rubric, time will be saved in the long run as grading and providing feedback on student work will become more streamlined.  
• A rubric can be a fillable pdf that can easily be emailed to students. 
• They can be used for oral presentations. 
• They are a great tool to evaluate teamwork and individual contribution to group tasks. 
• Rubrics facilitate peer-review by setting evaluation standards. Have students use the rubric to provide peer assessment on various drafts. 
• Students can use them for self-assessment to improve personal performance and learning. Encourage students to use the rubrics to assess their own work. 
• Motivate students to improve their work by using rubric feedback to resubmit their work incorporating the feedback. 

Getting Started with Rubrics 

• Start small by creating one rubric for one assignment in a semester.  
• Ask colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments or adapt rubrics that are available online. For example, the  AACU has rubrics  for topics such as written and oral communication, critical thinking, and creative thinking. RubiStar helps you to develop your rubric based on templates.  
• Examine an assignment for your course. Outline the elements or critical attributes to be evaluated (these attributes must be objectively measurable). 
• Create an evaluative range for performance quality under each element; for instance, “excellent,” “good,” “unsatisfactory.” 
• Avoid using subjective or vague criteria such as “interesting” or “creative.” Instead, outline objective indicators that would fall under these categories. 
• The criteria must clearly differentiate one performance level from another. 
• Assign a numerical scale to each level. 
• Give a draft of the rubric to your colleagues and/or TAs for feedback. 
• Train students to use your rubric and solicit feedback. This will help you judge whether the rubric is clear to them and will identify any weaknesses. 
• Rework the rubric based on the feedback. 

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Khan Academy Blog

The Power of Learning Objectives: A Guide for New Teachers

posted on October 4, 2023

By Aviv Weiss , Senior Product Marketing Manager for Educators at Khan Academy and former Teacher

Hey there, as a new teacher, one of the most important things you can do is set clear expectations for what your students are meant to achieve. This is where learning objectives come in. They’re like a road map that guides both you and your students. In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits of setting learning objectives in the classroom and guide you through creating specific and measurable objectives that can help your students succeed. We’ll also share some helpful tips to ensure your students’ success with implementing learning objectives and explore how AI-powered applications like Khanmigo can save you time and help you achieve your teaching goals faster. Let’s get started!

Use AI to write learning objectives with these prompts

Benefits of learning objectives in the classroom.

Setting clear learning objectives has numerous benefits for both teachers and students.

First and foremost, learning objectives provide direction and focus for lessons,which helps teachers maintain a clear vision of what they want to achieve. This ensures that students understand the purpose of the lesson. By knowing what they’re supposed to learn and achieve, students are better able to stay engaged, motivated, and interested in what they are learning.

Plus, by setting clear objectives, teachers can more easily assess student progress and adjust their teaching style and strategies to ensure students are getting the most out of each lesson.

How to Set Specific, Measurable Learning Objectives for Your Students

To create strong learning objectives, let’s be specific and measurable in our statements. This way, we can easily determine if students have met the objectives and make it clearer for them to understand what we expect. So, start by pinpointing the most important outcomes you want your students to achieve. Then, let’s create a statement that clearly explains what students will know or be able to do by the end of the lesson. For example, “students will be able to differentiate between adjectives and adverbs in sentences.” Let’s make sure the objective is achievable and realistic for your students’ level. You’ve got this!

Align Your Learning Objectives to State Curriculum 

Aligning your learning objectives to the state curriculum is super important for ensuring educational effectiveness. By mapping your objectives to the curriculum, you can provide students with a structured and comprehensive learning experience that meets all the required standards. This alignment not only helps students acquire the necessary knowledge and skills, but it also supports their overall academic growth and success. So, take the time to carefully analyze and align your learning objectives to the state curriculum, and get ready to see your students thrive in their educational journey!

Let’s give an example of developing a learning objective with Khanmigo:

Khanmigo : Let’s write some learning objectives! What standard are you working on today? (Please provide the text of the standard.) Teacher : My students need to tackle standard 6.G.A.1. Can you help me break down what they need to be able to do to master this standard?  Note: This is from Common Core standards. Khanmigo : Great! Now, let’s think about what we want the students to be able to do by the end of the lesson. Based on the standard, it seems like we want them to find the area of various shapes. Is that correct? Teacher : Yes. Khanmigo : Fantastic! Now, let’s think about the specific action we want the students to take. We want them to “find” the area, but that’s a bit vague. How about we use a more specific verb, like “calculate”? This way, we can observe them doing the calculations. What do you think? Teacher : I would like to observe my students doing the calculations. Khanmigo : Great! Now, are there any tools or references the students would need to calculate the area of these shapes? For example, would they need a formula sheet or a calculator? Teacher : Calculators only. Khanmigo : Perfect! So, here’s a draft of our learning objective: “By the end of the lesson, students will be able to calculate the area of right triangles, other triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons using a calculator.” Does that sound good to you, or are there any changes you’d like to make? Now, if you think this is too much work for your students to get done in one class, we can split learning objectives further down: Teacher : Could you break down this learning objective into five lessons? Khanmigo : Absolutely! Here’s how we could break it down: “By the end of Lesson 1, students will be able to calculate the area of right triangles using a calculator.” “By the end of Lesson 2, students will be able to calculate the area of other types of triangles using a calculator.” “By the end of Lesson 3, students will be able to calculate the area of special quadrilaterals using a calculator.” “By the end of Lesson 4, students will be able to calculate the area of other polygons using a calculator.” “By the end of Lesson 5, students will apply these techniques to solve real-world and mathematical problems involving the calculation of area.” How does that sound? Would you like to make any changes?

Tips to Ensure Your Student’s Success with Successful Implementation of Learning Objectives

• Set clear learning objectives: Clearly define what your students should be able to accomplish by the end of the learning period.
• Align objectives with curriculum: Ensure that the learning objectives are in line with the curriculum and educational standards.
• Break down objectives into smaller tasks: Divide the learning objectives into manageable tasks to facilitate better understanding and progress.
• Provide regular feedback: Give constructive feedback to students to help them track their progress and make necessary adjustments.
• Foster a supportive learning environment: Create a positive and supportive atmosphere that encourages students to actively engage in achieving the learning objectives.

Get to instructional action in seconds.

Setting learning objectives in the classroom is a fantastic and meaningful way to help students achieve academic success. Clearly defined learning objectives provide direction and focus for both teachers and students. With the help of AI-powered applications like Khanmigo , teachers can tailor their teaching to achieve their goals faster and save time. By setting realistic and achievable objectives, communicating them clearly to students, and tracking progress every step of the way, teachers can help their students reach their full potential and set them up for lifelong success!

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Using Case Studies to Teach

Why Use Cases?

Many students are more inductive than deductive reasoners, which means that they learn better from examples than from logical development starting with basic principles. The use of case studies can therefore be a very effective classroom technique.

Case studies are have long been used in business schools, law schools, medical schools and the social sciences, but they can be used in any discipline when instructors want students to explore how what they have learned applies to real world situations. Cases come in many formats, from a simple “What would you do in this situation?” question to a detailed description of a situation with accompanying data to analyze. Whether to use a simple scenario-type case or a complex detailed one depends on your course objectives.

Most case assignments require students to answer an open-ended question or develop a solution to an open-ended problem with multiple potential solutions. Requirements can range from a one-paragraph answer to a fully developed group action plan, proposal or decision.

Common Case Elements

Most “full-blown” cases have these common elements:

• A decision-maker who is grappling with some question or problem that needs to be solved.
• A description of the problem’s context (a law, an industry, a family).
• Supporting data, which can range from data tables to links to URLs, quoted statements or testimony, supporting documents, images, video, or audio.

Case assignments can be done individually or in teams so that the students can brainstorm solutions and share the work load.

The following discussion of this topic incorporates material presented by Robb Dixon of the School of Management and Rob Schadt of the School of Public Health at CEIT workshops. Professor Dixon also provided some written comments that the discussion incorporates.

Advantages to the use of case studies in class

A major advantage of teaching with case studies is that the students are actively engaged in figuring out the principles by abstracting from the examples. This develops their skills in:

• Problem solving
• Analytical tools, quantitative and/or qualitative, depending on the case
• Decision making in complex situations
• Coping with ambiguities

Guidelines for using case studies in class

In the most straightforward application, the presentation of the case study establishes a framework for analysis. It is helpful if the statement of the case provides enough information for the students to figure out solutions and then to identify how to apply those solutions in other similar situations. Instructors may choose to use several cases so that students can identify both the similarities and differences among the cases.

Depending on the course objectives, the instructor may encourage students to follow a systematic approach to their analysis.  For example:

• What is the issue?
• What is the goal of the analysis?
• What is the context of the problem?
• What key facts should be considered?
• What alternatives are available to the decision-maker?
• What would you recommend — and why?

An innovative approach to case analysis might be to have students  role-play the part of the people involved in the case. This not only actively engages students, but forces them to really understand the perspectives of the case characters. Videos or even field trips showing the venue in which the case is situated can help students to visualize the situation that they need to analyze.

Accompanying Readings

Case studies can be especially effective if they are paired with a reading assignment that introduces or explains a concept or analytical method that applies to the case. The amount of emphasis placed on the use of the reading during the case discussion depends on the complexity of the concept or method. If it is straightforward, the focus of the discussion can be placed on the use of the analytical results. If the method is more complex, the instructor may need to walk students through its application and the interpretation of the results.

Leading the Case Discussion and Evaluating Performance

Decision cases are more interesting than descriptive ones. In order to start the discussion in class, the instructor can start with an easy, noncontroversial question that all the students should be able to answer readily. However, some of the best case discussions start by forcing the students to take a stand. Some instructors will ask a student to do a formal “open” of the case, outlining his or her entire analysis.  Others may choose to guide discussion with questions that move students from problem identification to solutions.  A skilled instructor steers questions and discussion to keep the class on track and moving at a reasonable pace.

In order to motivate the students to complete the assignment before class as well as to stimulate attentiveness during the class, the instructor should grade the participation—quantity and especially quality—during the discussion of the case. This might be a simple check, check-plus, check-minus or zero. The instructor should involve as many students as possible. In order to engage all the students, the instructor can divide them into groups, give each group several minutes to discuss how to answer a question related to the case, and then ask a randomly selected person in each group to present the group’s answer and reasoning. Random selection can be accomplished through rolling of dice, shuffled index cards, each with one student’s name, a spinning wheel, etc.

Tips on the Penn State U. website: http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/cases/

If you are interested in using this technique in a science course, there is a good website on use of case studies in the sciences at the University of Buffalo.

Dunne, D. and Brooks, K. (2004) Teaching with Cases (Halifax, NS: Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education), ISBN 0-7703-8924-4 (Can be ordered at http://www.bookstore.uwo.ca/ at a cost of $15.00)

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Writing Center Analysis Papers

“does that make sense” the importance of clear assignment instructions and rubrics.

Carly Schaelling

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Publication date.

Students often struggle to understand the expectations of their teachers when completing writing assignments. Teachers often feel frustrated when students seem to understand what they are asking, only to grade papers and see that the gap between their assignment tasks and students’ performance is larger than expected. As a Writing Center tutor and first year graduate instructor for English 1010, I have had experiences that have helped me appreciate the importance of having clear written assignment instructions as well as detailed rubrics. Having these two elements incorporated with assignments can help students focus more on their writing tasks and less on guessing what their teacher expects of them. It is difficult as teachers to remember what it’s like to not know something we have already learned and mastered. Being aware of this difficulty is important for teachers to be successful, especially when it comes to writing assignments.

Recommended Citation

Schaelling, Carly, "“Does That Make Sense?” The Importance of Clear Assignment Instructions and Rubrics" (2018). Writing Center Analysis Papers. Paper 23. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/wc_analysis/23

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How to Use Rubrics

A rubric is a document that describes the criteria by which students’ assignments are graded. Rubrics can be helpful for:

• Making grading faster and more consistent (reducing potential bias). 
• Communicating your expectations for an assignment to students before they begin. 

Moreover, for assignments whose criteria are more subjective, the process of creating a rubric and articulating what it looks like to succeed at an assignment provides an opportunity to check for alignment with the intended learning outcomes and modify the assignment prompt, as needed.

Why rubrics?

Rubrics are best for assignments or projects that require evaluation on multiple dimensions. Creating a rubric makes the instructor’s standards explicit to both students and other teaching staff for the class, showing students how to meet expectations.

Additionally, the more comprehensive a rubric is, the more it allows for grading to be streamlined—students will get informative feedback about their performance from the rubric, even if they don’t have as many individualized comments. Grading can be more standardized and efficient across graders.

Finally, rubrics allow for reflection, as the instructor has to think about their standards and outcomes for the students. Using rubrics can help with self-directed learning in students as well, especially if rubrics are used to review students’ own work or their peers’, or if students are involved in creating the rubric.

How to design a rubric

1. consider the desired learning outcomes.

What learning outcomes is this assignment reinforcing and assessing? If the learning outcome seems “fuzzy,” iterate on the outcome by thinking about the expected student work product. This may help you more clearly articulate the learning outcome in a way that is measurable.  

2. Define criteria

What does a successful assignment submission look like? As described by Allen and Tanner (2006), it can help develop an initial list of categories that the student should demonstrate proficiency in by completing the assignment. These categories should correlate with the intended learning outcomes you identified in Step 1, although they may be more granular in some cases. For example, if the task assesses students’ ability to formulate an effective communication strategy, what components of their communication strategy will you be looking for? Talking with colleagues or looking at existing rubrics for similar tasks may give you ideas for categories to consider for evaluation.

If you have assigned this task to students before and have samples of student work, it can help create a qualitative observation guide. This is described in Linda Suskie’s book Assessing Student Learning , where she suggests thinking about what made you decide to give one assignment an A and another a C, as well as taking notes when grading assignments and looking for common patterns. The often repeated themes that you comment on may show what your goals and expectations for students are. An example of an observation guide used to take notes on predetermined areas of an assignment is shown here .

In summary, consider the following list of questions when defining criteria for a rubric (O’Reilly and Cyr, 2006):

• What do you want students to learn from the task?
• How will students demonstrate that they have learned?
• What knowledge, skills, and behaviors are required for the task?
• What steps are required for the task?
• What are the characteristics of the final product?

After developing an initial list of criteria, prioritize the most important skills you want to target and eliminate unessential criteria or combine similar skills into one group. Most rubrics have between 3 and 8 criteria. Rubrics that are too lengthy make it difficult to grade and challenging for students to understand the key skills they need to achieve for the given assignment. 

3. Create the rating scale

According to Suskie, you will want at least 3 performance levels: for adequate and inadequate performance, at the minimum, and an exemplary level to motivate students to strive for even better work. Rubrics often contain 5 levels, with an additional level between adequate and exemplary and a level between adequate and inadequate. Usually, no more than 5 levels are needed, as having too many rating levels can make it hard to consistently distinguish which rating to give an assignment (such as between a 6 or 7 out of 10). Suskie also suggests labeling each level with names to clarify which level represents the minimum acceptable performance. Labels will vary by assignment and subject, but some examples are: 

• Exceeds standard, meets standard, approaching standard, below standard
• Complete evidence, partial evidence, minimal evidence, no evidence

4. Fill in descriptors

Fill in descriptors for each criterion at each performance level. Expand on the list of criteria you developed in Step 2. Begin to write full descriptions, thinking about what an exemplary example would look like for students to strive towards. Avoid vague terms like “good” and make sure to use explicit, concrete terms to describe what would make a criterion good. For instance, a criterion called “organization and structure” would be more descriptive than “writing quality.” Describe measurable behavior and use parallel language for clarity; the wording for each criterion should be very similar, except for the degree to which standards are met. For example, in a sample rubric from Chapter 9 of Suskie’s book, the criterion of “persuasiveness” has the following descriptors:

• Well Done (5): Motivating questions and advance organizers convey the main idea. Information is accurate.
• Satisfactory (3-4): Includes persuasive information.
• Needs Improvement (1-2): Include persuasive information with few facts.
• Incomplete (0): Information is incomplete, out of date, or incorrect.

These sample descriptors generally have the same sentence structure that provides consistent language across performance levels and shows the degree to which each standard is met.

5. Test your rubric

Test your rubric using a range of student work to see if the rubric is realistic. You may also consider leaving room for aspects of the assignment, such as effort, originality, and creativity, to encourage students to go beyond the rubric. If there will be multiple instructors grading, it is important to calibrate the scoring by having all graders use the rubric to grade a selected set of student work and then discuss any differences in the scores. This process helps develop consistency in grading and making the grading more valid and reliable.

Types of Rubrics

If you would like to dive deeper into rubric terminology, this section is dedicated to discussing some of the different types of rubrics. However, regardless of the type of rubric you use, it’s still most important to focus first on your learning goals and think about how the rubric will help clarify students’ expectations and measure student progress towards those learning goals.

Depending on the nature of the assignment, rubrics can come in several varieties (Suskie, 2009):

Checklist Rubric

This is the simplest kind of rubric, which lists specific features or aspects of the assignment which may be present or absent. A checklist rubric does not involve the creation of a rating scale with descriptors. See example from 18.821 project-based math class .

Rating Scale Rubric

This is like a checklist rubric, but instead of merely noting the presence or absence of a feature or aspect of the assignment, the grader also rates quality (often on a graded or Likert-style scale). See example from 6.811 assistive technology class .

Descriptive Rubric

A descriptive rubric is like a rating scale, but including descriptions of what performing to a certain level on each scale looks like. Descriptive rubrics are particularly useful in communicating instructors’ expectations of performance to students and in creating consistency with multiple graders on an assignment. This kind of rubric is probably what most people think of when they imagine a rubric. See example from 15.279 communications class .

Holistic Scoring Guide

Unlike the first 3 types of rubrics, a holistic scoring guide describes performance at different levels (e.g., A-level performance, B-level performance) holistically without analyzing the assignment into several different scales. This kind of rubric is particularly useful when there are many assignments to grade and a moderate to a high degree of subjectivity in the assessment of quality. It can be difficult to have consistency across scores, and holistic scoring guides are most helpful when making decisions quickly rather than providing detailed feedback to students. See example from 11.229 advanced writing seminar .

The kind of rubric that is most appropriate will depend on the assignment in question.

Implementation tips

Rubrics are also available to use for Canvas assignments. See this resource from Boston College for more details and guides from Canvas Instructure.

Allen, D., & Tanner, K. (2006). Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 5 (3), 197-203. doi:10.1187/cbe.06-06-0168

Cherie Miot Abbanat. 11.229 Advanced Writing Seminar. Spring 2004. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

Haynes Miller, Nat Stapleton, Saul Glasman, and Susan Ruff. 18.821 Project Laboratory in Mathematics. Spring 2013. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

Lori Breslow, and Terence Heagney. 15.279 Management Communication for Undergraduates. Fall 2012. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

O’Reilly, L., & Cyr, T. (2006). Creating a Rubric: An Online Tutorial for Faculty. Retrieved from https://www.ucdenver.edu/faculty_staff/faculty/center-for-faculty-development/Documents/Tutorials/Rubrics/index.htm

Suskie, L. (2009). Using a scoring guide or rubric to plan and evaluate an assessment. In Assessing student learning: A common sense guide (2nd edition, pp. 137-154 ) . Jossey-Bass.

William Li, Grace Teo, and Robert Miller. 6.811 Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology. Fall 2014. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

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Differentiating by Offering Choices

Elementary students have a better chance of showing what they’ve learned when they have a choice about how to show it.

Most classrooms are filled with students of varying academic abilities. Even within a gifted and talented classroom like mine, the ability levels can range drastically. As teachers strive to meet each student’s individual needs, differentiation is key because it’s about giving more opportunities for students to grow to their highest potential, and it is beneficial for all students .

In the digital era, we can provide all of our students with technological ways to enhance their learning, no matter their academic label. Every student is different and needs to be offered a variety of ways to show what they’ve learned in a way that reflects their individuality.

One way to differentiate within the curriculum is to provide students with choices for completing an assignment. Students learn in various ways, and we can let them show their learning in various ways. When I give my students a choice on how they’ll complete a project, they have to meet certain criteria, but I allow them to find an outlet they find most enjoyable, such as creating a Google Slides presentation, a trifold board, or a pamphlet. Giving students a choice allows them to take ownership of their learning as well as create a product that feels authentic to them. They work on something that they’re good at creating, or try something they want to get better at.

An excellent way to ensure differentiation is to have each student create an e-portfolio—a technology-based assessment tool that collects a student’s authentic work samples, providing a quick way for a teacher to assess growth and skills. In a sense, the e-portfolio is a window into a student’s learning, one that allows the student to choose what to include.

An e-portfolio can follow the student across grades, too. And once the time is spent creating one, the process of adding content becomes easier and quicker as the student adds to it in later grades. Since e-portfolios offer a way for students to show authentic learning , they allow students to exhibit their individual growth through their academic experiences.

Differentiating by Giving Choices

The best way to differentiate instruction is to give students a choice in how they show their learning. All students learn in their own way, and they need to be able to show their individual skills and interests. As long as they’re able to demonstrate a certain skill, assessment should be more about the process than the product.

Giving choices may seem like more work for the teacher, and it can be, but it’s also worthwhile because it encourages more students to take more ownership of their learning.

Adding a technology component to an assignment can drastically increase student engagement, especially if they haven’t been given such options in the past. Using a novel app, such as Flipgrid, adds an element of fun while also giving students practice with tech skills.

But technology is not the only way to provide choice—try using choice boards, which provide students with many options for presenting content. Students may present the water cycle stages in a song, for example, or create a comic that lays out those stages. Such choices can be fun for the students, and can show teachers hidden talents their students possess that they wouldn’t see otherwise.

Differentiating With Portfolios

Few applications offer the opportunity for students to reflect on their learning, but pushing students to do that is important in getting them to think about how they learn best and take an active role in their own learning. Quick assessment applications such as Flipgrid and Kahoot allow for student reflection, but the e-portfolio—which showcases an individual student’s personality—is even better.

With e-portfolios, students reflect on their learning while putting their own mark on their assignments. Students are able to showcase their learning and the process they used to create their final product while individualizing it with their likes and interests.

A teacher may require some items to be present—such as name, class section, pictures of hobbies, or content-related materials—but seeing the ways that students make the e-portfolio their own is what a teacher wants. The e-portfolio is a tool that students can use to express their thinking in a way that is unique to them.

Teachers can assess e-portfolios to measure growth and skills instead of just knowledge of course content. Students are able to take ownership of what they have learned , choose how they present the content, and take control of their learning.

Differentiating allows students to have their voice heard, which can lead them to become self-motivated learners. And that in turn can help increase both their learning growth and their self-awareness of that growth.

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Students' Achievement and Homework Assignment Strategies

Rubén fernández-alonso.

1 Department of Education Sciences, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain

2 Department of Education, Principality of Asturias Government, Oviedo, Spain

Marcos Álvarez-Díaz

Javier suárez-Álvarez.

3 Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain

José Muñiz

The optimum time students should spend on homework has been widely researched although the results are far from unanimous. The main objective of this research is to analyze how homework assignment strategies in schools affect students' academic performance and the differences in students' time spent on homework. Participants were a representative sample of Spanish adolescents ( N = 26,543) with a mean age of 14.4 (±0.75), 49.7% girls. A test battery was used to measure academic performance in four subjects: Spanish, Mathematics, Science, and Citizenship. A questionnaire allowed the measurement of the indicators used for the description of homework and control variables. Two three-level hierarchical-linear models (student, school, autonomous community) were produced for each subject being evaluated. The relationship between academic results and homework time is negative at the individual level but positive at school level. An increase in the amount of homework a school assigns is associated with an increase in the differences in student time spent on homework. An optimum amount of homework is proposed which schools should assign to maximize gains in achievement for students overall.

The role of homework in academic achievement is an age-old debate (Walberg et al., 1985 ) that has swung between times when it was thought to be a tool for improving a country's competitiveness and times when it was almost outlawed. So Cooper ( 2001 ) talks about the battle over homework and the debates and rows continue (Walberg et al., 1985 , 1986 ; Barber, 1986 ). It is considered a complicated subject (Corno, 1996 ), mysterious (Trautwein and Köller, 2003 ), a chameleon (Trautwein et al., 2009b ), or Janus-faced (Flunger et al., 2015 ). One must agree with Cooper et al. ( 2006 ) that homework is a practice full of contradictions, where positive and negative effects coincide. As such, depending on our preferences, it is possible to find data which support the argument that homework benefits all students (Cooper, 1989 ), or that it does not matter and should be abolished (Barber, 1986 ). Equally, one might argue a compensatory effect as it favors students with more difficulties (Epstein and Van Voorhis, 2001 ), or on the contrary, that it is a source of inequality as it specifically benefits those better placed on the social ladder (Rømming, 2011 ). Furthermore, this issue has jumped over the school wall and entered the home, contributing to the polemic by becoming a common topic about which it is possible to have an opinion without being well informed, something that Goldstein ( 1960 ) warned of decades ago after reviewing almost 300 pieces of writing on the topic in Education Index and finding that only 6% were empirical studies.

The relationship between homework time and educational outcomes has traditionally been the most researched aspect (Cooper, 1989 ; Cooper et al., 2006 ; Fan et al., 2017 ), although conclusions have evolved over time. The first experimental studies (Paschal et al., 1984 ) worked from the hypothesis that time spent on homework was a reflection of an individual student's commitment and diligence and as such the relationship between time spent on homework and achievement should be positive. This was roughly the idea at the end of the twentieth century, when more positive effects had been found than negative (Cooper, 1989 ), although it was also known that the relationship was not strictly linear (Cooper and Valentine, 2001 ), and that its strength depended on the student's age- stronger in post-compulsory secondary education than in compulsory education and almost zero in primary education (Cooper et al., 2012 ). With the turn of the century, hierarchical-linear models ran counter to this idea by showing that homework was a multilevel situation and the effect of homework on outcomes depended on classroom factors (e.g., frequency or amount of assigned homework) more than on an individual's attitude (Trautwein and Köller, 2003 ). Research with a multilevel approach indicated that individual variations in time spent had little effect on academic results (Farrow et al., 1999 ; De Jong et al., 2000 ; Dettmers et al., 2010 ; Murillo and Martínez-Garrido, 2013 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2014 ; Núñez et al., 2014 ; Servicio de Evaluación Educativa del Principado de Asturias, 2016 ) and that when statistically significant results were found, the effect was negative (Trautwein, 2007 ; Trautwein et al., 2009b ; Lubbers et al., 2010 ; Chang et al., 2014 ). The reasons for this null or negative relationship lie in the fact that those variables which are positively associated with homework time are antagonistic when predicting academic performance. For example, some students may not need to spend much time on homework because they learn quickly and have good cognitive skills and previous knowledge (Trautwein, 2007 ; Dettmers et al., 2010 ), or maybe because they are not very persistent in their work and do not finish homework tasks (Flunger et al., 2015 ). Similarly, students may spend more time on homework because they have difficulties learning and concentrating, low expectations and motivation or because they need more direct help (Trautwein et al., 2006 ), or maybe because they put in a lot of effort and take a lot of care with their work (Flunger et al., 2015 ). Something similar happens with sociological variables such as gender: Girls spend more time on homework (Gershenson and Holt, 2015 ) but, compared to boys, in standardized tests they have better results in reading and worse results in Science and Mathematics (OECD, 2013a ).

On the other hand, thanks to multilevel studies, systematic effects on performance have been found when homework time is considered at the class or school level. De Jong et al. ( 2000 ) found that the number of assigned homework tasks in a year was positively and significantly related to results in mathematics. Equally, the volume or amount of homework (mean homework time for the group) and the frequency of homework assignment have positive effects on achievement. The data suggests that when frequency and volume are considered together, the former has more impact on results than the latter (Trautwein et al., 2002 ; Trautwein, 2007 ). In fact, it has been estimated that in classrooms where homework is always assigned there are gains in mathematics and science of 20% of a standard deviation over those classrooms which sometimes assign homework (Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ). Significant results have also been found in research which considered only homework volume at the classroom or school level. Dettmers et al. ( 2009 ) concluded that the school-level effect of homework is positive in the majority of participating countries in PISA 2003, and the OECD ( 2013b ), with data from PISA 2012, confirms that schools in which students have more weekly homework demonstrate better results once certain school and student-background variables are discounted. To put it briefly, homework has a multilevel nature (Trautwein and Köller, 2003 ) in which the variables have different significance and effects according to the level of analysis, in this case a positive effect at class level, and a negative or null effect in most cases at the level of the individual. Furthermore, the fact that the clearest effects are seen at the classroom and school level highlights the role of homework policy in schools and teaching, over and above the time individual students spend on homework.

From this complex context, this current study aims to explore the relationships between the strategies schools use to assign homework and the consequences that has on students' academic performance and on the students' own homework strategies. There are two specific objectives, firstly, to systematically analyze the differential effect of time spent on homework on educational performance, both at school and individual level. We hypothesize a positive effect for homework time at school level, and a negative effect at the individual level. Secondly, the influence of homework quantity assigned by schools on the distribution of time spent by students on homework will be investigated. This will test the previously unexplored hypothesis that an increase in the amount of homework assigned by each school will create an increase in differences, both in time spent on homework by the students, and in academic results. Confirming this hypothesis would mean that an excessive amount of homework assigned by schools would penalize those students who for various reasons (pace of work, gaps in learning, difficulties concentrating, overexertion) need to spend more time completing their homework than their peers. In order to resolve this apparent paradox we will calculate the optimum volume of homework that schools should assign in order to benefit the largest number of students without contributing to an increase in differences, that is, without harming educational equity.

Participants

The population was defined as those students in year 8 of compulsory education in the academic year 2009/10 in Spain. In order to provide a representative sample, a stratified random sampling was carried out from the 19 autonomous regions in Spain. The sample was selected from each stratum according to a two-stage cluster design (OECD, 2009 , 2011 , 2014a ; Ministerio de Educación, 2011 ). In the first stage, the primary units of the sample were the schools, which were selected with a probability proportional to the number of students in the 8th grade. The more 8th grade students in a given school, the higher the likelihood of the school being selected. In the second stage, 35 students were selected from each school through simple, systematic sampling. A detailed, step-by-step description of the sampling procedure may be found in OECD ( 2011 ). The subsequent sample numbered 29,153 students from 933 schools. Some students were excluded due to lack of information (absences on the test day), or for having special educational needs. The baseline sample was finally made up of 26,543 students. The mean student age was 14.4 with a standard deviation of 0.75, rank of age from 13 to 16. Some 66.2% attended a state school; 49.7% were girls; 87.8% were Spanish nationals; 73.5% were in the school year appropriate to their age, the remaining 26.5% were at least 1 year behind in terms of their age.

Test application, marking, and data recording were contracted out via public tendering, and were carried out by qualified personnel unconnected to the schools. The evaluation, was performed on two consecutive days, each day having two 50 min sessions separated by a break. At the end of the second day the students completed a context questionnaire which included questions related to homework. The evaluation was carried out in compliance with current ethical standards in Spain. Families of the students selected to participate in the evaluation were informed about the study by the school administrations, and were able to choose whether those students would participate in the study or not.

Instruments

Tests of academic performance.

The performance test battery consisted of 342 items evaluating four subjects: Spanish (106 items), mathematics (73 items), science (78), and citizenship (85). The items, completed on paper, were in various formats and were subject to binary scoring, except 21 items which were coded on a polytomous scale, between 0 and 2 points (Ministerio de Educación, 2011 ). As a single student is not capable of answering the complete item pool in the time given, the items were distributed across various booklets following a matrix design (Fernández-Alonso and Muñiz, 2011 ). The mean Cronbach α for the booklets ranged from 0.72 (mathematics) to 0.89 (Spanish). Student scores were calculated adjusting the bank of items to Rasch's IRT model using the ConQuest 2.0 program (Wu et al., 2007 ) and were expressed in a scale with mean and standard deviation of 500 and 100 points respectively. The student's scores were divided into five categories, estimated using the plausible values method. In large scale assessments this method is better at recovering the true population parameters (e.g., mean, standard deviation) than estimates of scores using methods of maximum likelihood or expected a-posteriori estimations (Mislevy et al., 1992 ; OECD, 2009 ; von Davier et al., 2009 ).

Homework variables

A questionnaire was made up of a mix of items which allowed the calculation of the indicators used for the description of homework variables. Daily minutes spent on homework was calculated from a multiple choice question with the following options: (a) Generally I don't have homework; (b) 1 h or less; (c) Between 1 and 2 h; (d) Between 2 and 3 h; (e) More than 3 h. The options were recoded as follows: (a) = 0 min.; (b) = 45 min.; (c) = 90 min.; (d) = 150 min.; (e) = 210 min. According to Trautwein and Köller ( 2003 ) the average homework time of the students in a school could be regarded as a good proxy for the amount of homework assigned by the teacher. So the mean of this variable for each school was used as an estimator of Amount or volume of homework assigned .

Control variables

Four variables were included to describe sociological factors about the students, three were binary: Gender (1 = female ); Nationality (1 = Spanish; 0 = other ); School type (1 = state school; 0 = private ). The fourth variable was Socioeconomic and cultural index (SECI), which is constructed with information about family qualifications and professions, along with the availability of various material and cultural resources at home. It is expressed in standardized points, N(0,1) . Three variables were used to gather educational history: Appropriate School Year (1 = being in the school year appropriate to their age ; 0 = repeated a school year) . The other two adjustment variables were Academic Expectations and Motivation which were included for two reasons: they are both closely connected to academic achievement (Suárez-Álvarez et al., 2014 ). Their position as adjustment factors is justified because, in an ex-post facto descriptive design such as this, both expectations and motivation may be thought of as background variables that the student brings with them on the day of the test. Academic expectations for finishing education was measured with a multiple-choice item where the score corresponds to the years spent in education in order to reach that level of qualification: compulsory secondary education (10 points); further secondary education (12 points); non-university higher education (14 points); University qualification (16 points). Motivation was constructed from the answers to six four-point Likert items, where 1 means strongly disagree with the sentence and 4 means strongly agree. Students scoring highly in this variable are agreeing with statements such as “at school I learn useful and interesting things.” A Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed using a Maximum Likelihood robust estimation method (MLMV) and the items fit an essentially unidimensional scale: CFI = 0.954; TLI = 0.915; SRMR = 0.037; RMSEA = 0.087 (90% CI = 0.084–0.091).

As this was an official evaluation, the tests used were created by experts in the various fields, contracted by the Spanish Ministry of Education in collaboration with the regional education authorities.

Data analyses

Firstly the descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations between the variables were calculated. Then, using the HLM 6.03 program (Raudenbush et al., 2004 ), two three-level hierarchical-linear models (student, school, autonomous community) were produced for each subject being evaluated: a null model (without predictor variables) and a random intercept model in which adjustment variables and homework variables were introduced at the same time. Given that HLM does not return standardized coefficients, all of the variables were standardized around the general mean, which allows the interpretation of the results as classical standardized regression analysis coefficients. Levels 2 and 3 variables were constructed from means of standardized level 1 variables and were not re-standardized. Level 1 variables were introduced without centering except for four cases: study time, motivation, expectation, and socioeconomic and cultural level which were centered on the school mean to control composition effects (Xu and Wu, 2013 ) and estimate the effect of differences in homework time among the students within the same school. The range of missing variable cases was very small, between 1 and 3%. Recovery was carried out using the procedure described in Fernández-Alonso et al. ( 2012 ).

The results are presented in two ways: the tables show standardized coefficients while in the figures the data are presented in a real scale, taking advantage of the fact that a scale with a 100 point standard deviation allows the expression of the effect of the variables and the differences between groups as percentage increases in standardized points.

Table ​ Table1 1 shows the descriptive statistics and the matrix of correlations between the study variables. As can be seen in the table, the relationship between the variables turned out to be in the expected direction, with the closest correlations between the different academic performance scores and socioeconomic level, appropriate school year, and student expectations. The nationality variable gave the highest asymmetry and kurtosis, which was to be expected as the majority of the sample are Spanish.

Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation matrix between the variables .

Table ​ Table2 2 shows the distribution of variance in the null model. In the four subjects taken together, 85% of the variance was found at the student level, 10% was variance between schools, and 5% variance between regions. Although the 10% of variance between schools could seem modest, underlying that there were large differences. For example, in Spanish the 95% plausible value range for the school means ranged between 577 and 439 points, practically 1.5 standard deviations, which shows that schools have a significant impact on student results.

Distribution of the variance in the null model .

Table ​ Table3 3 gives the standardized coefficients of the independent variables of the four multilevel models, as well as the percentage of variance explained by each level.

Multilevel models for prediction of achievement in four subjects .

β, Standardized weight; SE, Standard Error; SECI, Socioeconomic and cultural index; AC, Autonomous Communities .

The results indicated that the adjustment variables behaved satisfactorily, with enough control to analyze the net effects of the homework variables. This was backed up by two results, firstly, the two variables with highest standardized coefficients were those related to educational history: academic expectations at the time of the test, and being in the school year corresponding to age. Motivation demonstrated a smaller effect but one which was significant in all cases. Secondly, the adjustment variables explained the majority of the variance in the results. The percentages of total explained variance in Table ​ Table2 2 were calculated with all variables. However, if the strategy had been to introduce the adjustment variables first and then add in the homework variables, the explanatory gain in the second model would have been about 2% in each subject.

The amount of homework turned out to be positively and significantly associated with the results in the four subjects. In a 100 point scale of standard deviation, controlling for other variables, it was estimated that for each 10 min added to the daily volume of homework, schools would achieve between 4.1 and 4.8 points more in each subject, with the exception of mathematics where the increase would be around 2.5 points. In other words, an increase of between 15 and 29 points in the school mean is predicted for each additional hour of homework volume of the school as a whole. This school level gain, however, would only occur if the students spent exactly the same time on homework as their school mean. As the regression coefficient of student homework time is negative and the variable is centered on the level of the school, the model predicts deterioration in results for those students who spend more time than their class mean on homework, and an improvement for those who finish their homework more quickly than the mean of their classmates.

Furthermore, the results demonstrated a positive association between the amount of homework assigned in a school and the differences in time needed by the students to complete their homework. Figure ​ Figure1 1 shows the relationship between volume of homework (expressed as mean daily minutes of homework by school) and the differences in time spent by students (expressed as the standard deviation from the mean school daily minutes). The correlation between the variables was 0.69 and the regression gradient indicates that schools which assigned 60 min of homework per day had a standard deviation in time spent by students on homework of approximately 25 min, whereas in those schools assigning 120 min of homework, the standard deviation was twice as long, and was over 50 min. So schools which assigned more homework also tended to demonstrate greater differences in the time students need to spend on that homework.

Relationship between school homework volume and differences in time needed by students to complete homework .

Figure ​ Figure2 2 shows the effect on results in mathematics of the combination of homework time, homework amount, and the variance of homework time associated with the amount of homework assigned in two types of schools: in type 1 schools the amount of homework assigned is 1 h, and in type 2 schools the amount of homework 2 h. The result in mathematics was used as a dependent variable because, as previously noted, it was the subject where the effect was smallest and as such is the most conservative prediction. With other subjects the results might be even clearer.

Prediction of results for quick and slow students according to school homework size .

Looking at the first standard deviation of student homework time shown in the first graph, it was estimated that in type 1 schools, which assign 1 h of daily homework, a quick student (one who finishes their homework before 85% of their classmates) would spend a little over half an hour (35 min), whereas the slower student, who spends more time than 85% of classmates, would need almost an hour and a half of work each day (85 min). In type 2 schools, where the homework amount is 2 h a day, the differences increase from just over an hour (65 min for a quick student) to almost 3 h (175 min for a slow student). Figure ​ Figure2 2 shows how the differences in performance would vary within a school between the more and lesser able students according to amount of homework assigned. In type 1 schools, with 1 h of homework per day, the difference in achievement between quick and slow students would be around 5% of a standard deviation, while in schools assigning 2 h per day the difference would be 12%. On the other hand, the slow student in a type 2 school would score 6 points more than the quick student in a type 1 school. However, to achieve this, the slow student in a type 2 school would need to spend five times as much time on homework in a week (20.4 weekly hours rather than 4.1). It seems like a lot of work for such a small gain.

Discussion and conclusions

The data in this study reaffirm the multilevel nature of homework (Trautwein and Köller, 2003 ) and support this study's first hypothesis: the amount of homework (mean daily minutes the student spends on homework) is positively associated with academic results, whereas the time students spent on homework considered individually is negatively associated with academic results. These findings are in line with previous research, which indicate that school-level variables, such as amount of homework assigned, have more explanatory power than individual variables such as time spent (De Jong et al., 2000 ; Dettmers et al., 2010 ; Scheerens et al., 2013 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ). In this case it was found that for each additional hour of homework assigned by a school, a gain of 25% of a standard deviation is expected in all subjects except mathematics, where the gain is around 15%. On the basis of this evidence, common sense would dictate the conclusion that frequent and abundant homework assignment may be one way to improve school efficiency.

However, as noted previously, the relationship between homework and achievement is paradoxical- appearances are deceptive and first conclusions are not always confirmed. Analysis demonstrates another two complementary pieces of data which, read together, raise questions about the previous conclusion. In the first place, time spent on homework at the individual level was found to have a negative effect on achievement, which confirms the findings of other multilevel-approach research (Trautwein, 2007 ; Trautwein et al., 2009b ; Chang et al., 2014 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2016 ). Furthermore, it was found that an increase in assigned homework volume is associated with an increase in the differences in time students need to complete it. Taken together, the conclusion is that, schools with more homework tend to exhibit more variation in student achievement. These results seem to confirm our second hypothesis, as a positive covariation was found between the amount of homework in a school (the mean homework time by school) and the increase in differences within the school, both in student homework time and in the academic results themselves. The data seem to be in line with those who argue that homework is a source of inequity because it affects those less academically-advantaged students and students with greater limitations in their home environments (Kohn, 2006 ; Rømming, 2011 ; OECD, 2013b ).

This new data has clear implications for educational action and school homework policies, especially in compulsory education. If quality compulsory education is that which offers the best results for the largest number (Barber and Mourshed, 2007 ; Mourshed et al., 2010 ), then assigning an excessive volume of homework at those school levels could accentuate differences, affecting students who are slower, have more gaps in their knowledge, or are less privileged, and can make them feel overwhelmed by the amount of homework assigned to them (Martinez, 2011 ; OECD, 2014b ; Suárez et al., 2016 ). The data show that in a school with 60 min of assigned homework, a quick student will need just 4 h a week to finish their homework, whereas a slow student will spend 10 h a week, 2.5 times longer, with the additional aggravation of scoring one twentieth of a standard deviation below their quicker classmates. And in a school assigning 120 min of homework per day, a quick student will need 7.5 h per week whereas a slow student will have to triple this time (20 h per week) to achieve a result one eighth worse, that is, more time for a relatively worse result.

It might be argued that the differences are not very large, as between 1 and 2 h of assigned homework, the level of inequality increases 7% on a standardized scale. But this percentage increase has been estimated after statistically, or artificially, accounting for sociological and psychological student factors and other variables at school and region level. The adjustment variables influence both achievement and time spent on homework, so it is likely that in a real classroom situation the differences estimated here might be even larger. This is especially important in comprehensive education systems, like the Spanish (Eurydice, 2015 ), in which the classroom groups are extremely heterogeneous, with a variety of students in the same class in terms of ability, interest, and motivation, in which the aforementioned variables may operate more strongly.

The results of this research must be interpreted bearing in mind a number of limitations. The most significant limitation in the research design is the lack of a measure of previous achievement, whether an ad hoc test (Murillo and Martínez-Garrido, 2013 ) or school grades (Núñez et al., 2014 ), which would allow adjustment of the data. In an attempt to alleviate this, our research has placed special emphasis on the construction of variables which would work to exclude academic history from the model. The use of the repetition of school year variable was unavoidable because Spain has one of the highest levels of repetition in the European Union (Eurydice, 2011 ) and repeating students achieve worse academic results (Ministerio de Educación, 2011 ). Similarly, the expectation and motivation variables were included in the group of adjustment factors assuming that in this research they could be considered background variables. In this way, once the background factors are discounted, the homework variables explain 2% of the total variance, which is similar to estimations from other multilevel studies (De Jong et al., 2000 ; Trautwein, 2007 ; Dettmers et al., 2009 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2016 ). On the other hand, the statistical models used to analyze the data are correlational, and as such, one can only speak of an association between variables and not of directionality or causality in the analysis. As Trautwein and Lüdtke ( 2009 ) noted, the word “effect” must be understood as “predictive effect.” In other words, it is possible to say that the amount of homework is connected to performance; however, it is not possible to say in which direction the association runs. Another aspect to be borne in mind is that the homework time measures are generic -not segregated by subject- when it its understood that time spent and homework behavior are not consistent across all subjects (Trautwein et al., 2006 ; Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2007 ). Nonetheless, when the dependent variable is academic results it has been found that the relationship between homework time and achievement is relatively stable across all subjects (Lubbers et al., 2010 ; Chang et al., 2014 ) which leads us to believe that the results given here would have changed very little even if the homework-related variables had been separated by subject.

Future lines of research should be aimed toward the creation of comprehensive models which incorporate a holistic vision of homework. It must be recognized that not all of the time spent on homework by a student is time well spent (Valle et al., 2015 ). In addition, research has demonstrated the importance of other variables related to student behavior such as rate of completion, the homework environment, organization, and task management, autonomy, parenting styles, effort, and the use of study techniques (Zimmerman and Kitsantas, 2005 ; Xu, 2008 , 2013 ; Kitsantas and Zimmerman, 2009 ; Kitsantas et al., 2011 ; Ramdass and Zimmerman, 2011 ; Bembenutty and White, 2013 ; Xu and Wu, 2013 ; Xu et al., 2014 ; Rosário et al., 2015a ; Osorio and González-Cámara, 2016 ; Valle et al., 2016 ), as well as the role of expectation, value given to the task, and personality traits (Lubbers et al., 2010 ; Goetz et al., 2012 ; Pedrosa et al., 2016 ). Along the same lines, research has also indicated other important variables related to teacher homework policies, such as reasons for assignment, control and feedback, assignment characteristics, and the adaptation of tasks to the students' level of learning (Trautwein et al., 2009a ; Dettmers et al., 2010 ; Patall et al., 2010 ; Buijs and Admiraal, 2013 ; Murillo and Martínez-Garrido, 2013 ; Rosário et al., 2015b ). All of these should be considered in a comprehensive model of homework.

In short, the data seem to indicate that in year 8 of compulsory education, 60–70 min of homework a day is a recommendation that, slightly more optimistically than Cooper's ( 2001 ) “10 min rule,” gives a reasonable gain for the whole school, without exaggerating differences or harming students with greater learning difficulties or who work more slowly, and is in line with other available evidence (Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ). These results have significant implications when it comes to setting educational policy in schools, sending a clear message to head teachers, teachers and those responsible for education. The results of this research show that assigning large volumes of homework increases inequality between students in pursuit of minimal gains in achievement for those who least need it. Therefore, in terms of school efficiency, and with the aim of improving equity in schools it is recommended that educational policies be established which optimize all students' achievement.

Ethics statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the University of Oviedo with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the University of Oviedo.

Author contributions

RF and JM have designed the research; RF and JS have analyzed the data; MA and JM have interpreted the data; RF, MA, and JS have drafted the paper; JM has revised it critically; all authors have provided final approval of the version to be published and have ensured the accuracy and integrity of the work.

This research was funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad del Gobierno de España. References: PSI2014-56114-P, BES2012-053488. We would like to express our utmost gratitude to the Ministerio de Educación Cultura y Deporte del Gobierno de España and to the Consejería de Educación y Cultura del Gobierno del Principado de Asturias, without whose collaboration this research would not have been possible.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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TeachOnline@UW: Rubrics – Advantages and Best Practices

Why Use Rubrics?

Rubrics can help improve student performance by making instructors’ expectations clear and by showing students how to meet those expectations. The result is often marked improvements in the quality of student learning. Thus, the most common argument for using rubrics is that they help define “quality.”

Rubrics also help students become more thoughtful judges of the quality of their own and others’ work. When rubrics are used to guide self- and peer-assessment, students develop the ability to spot and solve problems in their work.

Rubrics that are completed with comments can provide students with more informative feedback about their strengths and areas to improve. They also add fairness to the assessment process, helping students to understand why they received a particular grade, score, or rating. Studies have found that students feel rubrics clarify expectations and are especially useful as they prepare assignments.

Rubrics take time to develop, but they make it easier to judge student work and provide feedback over the long-run. If developed well, they can reduce the amount of time evaluating student work.

Write feedback for each level of performance for a rubric in advance that can be pre-inserted in digital rubrics or pasted into a  document version of a rubric. This feedback can be tailored to each student, if preferable, or link to the assignment guidelines for more explanation of how to achieve the assignment criteria requirements.

UW-Madison instructors discuss how they use rubrics

Watch video.

• Mark Edgar, Population Health Sciences, School of Medicine and Public Health
• Jennifer Gipson, Professor of French, College of Letters and Science
• Evelyn Howell, professor and chair, Landscape Architecture
• Doug Hadley, senior lecturer, Landscape Architecture

Rubrics: Advantages and Best Practices Copyright © by Karen Skibba. All Rights Reserved.

Taylor Swift is now a class at the University of Miami. What will the students learn?

MIAMI — A University of Miami dean’s own homework assignment last year — learn all you can about Taylor Swift’s songs as fast as you can — has led to one of the coming fall semester’s hottest classes on the Coral Gables campus.

Students were more than ready for it. The UM’s “Mastermind Taylor Swift Brand” strategic communication class filled up at a pace almost as fast as tickets sold out last August for the superstar’s three South Florida concerts in October 2023. Those shows open the second U.S. leg of Swift’s Eras Tour at Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium.

When registration opened earlier this month at UM for the 150-capacity class that’s open to all majors and begins Aug. 20, all seats filled within four days. The school raised the cap to 175. There is now a waiting list for STC 290. UM may add more seats for the Tuesday-Thursday 75-minute class.

How a UM Swift class was born

For Alyse Lancaster, UM’s vice dean for academic affairs in the School of Communication, that “Mastermind Taylor Swift Brand” class she formulated and will teach is a family affair.

The class is happening because her daughter Gabi planted the idea. And her son Sydney, a sophomore at the University of Florida majoring in interior design, designed the class’s promotional poster that UM students have seen around campus since March.

“Taylor Swift has been a staple in my house since my now-17-year-old daughter was 4 years old,” Lancaster told the Miami Herald in an email interview. “But it wasn’t until we were able to purchase presale tickets for the Eras Tour concert that things changed on my end. My daughter told me that I needed to learn all of the songs on the Eras Tour set list, plus most of Taylor’s other songs — ‘because you never know what the two surprise songs she will perform at the concert’ and I need to be ready.”

Gabi made her mom a playlist. Lancaster listened intently.

“Don’t blame me, love made me crazy/ If it doesn’t, you ain’t doin’ it right” blasting on Lancaster’s exercise walks.

“And you call me up again just to break me like a promise/ So casually cruel in the name of being honest,” Taylor’s dig at ex-beau Jake Gyllenhaal, coming from Lancaster’s car stereo on those drives to and from campus in Miami’s infernal traffic jams.

All this cramming of Swift’s music gave the educator plenty of contemplative and creative time.

“Then she and I went to see the Eras Tour movie and while watching this incredible woman perform for 3.5 hours straight, through nine eras of her music, interacting with her over-the-moon-excited, completely engaged audience, I finally understood what the big deal is,” Lancaster said.

On one of those walks, the idea for the class hit Lancaster like an immediate, enchanted revelation, much like words and music come to Swift. She knew she had to teach a communication strategy class at UM built around Swift’s brand.

Swift in academia from UF to Harvard

Other places of higher education have designed courses around the pop star.

Last fall, the University of Miami’s School of Law had an adjunct professor teach a seven-week intensive class called “Intellectual Property Law Through the Lens of Taylor Swift.”

The University of Florida’s one-credit discussion-based spring 2024 class, “ Musical Storytelling With Taylor Swift and Other Iconic Female Artists,” filled its 15 spots in 10 seconds when early registration opened last fall, the campus newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator reported.

In the last year, Stanford University has offered “All Too Well (Ten Week Version),” a course analyzing Swift’s 10-minute masterpiece, “All Too Well” and “The Last Great American Songwriter: Storytelling With Taylor Swift Through the Eras.”

Harvard’s Department of English opened its “ Taylor Swift and Her World “ course this spring, promising to cover “illicit affairs and hoaxes” and “champagne problems and incomplete closure.”

Berklee College of Music in Boston offers a “Songs of Taylor Swift” class with a focus on the performer’s music composition and lyrics, The Boston Globe reported.

In addition to Lancaster’s coming UM class, Arizona State University, Brigham Young University, Houston’s Rice University, the University of Delaware and the University of California, Berkeley all plan Swift-inspired courses in 2024, according to Best Colleges.

“I typically teach courses in advertising strategy development and social media strategies,” Lancaster said. “These classes focus on brand-building, identifying and communicating with the desired target audience, building brand loyalty, and using social media to build a long-lasting relationship between the brand and its loyal audience. And it occurred to me that Taylor Swift has successfully built a billion-dollar brand with a multicultural, multigenerational, global audience of millions of loyal fans.

“So why not use Taylor Swift’s success and business prowess as the foundation for teaching students about brand-building, audience-building, and the importance of communication in achieving those relationships? And just like that, the class was born,” Lancaster said.

What students will learn

Students who managed to secure a seat for UM’s STC 290 in the fall will learn about the marketing and communication strategies Swift has used to build her billion-dollar brand via “the most diverse and loyal group of fans many of us have ever seen,” Lancaster said.

Take Emma Craig, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering at UM. “It’s going to be a ‘Cruel Summer’ waiting until fall for the new Taylor Swift class coming to UM,” the student told The Miami Hurricane campus paper in anticipation of registration for the course.

“For “Mastermind,” the class title borrowed from one of Swift’s “Midnights” tracks, Lancaster’s lectures aim to teach students how to use promotional, persuasive and strategic communication to build a connection with a target audience, and how to get that audience invested in the brand, Lancaster said as she builds her syllabus. School of Communication issues like freedom of expression, the right to privacy for public figures, and the legal limits of using artificial intelligence to alter images are also on the course agenda.

“These are skills students can use not only in the industry, but also in building their own personal brands after graduation,” Lancaster said.

Swift’s own education path

For Swift, 34, that brand-building began inside a classroom in Hendersonville, Tennessee, when she was a high school freshman in a math class, she told the Miami Herald in an interview published in January 2008, just a month after she turned 18.

While her peers listened to the teacher lecture about algebra a few years earlier, Swift said she scribbled the lyrics to her first two hits, “Tim McGraw” and “Teardrops on My Guitar,” in her notebook and sneaked out of class to record voice memos into her telephone.

At 17, signed to her first label, Swift already directed nearly every aspect of her career, from the images on her album covers and press photos, to the songs’ sequencing on her albums. Swift said nothing was released to the marketplace that she hadn’t approved.

“When teachers conducted random notebook checks, they’d be freaked out — but they learned to deal with me,” Swift mused in that long-ago interview.

Knowledge retention

Taylor Swift, Lancaster says, is “in essence, a phenomenon who truly understands many of the important constructs we cover in higher education, including persuasive communication, branding, storytelling, intellectual property, and the power of music.”

One reason universities like UM and UF have taken to teaching Swift, aside from the Eras-like sellout registrations for classes, is they give professors an opportunity to teach concepts that students may actually remember after graduation.

“If students can connect the information they learn to something that’s of great interest to them, they will not only remember that information, but they will be reminded of it whenever the topic of interest comes up. Using Taylor Swift as the impetus for teaching important concepts increases attention, learning, and retention. And plus, it makes learning fun,” Lancaster said.

“I’ve never been more excited to teach a class than I am to teach this one!”

Related Stories

Teacher Appreciation Week 2024: What You Need to Know

04/11/24 | by Kyle Freelander

The winter holiday season is often called the most wonderful time of year. But have you ever celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week as a teacher ?  

Teaching, whether in the K-12 or higher ed space, can be a very rewarding experience, and Teacher Appreciation Week is a great time for the broader community to celebrate the teachers that help educate, inspire, and support the next generation.  

With Teacher Appreciation Week 2024 just around the corner, we thought we’d take some time to answer some frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the week-long celebration and its importance to educators, schools and districts, and — just as notably — student success.   

Table of Contents

What is teacher appreciation week  .

Observed annually in the U.S., Teacher Appreciation Week recognizes the invaluable contributions of teachers. It typically occurs during the first full week of May and serves as an opportunity for students, parents, administrators, and communities to express gratitude and appreciation for the hard work, dedication, and passion of educators.  

Teacher Appreciation Week is a time to acknowledge the vital role teachers play in shaping the future and reaffirm support for the teaching profession. The dedicated week also provides a platform for various activities, events, and gestures of thanks to celebrate teachers’ impact on students’ lives and society.  

Throughout the week, schools, districts, and organizations across the country engage in initiatives to honor teachers — fostering a culture of appreciation and recognition within the education community. 

When is Teacher Appreciation Week 2024?  

Teacher Appreciation Week in 2024 will be celebrated from May 6 to May 10. However — just like you hopefully wouldn’t only celebrate your love on Valentine’s Day or your friends and family members on their respective birthdays — celebrating the teachers in your life is something you can (and should!) do year-round.  

How long is Teacher Appreciation Week?  

Teacher Appreciation Week is celebrated for five consecutive days — Monday through Friday — or a business week.  

Is Teacher Appreciation Week held at the same time each year?  

Teacher Appreciation Week typically occurs during the first full week of May each year in the United States. Usually, it’s celebrated Monday through Friday of that week — providing a full business week for celebration. However, the exact dates can vary from year to year, so it is worth checking with the National Education Association to confirm the official dates for upcoming celebrations.  

Is Teacher Appreciation Week only celebrated in the United States? 

While Teacher Appreciation Week is a widely recognized observance in the United States, similar celebrations honoring educators occur in other countries as well. Different countries may have their own designated days or weeks to honor teachers and recognize their contributions to education. 

For example: 

• World Teachers’ Day  is held annually on October 5 and celebrated internationally 
• In the United Kingdom, there is a National Teaching Assistants’ Day held on the last Friday in September (Sept. 27 in 2024)  
• In China, Teachers’ Day is celebrated on September 10  
• In Canada, National Teacher Appreciation Day is celebrated on the first Tuesday of May. 
• In Vietnam, Vietnamese Teacher’s Day is celebrated annually on November 20 
• Many other countries also have their own variations of teacher appreciation events or days to honor educators. 

While the specific dates and names may vary, the sentiment behind these celebrations remains the same: to express gratitude and appreciation for the hard work and dedication of teachers worldwide. 

Why is it important to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week? 

It is crucial to recognize and celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week as it provides an opportunity for students, parents, administrators, and communities to express gratitude and appreciation for the tireless dedication and hard work of educators.  

Teachers play a pivotal role in shaping the lives of students, inspiring a love for learning, and fostering personal and academic growth. Their commitment extends far beyond the classroom, as they serve as mentors, role models, and advocates for their students’ success.  

By celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week, we honor the profound impact teachers have and reaffirm our commitment to supporting and valuing their contributions to education. 

Celebrating teachers also boosts morale, fosters a positive school culture, and strengthens the bonds between educators, students, and the broader community — creating a supportive and empowering environment for teaching and learning. 

Why is it important for schools and school districts to celebrate Teacher Appreciation week?  

Recognizing teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week and throughout the year is a vital opportunity to acknowledge the significant impact educators have on students, schools, and communities.  

Teachers dedicate countless hours to nurturing, inspiring, and guiding the next generation of leaders — often going above and beyond their roles to ensure every student receives a quality education. By expressing gratitude and appreciation for their hard work, dedication, and passion, schools and districts not only boost teacher morale and job satisfaction but also reinforce a culture of respect, support, and collaboration within the education community. 

Recognizing teachers during National Teacher Appreciation Week fosters great pride among educators, motivating and empowering them to continue making a positive difference in the lives of their students.  

By celebrating teachers, schools, districts, and communities reaffirm the invaluable role educators play in shaping the future and underscore the importance of investing in their professional growth, well-being, and recognition year-round. 

How does Teacher Appreciation Week support student success? 

Teacher Appreciation Week plays a crucial role in supporting student success in several ways: 

• Boosts morale : When teachers feel appreciated and valued, it boosts their morale and job satisfaction. Happy and motivated teachers are more likely to go above and beyond to support their students, creating a positive learning environment conducive to success. 
• Fosters positive relationships : Teacher Appreciation Week provides an opportunity for students and teachers to strengthen their relationships. Expressing gratitude and appreciation helps build trust and rapport between teachers and students — leading to better communication and collaboration, which are essential for academic growth. 
• Enhances teacher-student engagement : Feeling appreciated can inspire teachers to increase their engagement with students, both inside and outside the classroom. Teachers who feel valued are more likely to invest time and effort in providing personalized support, feedback, and guidance to help students succeed academically and personally. 
• Promotes supportive school culture : Celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week fosters a supportive school culture where everyone feels valued and respected. A positive school culture promotes a sense of belonging and encourages students to actively participate in their learning — leading to higher levels of engagement and achievement. 
• Models gratitude and respect : By recognizing and appreciating teachers’ contributions, schools model the importance of gratitude and respect. Students learn to value the efforts of those who support their learning and understand the impact of showing appreciation for others. This fosters a culture of mutual respect and appreciation among students, teachers, and staff, contributing to a positive and supportive learning environment. 

Overall, Teacher Appreciation Week plays a vital role in creating a supportive and nurturing environment where teachers can thrive, leading to improved student outcomes and success. When teachers feel appreciated, valued, and supported, they are better equipped to inspire, motivate, and empower their students to reach their full potential. 

What are some good resources for learning more about Teacher Appreciation Week 2024?  

There are several resources available for learning more about Teacher Appreciation Week and finding inspiration for how to celebrate and honor teachers: 

• National Education Association (NEA) : The NEA provides information and resources related to Teacher Appreciation Week, including ideas for celebrations, downloadable materials, and tips for showing appreciation for educators. 
• National PTA : The National Parent Teacher Association (PTA) offers resources and toolkits for schools and PTAs to plan and organize Teacher Appreciation Week events and activities. 
• Local School District Websites : Many school districts provide information and guidance on how they are celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week, including event schedules, volunteer opportunities, and ways for students and parents to get involved. 
• Education Organizations and Associations : Various education organizations and associations, such as the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) , the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) or the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) , may offer resources, articles, and ideas for recognizing teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week. 
• Social Media Platforms : Following education-related hashtags on social media platforms can provide insights into how schools, districts, educators, and communities are celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week and sharing ideas and inspiration. 
• Teacher Blogs and Websites : Many educators share their experiences, ideas, and resources related to Teacher Appreciation Week on their blogs or websites. Exploring teacher blogs or education-focused websites can provide valuable insights and inspiration for celebrating teachers. 
• Local News Outlets : Local news outlets may cover stories and events related to Teacher Appreciation Week in the community, offering ideas and inspiration for how individuals and organizations are celebrating and honoring educators. 
• 240Tutoring: Wondering what to give teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week? Our partner 240Tutoring has a blog post detailing the best and worst teacher appreciation gifts, which you can read here . 

By using these additional resources, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of Teacher Appreciation Week and find creative ways to show gratitude and appreciation for the hard work and dedication of educators. 

Ready to amplify your teaching success? We can help. 

At Moreland University, we help current and aspiring teachers thrive. Our 100% online TEACH-NOW Teacher Preparation Certificate and master’s programs help shape aspiring educators into inspirational teachers, support U.S. teaching certification journeys, and ensure classroom success for today and tomorrow’s students.  

Request more information or join an online information session to discover how we can help you achieve your teaching dreams.  

Additional Reading

May 1, 2023

How to Celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week 2023

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! This week is dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the amazing work that teachers and educators do on a daily basis. At Moreland University, celebrating and supporting our global network of teachers is our mission.

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Watch CBS News

Missy Testerman named National Teacher of the Year: "She makes everyone feel important"

By Kelsie Hoffman

April 3, 2024 / 12:10 PM EDT / CBS News

Missy Testerman has been educating young minds for more than 30 years. 

Her hard work has paid off with a distinctive honor: Testerman was named 2024 National Teacher of the Year. It is selected by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The news was first announced on CBS Mornings. Testerman is a longtime elementary school teacher at Rogersville City Schools in Rogersville, Tennessee.

"There are 3.5 million teachers in this country, so to be named as the teacher who gets to advocate for our teachers and our students is just an incredible honor," she said.

In a tribute video to her years of hard work and support as an educator, a former student told CBS Mornings, "she makes everyone feel important."

Testerman has previously taught first and second grades, and is currently the English as a second language program director. Testerman said she wanted to be a teacher when she walked into the classroom of her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Brown.

"I was very scared, and she took me by the hand, led me over to where my classmates and the toys were, and from that moment on, I wanted to be like Mrs. Brown," Testerman said.

What she loves the most about being a teacher is being the person who gets to "unlock the love of learning in students," she said.

Testerman stressed there is no such thing as bad students, and that everyone can have a bad day.

"There may be kids who are having bad days or kids who are struggling with the circumstances they're in, but there is no such thing as a bad kid."

But when students trust teachers and create a strong bond, that's when Testerman said she believes learning takes place.

"When students realize you're on their side and you want them to be able to create a good life for themselves, that's when learning takes pace.

First lady Jill Biden, who has spent decades as an educator, surprised Testerman with flowers on CBS Mornings. 

"I always say teachers are our heroes, and I wanted to be here today to celebrate Missy as I love celebrating teachers," the first lady said. 

While they share a love and passion for their profession, both women recognize the challenges facing teachers today.

Testerman said she maintains there is not a teacher shortage, but instead the issue lies with compensation.

"A lot of times you hear that there is a teacher shortage. We have a lot of trained teachers out there, people who were even in our classrooms, who were highly effective educators, but they left because they needed to make more money for their families," she said. "The average new college grad coming out of an educator program makes 25% less than most other career fields."

When it comes to retaining teachers, Biden looks to those currently in the classroom for help.

"I think it's up to the teachers who are already in the classroom to recruit other teachers and to mentor them because that's exactly what Missy does, she mentors other teachers and I think it's so important," she said.

Biden announced the first ever Teachers of the Year State Dinner, which will be on May 1.

Kelsie Hoffman is a push and platform editor on CBS News' Growth and Engagement team. She previously worked on Hearst Television's National Desk and as a local TV reporter in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

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College of Engineering

Georgia tech ai makerspace.

Using an approach unlike any other in higher education, Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering has created a digital sandbox for students to understand and use artificial intelligence in the classroom.

The AI Makerspace is a supercomputer hub that gives students access to computing resources typically available only to researchers or tech companies. It means hands-on experience for our students, deepening their skills and preparing them to be the new generation of AI professionals.

With the resources in the AI Makerspace, the College can redesign courses to incorporate practical AI tools and develop new ones that impart the essential principles of AI to all students.

The initiative is in collaboration with NVIDIA , one of the country’s largest suppliers of AI hardware and software — and a substantial investment. Students and faculty receive support through NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute resources, including faculty-run NVIDIA workshops, certifications, a university ambassador program, curriculum-aided teaching kits, and a developer community network.

The AI Makerspace also enables Georgia Tech to enhance or redesign courses to incorporate practical AI tools, along with develop new courses — both foundational and advanced — that impart the essential principles of AI to all students. The partnership between Georgia Tech and NVIDIA signifies a substantial investment. The allocated funds will be utilized for technology, including NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), and infrastructure. S tudents and faculty will receive support through NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute resources, including faculty-run NVIDIA workshops, certifications, a university ambassador program, curriculum-aided teaching kits, and a developer community network.

The collaboration is part of the College’s commitment to nurturing a vibrant AI-powered university that will shape the future generation of AI professionals.

Georgia Tech Unveils New AI Makerspace

By giving students access to powerful supercomputers, Georgia Tech will teach AI to undergraduates in a way unlike any other university in the nation.

What Sets the Georgia Tech AI Makerspace Apart?

Educational Empowerment

In an era where AI is increasingly ingrained in our daily lives, the AI Makerspace democratizes access to heavyweight computing resources.

Training the AI Workforce

The AI Makerspace takes a dedicated approach to workforce development through curriculum-based study as well as independent exploration. 

National Security

Harnessing the power of AI is a strategic imperative for national security. As nations strive to secure their positions as global leaders in the field, investing in AI education is critical for U.S. competitiveness.

Interdisciplinary Focus

The AI Makerspace offers a unique opportunity for students to harness the power of AI technologies in ways that extend beyond traditional computing applications.

The Georgia Tech AI Makerspace is a dedicated computing cluster paired with NVIDIA AI Enterprise software. The software technology resides on an advanced AI infrastructure that is designed, built, and deployed by  Penguin Solutions , providing a virtual gateway to a high-performance computing environment. 

The first phase of the endeavor is powered by 20 NVIDIA HGX H100 systems, housing 160 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, one of the most powerful computational accelerators capable of enabling and supporting advanced AI and machine learning efforts. The system is interconnected with an NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking platform, featuring in-network computing. 

Infrastructure support is led by Georgia Tech’s Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) .

It would take a single NVIDIA H100 GPU one second to come up with a multiplication operation that would take Georgia Tech’s 50,000 students 22 years to achieve.

20 NVIDIA H100-HGX servers, each with:

• 8 x NVIDIA H100 GPUs (SXM5 form-factor)
• 2 x 32-Core Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs (2.8 GHz)
• 2TB 4800 MHz DDR5 DRAM
• 3 x 3.84 TB NVMe storage
• 1 x ConnectX-7 IB NIC (400 Gbps)

Total System:

• 160 NVIDIA H100 GPUs
• 1,280 Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU cores
• 40TB 4800 MHz DDR5 DRAM
• 230.4 TB NVMe storage

Frequently Asked Questions

What are gpus and cpus.

GPUs (graphics processing units) are specialized processors designed to handle certain complex computations efficiently, commonly used in tasks such as rendering high-resolution graphics and performing parallel computations in fields like machine learning and artificial intelligence. CPUs (central processing units) are the central component of a computer responsible for executing instructions, managing tasks, and coordinating the operation of various hardware components, serving as the brain of the computer.

GPUs have become prominent due to their exceptional parallel processing capabilities, which make them highly efficient for high-performance computing (HPC) tasks. Additionally, advancements in GPU technology have led to significant improvements in graphics rendering, gaming experiences, and visual computing applications, further driving their prominence in various industries and fields.

How many GPUs are in the Georgia Tech AI Makerspace and what makes them important?

Phase I of the Georgia Tech AI Makerspace comprises a total of 160 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. 20 NVIDIA H100-HGX servers contain 8 GPUs each. The benefit of GPUs is that they provide extremely performant accelerators designed specifically for AI, with a very large unified memory space that can accommodate very big models.

It’s also noteworthy that an important capability of AI is low-precision performance. These nodes provide roughly 640 petaflops (PF) of theoretical 8-bit floating-point for 8-bit integer (FP8/INT8) capability, combined with the 640 gigabytes of GPU memory per server.

Why are there both GPUs and CPUs in the Georgia Tech AI Makerspace? 

CPUs and GPUs are optimized for different kinds of calculations, so it’s useful to have both available. Optimized software will perform certain steps of code on the CPU and others on the GPU to maximize performance.

CPUs are “standard” general-purpose chips that work well for many calculations. GPUs are specialized. A server cannot run without a CPU. The CPU handles all the tasks required for all software on the server to run correctly. 

GPUs are accelerators with more focused computational hardware that rely on a separate host system to operate.

Who will manage the infrastructure of the AI Makerspace? 

The AI Makerspace infrastructure will be supported by Georgia Tech’s Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE). PACE provides sustainable leading-edge Research Computing and Data (RCD) cyberinfrastructure, software, and support for research and education requiring high performance computing and other advanced research computing infrastructure. 

PACE is a collaboration between Georgia Tech faculty and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) focused on HPC.

Is the AI Makerspace scalable?

Yes. Each GPU can be physically partitioned into 7 GPUs (with 1/8 the capability of the whole). With 160 total GPUs, the AI Makerspace can provide 1,120 concurrent GPUs to allow large numbers of students access simultaneously. 

How much power does the AI Makerspace require?

The new servers will draw about 140kW of power, compared to the 800kW PACE’s five existing clusters draw.

The theoretical 64-bit performance of the new hardware is 5.5 PF (petaflops, a measurement of computer speed of performing calculations). The existing PACE clusters altogether have about 4-4.5 PF of performance. This means that the new servers are significantly more energy efficient for the same computational capability than older systems.

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