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Google Classroom  - Creating Assignments and Materials

Google classroom  -, creating assignments and materials, google classroom creating assignments and materials.

Google Classroom: Creating Assignments and Materials

Lesson 2: creating assignments and materials.

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Creating assignments and materials

Google Classroom gives you the ability to create and assign work for your students, all without having to print anything. Questions , essays , worksheets , and readings can all be distributed online and made easily available to your class. If you haven't created a class already, check out our Getting Started with Google Classroom lesson.

Watch the video below to learn more about creating assignments and materials in Google Classroom.

Creating an assignment

Whenever you want to create new assignments, questions, or material, you'll need to navigate to the Classwork tab.

In this tab, you can create assignments and view all current and past assignments. To create an assignment, click the Create button, then select Assignment . You can also select Question if you'd like to pose a single question to your students, or Material if you simply want to post a reading, visual, or other supplementary material.

This will bring up the Assignment form. Google Classroom offers considerable flexibility and options when creating assignments.

Click the buttons in the interactive below to become familiar with the Assignment form.

This is where you'll type the title of the assignment you're creating.

Instructions

If you'd like to include instructions with your assignment, you can type them here.

Here, you can decide how many points an assignment is worth by typing the number in the form. You can also click the drop-down arrow to select Ungraded if you don't want to grade an assignment.

You can select a due date for an assignment by clicking this arrow and selecting a date from the calendar that appears. Students will have until then to submit their work.

In Google Classroom, you can sort your assignments and materials into topics. This menu allows you to select an existing topic or create a new one to place an assignment under.

Attachments

You can attach files from your computer , files from Google Drive , URLs , and YouTube videos to your assignments.

Google Classroom gives you the option of sending assignments to all students or a select number .

Once you're happy with the assignment you've created, click Assign . The drop-down menu also gives you the option to Schedule  an assignment if you'd like it to post it at a later date.

You can attach a rubric to help students know your expectations for the assignment and to give them feedback.

Once you've completed the form and clicked Assign , your students will receive an email notification letting them know about the assignment.

Google Classroom takes all of your assignments and automatically adds them to your Google Calendar. From the Classwork tab, you can click Google Calendar to pull this up and get a better overall view of the timeline for your assignments' due dates.

Using Google Docs with assignments

When creating an assignment, there may often be times when you want to attach a document from Google Docs. These can be helpful when providing lengthy instructions, study guides, and other material.

When attaching these types of files, you'll want to make sure to choose the correct setting for how your students can interact with it . After attaching one to an assignment, you'll find a drop-down menu with three options.

Let's take a look at when you might want to use each of these:

• Students can view file : Use this option if the file is simply something you want your students to view but not make any changes to.
• Students can edit file : This option can be helpful if you're providing a document you want your students to collaborate on or fill out collectively.
• Make a copy for each student : If you're creating a worksheet or document that you want each student to complete individually, this option will create a separate copy of the same document for every student.

Using topics

On the Classwork tab, you can use  topics to sort and group your assignments and material. To create a topic, click the Create button, then select Topic .

Topics can be helpful for organizing your content into the various units you teach throughout the year. You could also use it to separate your content by type , splitting it into homework, classwork, readings, and other topic areas.

In our next lesson , we'll explore how to create quizzes and worksheets with Google Forms, further expanding how you can use Google Classroom with your students.

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Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center

• Teaching Resources
• TLPDC Teaching Resources

How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?

Prepared by allison boye, ph.d. teaching, learning, and professional development center.

Assessment is a necessary part of the teaching and learning process, helping us measure whether our students have really learned what we want them to learn. While exams and quizzes are certainly favorite and useful methods of assessment, out of class assignments (written or otherwise) can offer similar insights into our students' learning.  And just as creating a reliable test takes thoughtfulness and skill, so does creating meaningful and effective assignments. Undoubtedly, many instructors have been on the receiving end of disappointing student work, left wondering what went wrong… and often, those problems can be remedied in the future by some simple fine-tuning of the original assignment.  This paper will take a look at some important elements to consider when developing assignments, and offer some easy approaches to creating a valuable assessment experience for all involved.

First Things First…

Before assigning any major tasks to students, it is imperative that you first define a few things for yourself as the instructor:

• Your goals for the assignment . Why are you assigning this project, and what do you hope your students will gain from completing it? What knowledge, skills, and abilities do you aim to measure with this assignment?  Creating assignments is a major part of overall course design, and every project you assign should clearly align with your goals for the course in general.  For instance, if you want your students to demonstrate critical thinking, perhaps asking them to simply summarize an article is not the best match for that goal; a more appropriate option might be to ask for an analysis of a controversial issue in the discipline. Ultimately, the connection between the assignment and its purpose should be clear to both you and your students to ensure that it is fulfilling the desired goals and doesn't seem like “busy work.” For some ideas about what kinds of assignments match certain learning goals, take a look at this page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons.
• Have they experienced “socialization” in the culture of your discipline (Flaxman, 2005)? Are they familiar with any conventions you might want them to know? In other words, do they know the “language” of your discipline, generally accepted style guidelines, or research protocols?
• Do they know how to conduct research?  Do they know the proper style format, documentation style, acceptable resources, etc.? Do they know how to use the library (Fitzpatrick, 1989) or evaluate resources?
• What kinds of writing or work have they previously engaged in?  For instance, have they completed long, formal writing assignments or research projects before? Have they ever engaged in analysis, reflection, or argumentation? Have they completed group assignments before?  Do they know how to write a literature review or scientific report?

In his book Engaging Ideas (1996), John Bean provides a great list of questions to help instructors focus on their main teaching goals when creating an assignment (p.78):

1. What are the main units/modules in my course?

2. What are my main learning objectives for each module and for the course?

3. What thinking skills am I trying to develop within each unit and throughout the course?

4. What are the most difficult aspects of my course for students?

5. If I could change my students' study habits, what would I most like to change?

6. What difference do I want my course to make in my students' lives?

What your students need to know

Once you have determined your own goals for the assignment and the levels of your students, you can begin creating your assignment.  However, when introducing your assignment to your students, there are several things you will need to clearly outline for them in order to ensure the most successful assignments possible.

• First, you will need to articulate the purpose of the assignment . Even though you know why the assignment is important and what it is meant to accomplish, you cannot assume that your students will intuit that purpose. Your students will appreciate an understanding of how the assignment fits into the larger goals of the course and what they will learn from the process (Hass & Osborn, 2007). Being transparent with your students and explaining why you are asking them to complete a given assignment can ultimately help motivate them to complete the assignment more thoughtfully.
• If you are asking your students to complete a writing assignment, you should define for them the “rhetorical or cognitive mode/s” you want them to employ in their writing (Flaxman, 2005). In other words, use precise verbs that communicate whether you are asking them to analyze, argue, describe, inform, etc.  (Verbs like “explore” or “comment on” can be too vague and cause confusion.) Provide them with a specific task to complete, such as a problem to solve, a question to answer, or an argument to support.  For those who want assignments to lead to top-down, thesis-driven writing, John Bean (1996) suggests presenting a proposition that students must defend or refute, or a problem that demands a thesis answer.
• It is also a good idea to define the audience you want your students to address with their assignment, if possible – especially with writing assignments.  Otherwise, students will address only the instructor, often assuming little requires explanation or development (Hedengren, 2004; MIT, 1999). Further, asking students to address the instructor, who typically knows more about the topic than the student, places the student in an unnatural rhetorical position.  Instead, you might consider asking your students to prepare their assignments for alternative audiences such as other students who missed last week's classes, a group that opposes their position, or people reading a popular magazine or newspaper.  In fact, a study by Bean (1996) indicated the students often appreciate and enjoy assignments that vary elements such as audience or rhetorical context, so don't be afraid to get creative!
• Obviously, you will also need to articulate clearly the logistics or “business aspects” of the assignment . In other words, be explicit with your students about required elements such as the format, length, documentation style, writing style (formal or informal?), and deadlines.  One caveat, however: do not allow the logistics of the paper take precedence over the content in your assignment description; if you spend all of your time describing these things, students might suspect that is all you care about in their execution of the assignment.
• Finally, you should clarify your evaluation criteria for the assignment. What elements of content are most important? Will you grade holistically or weight features separately? How much weight will be given to individual elements, etc?  Another precaution to take when defining requirements for your students is to take care that your instructions and rubric also do not overshadow the content; prescribing too rigidly each element of an assignment can limit students' freedom to explore and discover. According to Beth Finch Hedengren, “A good assignment provides the purpose and guidelines… without dictating exactly what to say” (2004, p. 27).  If you decide to utilize a grading rubric, be sure to provide that to the students along with the assignment description, prior to their completion of the assignment.

A great way to get students engaged with an assignment and build buy-in is to encourage their collaboration on its design and/or on the grading criteria (Hudd, 2003). In his article “Conducting Writing Assignments,” Richard Leahy (2002) offers a few ideas for building in said collaboration:

• Ask the students to develop the grading scale themselves from scratch, starting with choosing the categories.

• Set the grading categories yourself, but ask the students to help write the descriptions.

• Draft the complete grading scale yourself, then give it to your students for review and suggestions.

A Few Do's and Don'ts…

Determining your goals for the assignment and its essential logistics is a good start to creating an effective assignment. However, there are a few more simple factors to consider in your final design. First, here are a few things you should do :

• Do provide detail in your assignment description . Research has shown that students frequently prefer some guiding constraints when completing assignments (Bean, 1996), and that more detail (within reason) can lead to more successful student responses.  One idea is to provide students with physical assignment handouts , in addition to or instead of a simple description in a syllabus.  This can meet the needs of concrete learners and give them something tangible to refer to.  Likewise, it is often beneficial to make explicit for students the process or steps necessary to complete an assignment, given that students – especially younger ones – might need guidance in planning and time management (MIT, 1999).
• Do use open-ended questions.  The most effective and challenging assignments focus on questions that lead students to thinking and explaining, rather than simple yes or no answers, whether explicitly part of the assignment description or in the  brainstorming heuristics (Gardner, 2005).
• Do direct students to appropriate available resources . Giving students pointers about other venues for assistance can help them get started on the right track independently. These kinds of suggestions might include information about campus resources such as the University Writing Center or discipline-specific librarians, suggesting specific journals or books, or even sections of their textbook, or providing them with lists of research ideas or links to acceptable websites.
• Do consider providing models – both successful and unsuccessful models (Miller, 2007). These models could be provided by past students, or models you have created yourself.  You could even ask students to evaluate the models themselves using the determined evaluation criteria, helping them to visualize the final product, think critically about how to complete the assignment, and ideally, recognize success in their own work.
• Do consider including a way for students to make the assignment their own. In their study, Hass and Osborn (2007) confirmed the importance of personal engagement for students when completing an assignment.  Indeed, students will be more engaged in an assignment if it is personally meaningful, practical, or purposeful beyond the classroom.  You might think of ways to encourage students to tap into their own experiences or curiosities, to solve or explore a real problem, or connect to the larger community.  Offering variety in assignment selection can also help students feel more individualized, creative, and in control.
• If your assignment is substantial or long, do consider sequencing it. Far too often, assignments are given as one-shot final products that receive grades at the end of the semester, eternally abandoned by the student.  By sequencing a large assignment, or essentially breaking it down into a systematic approach consisting of interconnected smaller elements (such as a project proposal, an annotated bibliography, or a rough draft, or a series of mini-assignments related to the longer assignment), you can encourage thoughtfulness, complexity, and thoroughness in your students, as well as emphasize process over final product.

Next are a few elements to avoid in your assignments:

• Do not ask too many questions in your assignment.  In an effort to challenge students, instructors often err in the other direction, asking more questions than students can reasonably address in a single assignment without losing focus. Offering an overly specific “checklist” prompt often leads to externally organized papers, in which inexperienced students “slavishly follow the checklist instead of integrating their ideas into more organically-discovered structure” (Flaxman, 2005).
• Do not expect or suggest that there is an “ideal” response to the assignment. A common error for instructors is to dictate content of an assignment too rigidly, or to imply that there is a single correct response or a specific conclusion to reach, either explicitly or implicitly (Flaxman, 2005). Undoubtedly, students do not appreciate feeling as if they must read an instructor's mind to complete an assignment successfully, or that their own ideas have nowhere to go, and can lose motivation as a result. Similarly, avoid assignments that simply ask for regurgitation (Miller, 2007). Again, the best assignments invite students to engage in critical thinking, not just reproduce lectures or readings.
• Do not provide vague or confusing commands . Do students know what you mean when they are asked to “examine” or “discuss” a topic? Return to what you determined about your students' experiences and levels to help you decide what directions will make the most sense to them and what will require more explanation or guidance, and avoid verbiage that might confound them.
• Do not impose impossible time restraints or require the use of insufficient resources for completion of the assignment.  For instance, if you are asking all of your students to use the same resource, ensure that there are enough copies available for all students to access – or at least put one copy on reserve in the library. Likewise, make sure that you are providing your students with ample time to locate resources and effectively complete the assignment (Fitzpatrick, 1989).

The assignments we give to students don't simply have to be research papers or reports. There are many options for effective yet creative ways to assess your students' learning! Here are just a few:

Journals, Posters, Portfolios, Letters, Brochures, Management plans, Editorials, Instruction Manuals, Imitations of a text, Case studies, Debates, News release, Dialogues, Videos, Collages, Plays, Power Point presentations

Ultimately, the success of student responses to an assignment often rests on the instructor's deliberate design of the assignment. By being purposeful and thoughtful from the beginning, you can ensure that your assignments will not only serve as effective assessment methods, but also engage and delight your students. If you would like further help in constructing or revising an assignment, the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center is glad to offer individual consultations. In addition, look into some of the resources provided below.

Online Resources

“Creating Effective Assignments” http://www.unh.edu/teaching-excellence/resources/Assignments.htm This site, from the University of New Hampshire's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning,  provides a brief overview of effective assignment design, with a focus on determining and communicating goals and expectations.

Gardner, T.  (2005, June 12). Ten Tips for Designing Writing Assignments. Traci's Lists of Ten. http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/034.shtml This is a brief yet useful list of tips for assignment design, prepared by a writing teacher and curriculum developer for the National Council of Teachers of English .  The website will also link you to several other lists of “ten tips” related to literacy pedagogy.

“How to Create Effective Assignments for College Students.”  http:// tilt.colostate.edu/retreat/2011/zimmerman.pdf     This PDF is a simplified bulleted list, prepared by Dr. Toni Zimmerman from Colorado State University, offering some helpful ideas for coming up with creative assignments.

“Learner-Centered Assessment” http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/tips/learner_centered_assessment.html From the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo, this is a short list of suggestions for the process of designing an assessment with your students' interests in mind. “Matching Learning Goals to Assignment Types.” http://teachingcommons.depaul.edu/How_to/design_assignments/assignments_learning_goals.html This is a great page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons, providing a chart that helps instructors match assignments with learning goals.

Additional References Bean, J.C. (1996). Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fitzpatrick, R. (1989). Research and writing assignments that reduce fear lead to better papers and more confident students. Writing Across the Curriculum , 3.2, pp. 15 – 24.

Flaxman, R. (2005). Creating meaningful writing assignments. The Teaching Exchange .  Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008 from http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Sheridan_Center/pubs/teachingExchange/jan2005/01_flaxman.pdf

Hass, M. & Osborn, J. (2007, August 13). An emic view of student writing and the writing process. Across the Disciplines, 4. 

Hedengren, B.F. (2004). A TA's guide to teaching writing in all disciplines . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Hudd, S. S. (2003, April). Syllabus under construction: Involving students in the creation of class assignments.  Teaching Sociology , 31, pp. 195 – 202.

Leahy, R. (2002). Conducting writing assignments. College Teaching , 50.2, pp. 50 – 54.

Miller, H. (2007). Designing effective writing assignments.  Teaching with writing .  University of Minnesota Center for Writing. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008, from http://writing.umn.edu/tww/assignments/designing.html

MIT Online Writing and Communication Center (1999). Creating Writing Assignments. Retrieved January 9, 2008 from http://web.mit.edu/writing/Faculty/createeffective.html .

Contact TTU

Learning & Education

8 Google Classroom tips every teacher should know

Apr 17, 2024

[[read-time]] min read

Google Classroom offers a suite of tools for teachers to tailor lessons, engage students, monitor progress, and provide support.

• General summary

Google Classroom offers a range of features to enhance teaching and learning. Teachers can tailor lessons, encourage feedback with rubrics, and gain insights into student progress using analytics. Practice sets provide real-time feedback and support, while interactive questions for YouTube videos enhance learning. Importing and sharing resources saves time, and flexible assignment options cater to diverse needs. Screencast allows teachers to record lessons with embedded videos and automatic transcripts. These tips empower educators to create personalized and engaging learning experiences for their students.

• Bullet points
• Tailor lessons: Create assignments for specific students or groups.
• Encourage feedback: Use rubrics to set expectations and grade assignments.
• Get early insights: Use analytics to monitor student progress and identify areas for improvement.
• Offer support: Use practice sets to provide students with additional support and resources.
• Help students learn at their own pace: Use interactive questions for YouTube videos to engage students and track their progress.
• Import and share: Share practice sets, video activities, and classes with other teachers.
• Add flexibility: Give students more time to submit assignments or mark assignments as excused.
• Record your screen: Use Screencast to create video lessons and provide students with a personalized learning experience.
• Shakespeare-ish

In Google's realm, a Classroom doth reside, Where teachers thrive, with knowledge as their guide. Eight tips revealed, to aid their noble quest, To teach and guide, with passion and zest.

Tailor lessons, to each student's need, With rubrics clear, their progress shall proceed. Analytics deep, insights they shall bestow, To intervene and help their students grow.

Practice sets, with AI's guiding hand, Support they offer, where students stand. YouTube's videos, with questions interspersed, Engage young minds, their learning is immersed.

Import and share, resources rich and vast, Collaboration blooms, the future unsurpassed. Flexibility in grading, a teacher's grace, Screencast's recordings, a diverse embrace.

With these tips in hand, teachers shall soar, In Google's Classroom, learning evermore.

Explore other styles:

Get the most out of Google Classroom with these top tips and tricks to help teachers and students adapt to new ways of learning — and succeeding — in the classroom.

1. Tailor your lessons for your students

In most classrooms, students have different preferences, levels and abilities when it comes to learning. While an article might work for some, a video could be better for others. Meeting students where they are is essential to helping them learn, but isn’t always easy to scale.

Classroom can help get the right lesson to the right student. Under the “Classwork” tab, click “Create” to create an assignment for your students. Select which students in the class will receive it by unselecting “All students” and choosing the specific students for that lesson. From there, create as many assignments as you need for groups or individuals. In the next few months, we will be making this even easier by enabling educators to create groups of students to organize their class and deliver personalized instruction. Educators can create or update student groups right from the assignment creator so they no longer need to manually find each individual student (available with the Google Workspace for Education Plus edition or Teaching & Learning Upgrade).

2. Encourage a feedback loop with rubrics

When creating an assignment, you can make, reuse or import a rubric so students can understand expectations and their grades. This information makes it easier to have a conversation with students based on their assignments. You can even share rubrics with other educators to save time or weigh certain criteria differently. Simply choose the “Create rubric” option when creating your next assignment. Students will see the rubric before turning in their work, and you’ll be able to grade against the rubric when returning it to them.

3. Get early insights into student learning

With Classroom analytics , you can get a birds-eye view of how your class and students are doing. You can see how students are performing in terms of grades, assignment completion rates, how many missing assignments they have, or how often they’re accessing Classroom on their own. As we add more analytics capabilities to this page, you’ll get more insights about how to support all your students, when you might need to intervene, and how you can differentiate your instruction. To view analytics for your class, click the “Analytics” icon on a class card on the homepage or in the header bar in a class. Available with the Google Workspace for Education Plus edition or Teaching & Learning Upgrade.

4. Use practice sets to offer support where students need it, at scale

Practice sets help teachers provide students with a way to engage more deeply with a subject when they need a little extra support. Unlike the experience of a static worksheet or PDF, students can see in real time whether they got an answer correct. Teachers can also provide a bank of resources specific to each problem for when students get stuck, like a text hint (“Remember to isolate the variable”) or a YouTube video that reviews the underlying concepts to the problem. Students can show their work using the keyboard or stylus, with teachers receiving snapshots of that work each time a student attempts a problem.

It’s easy to get started with practice sets. First, import an existing Google Form or PDF to instantly transform it into an interactive practice set, or start fresh by creating your first problem. Add a problem question (multiple choice, or short answer, or something else) and tag each problem with a learning skill. AI will suggest learning skills and additional resources as you build your practice sets. An insights dashboard shows how students performed on every practice set assignment, with helpful details and insights like how many tries it took for each student to arrive at the correct answer, or how many students struggled with a particular question. Available with the Google Workspace for Education Plus edition or Teaching & Learning Upgrade.

5. Help students learn at their own pace with interactive questions for YouTube videos

YouTube is a common learning tool in Classroom today and with interactive questions for YouTube videos , it’s never been easier to use. Add questions at any timestamp and the video will pause and prompt students to answer. They’ll receive real-time feedback and can go back and rewatch segments to help them arrive at the right solutions. Like with practice sets, you’ll get an insights dashboard with details about how students engaged with the video. Soon, educators will be able to test out AI-suggested questions, making interactive videos a snap. Available with the Google Workspace for Education Plus edition or Teaching & Learning Upgrade

6. Don’t start from scratch — import and share

Want to share practice sets, video activities and classes with a fellow teacher or use something you loved from a previous year? No problem. Enable link sharing for your practice set, video activity or an entire classwork page to share directly with other teachers in your organization. From there, they can import classwork or make a copy of your practice sets or video activities to use for their students. Available with the Google Workspace for Education Plus edition or Teaching & Learning Upgrade.

7. Add flexibility to your assignments and grading

Give students one last shot to get in any missing assignments, or disable submissions after the due date. On your dashboard, go into “Assignments” and uncheck “Close submissions after the due date.” You can always go in and add a final due date to close out the assignment for good when you’re ready.

There might be times when you want to have more control over what counts toward a student’s final grade. By marking an assignment as “excused,” you can prevent it from counting toward the average in times when you don’t want it to. Under the “Grades” tab, click the three dots and select “Excused.”

8. Record your screen with Screencast to meet your class’s diverse needs

If you’re using Classroom on a Chromebook, take advantage of the Screencast app. Screencast allows you to record your screen with your own video embedded, so your students can see you and your screen. Screencast provides an automatic transcript and AI-enabled editing tools. Don’t love how a specific 14 seconds came out? Simply trim it away by deleting the transcript text.

Once you have that video lesson recorded there are endless possibilities to provide students with an effective and personalized experience. For example, upload your recording as an unlisted YouTube video and assign it as an interactive questions video in Classroom. Pause after key moments of the lesson to prompt your students with questions and get insights about their performance and engagement, all while helping them learn at their own pace.

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Understanding Assignments

What this handout is about.

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

Basic beginnings

Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well :

• Read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.
• Ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats

Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic, include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, and offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind

The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class. For example:

“Throughout history, gerbils have played a key role in politics,” or “In the last few weeks of class, we have focused on the evening wear of the housefly …”

The Task of the Assignment

Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information. (See the section in this handout titled “Key Terms” for more information.)

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about

Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue furiously.”

Technical Details

These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”

The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment

Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?

Who is your audience.

• What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?

What kind of writing style is acceptable?

• What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that they will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor. For help with this, see our handout on getting feedback .

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs

Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.

• define —give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
• describe —provide details about the subject by answering question words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
• explain —give reasons why or examples of how something happened
• illustrate —give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
• summarize —briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
• trace —outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
• research —gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.

• compare —show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
• contrast —show how two or more things are dissimilar
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
• cause —show how one event or series of events made something else happen
• relate —show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.

• assess —summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
• prove, justify —give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
• evaluate, respond —state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
• support —give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
• synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
• analyze —determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
• argue —take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

• What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?
• In lecture, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove their point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?
• What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.
• How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, they still have to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

• Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.
• The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and they already know everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

You’ll find a much more detailed discussion of these concepts in our handout on audience .

The Grim Truth

With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present. For help with understanding the role of argument in academic writing, see our handout on argument .

What kind of evidence do you need?

There are many kinds of evidence, and what type of evidence will work for your assignment can depend on several factors–the discipline, the parameters of the assignment, and your instructor’s preference. Should you use statistics? Historical examples? Do you need to conduct your own experiment? Can you rely on personal experience? See our handout on evidence for suggestions on how to use evidence appropriately.

Make sure you are clear about this part of the assignment, because your use of evidence will be crucial in writing a successful paper. You are not just learning how to argue; you are learning how to argue with specific types of materials and ideas. Ask your instructor what counts as acceptable evidence. You can also ask a librarian for help. No matter what kind of evidence you use, be sure to cite it correctly—see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

You cannot always tell from the assignment just what sort of writing style your instructor expects. The instructor may be really laid back in class but still expect you to sound formal in writing. Or the instructor may be fairly formal in class and ask you to write a reflection paper where you need to use “I” and speak from your own experience.

Try to avoid false associations of a particular field with a style (“art historians like wacky creativity,” or “political scientists are boring and just give facts”) and look instead to the types of readings you have been given in class. No one expects you to write like Plato—just use the readings as a guide for what is standard or preferable to your instructor. When in doubt, ask your instructor about the level of formality they expect.

No matter what field you are writing for or what facts you are including, if you do not write so that your reader can understand your main idea, you have wasted your time. So make clarity your main goal. For specific help with style, see our handout on style .

Technical details about the assignment

The technical information you are given in an assignment always seems like the easy part. This section can actually give you lots of little hints about approaching the task. Find out if elements such as page length and citation format (see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial ) are negotiable. Some professors do not have strong preferences as long as you are consistent and fully answer the assignment. Some professors are very specific and will deduct big points for deviations.

Usually, the page length tells you something important: The instructor thinks the size of the paper is appropriate to the assignment’s parameters. In plain English, your instructor is telling you how many pages it should take for you to answer the question as fully as you are expected to. So if an assignment is two pages long, you cannot pad your paper with examples or reword your main idea several times. Hit your one point early, defend it with the clearest example, and finish quickly. If an assignment is ten pages long, you can be more complex in your main points and examples—and if you can only produce five pages for that assignment, you need to see someone for help—as soon as possible.

Tricks that don’t work

Your instructors are not fooled when you:

• spend more time on the cover page than the essay —graphics, cool binders, and cute titles are no replacement for a well-written paper.
• use huge fonts, wide margins, or extra spacing to pad the page length —these tricks are immediately obvious to the eye. Most instructors use the same word processor you do. They know what’s possible. Such tactics are especially damning when the instructor has a stack of 60 papers to grade and yours is the only one that low-flying airplane pilots could read.
• use a paper from another class that covered “sort of similar” material . Again, the instructor has a particular task for you to fulfill in the assignment that usually relates to course material and lectures. Your other paper may not cover this material, and turning in the same paper for more than one course may constitute an Honor Code violation . Ask the instructor—it can’t hurt.
• get all wacky and “creative” before you answer the question . Showing that you are able to think beyond the boundaries of a simple assignment can be good, but you must do what the assignment calls for first. Again, check with your instructor. A humorous tone can be refreshing for someone grading a stack of papers, but it will not get you a good grade if you have not fulfilled the task.

Critical reading of assignments leads to skills in other types of reading and writing. If you get good at figuring out what the real goals of assignments are, you are going to be better at understanding the goals of all of your classes and fields of study.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Teaching Writing in Kindergarten: Everything You Need to Know

Haiti names new prime minister to try to lead country out of crisis, israel pushes into rafah as displaced palestinians search for safety, gazan officials say a strike killed 21 in al-mawasi, pope apologizes after reports that he used an anti-gay slur, growing pressure on western nations to expand the range of weaponry provided to ukraine has been escalating as the conflict with russia continues. leaders and military officials are increasingly debating the possibility of allowing ukraine to employ western-supplied weapons to carry out strikes against targets on russian territory. the crux of the argument for allowing ukraine such offensive capabilities is grounded in the desire to create a significant deterrent effect. proponents argue that enabling ukraine to strike back at russia could force moscow to reconsider its strategy and potentially lead to a de-escalation of hostilities. opponents, however, warn of the risks associated with such a move. escalation dominance, wherein one side’s increase in capabilities leads to an arms race, poses a serious concern. there is also fear that enabling ukraine to strike inside russia might provoke a strong retaliation, not just against ukraine but potentially involving western nations more directly in the conflict. the debate involves complex strategic calculations. on one hand, there’s a moral and strategic impetus to support ukraine in defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity. on the other hand, there’s a need for caution and consideration of long-term regional stability and global security. as discussions continue without definitive conclusions, it is clear that decisions made today will have lasting implications for international norms and future geopolitical conflicts. the international community awaits further developments while contemplating the far-reaching consequences of this critical juncture in east-west relations., why lawmakers are brawling and people are protesting in taiwan, three european countries formally recognize palestinian statehood, what we know about the papua new guinea landslide, north korean rocket carrying spy satellite explodes after takeoff, google classroom tip #43: 48 ways to manage student assignments.

Along with instruction and assessment, assignments form the foundation of the teaching and learning process. They provide opportunities for students to practice the skills and apply the knowledge that they have been taught in a supportive environment. It also helps the teacher gauge how well students are learning the material and how close they are to mastery.

Because of the nature of assignments, managing them can get hectic. That’s why its best to use a platform like Google Classroom to help you manage assignments digitally. In today’s tip, we will discuss 48 ways that you can use Classroom to manage student assignments.

• Assignment Status – Easily check how many students turned in an assignment as well as how many assignments have been graded by going to the Classwork tab and clicking on the title of the assignment.
• Assign to Multiple Classes – Post an assignment to multiple classes by using the “for” drop-down menu when creating an assignment.
• Brainstorm – Use Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Drawings to brainstorm for class assignments.
• Calendar of Due Dates – Link a Google Calendar with due dates for assignments, tests, and other important dates into Classroom.
• Check Homework – Classroom makes checking homework easy with a quick glance at the assignment page. If more detailed grading is needed, just access the grading interface for the assignment.
• Choice Boards – Give students a choice in how they demonstrate what they know by creating a choice board and uploading it as an assignment. Choice boards allow students to choose between several assignments and can be created directly in Classroom, using Google Docs, or with third-party apps.
• Co-Teach Classes – Invite others to co-teach in your Classroom. Each teacher is able to create assignments and post announcements for students.
• Create Questions Before a Socratic Seminar – Create an assignment for students to develop questions before a Socratic seminar. During the collaborative process, students can eliminate duplicate questions.
• Detention Assignment Sheet – Create a detention assignment sheet using Google Docs. The assignment sheet can then be shared with the detention teacher and individual students privately through Classroom.
• Differentiate Assignments – Assign work to individual students or groups of students in Classroom.
• Differentiate by Product – Differentiate by product in Classroom by providing a challenge, variety, or choice or by using a continuum with assignments.
• Digital Portfolios – Students can create digital portfolios of their work by uploading documents, pictures, artifacts, etc. to Classroom assignments.
• Directions Document – Use Google Docs to create instruction documents for assignments in Classroom.
• Distribute Student Work/Homework – Use Classroom to distribute student assignments or homework to all students, groups of students, or individual students.
• Diversify Student Submissions – Create alternative submission options for students through the assignment tool. For example, one group of students may be required to submit a Google Doc while another group is required to submit a Slides presentation.
• Do-Now Activities – Use Classroom to post Do-Now Activities.
• Draft Assignments – Save posts as drafts until they are ready for publishing.
• Feedback Before Student Submits – Provide feedback to students while their assignment is still a work in progress instead of waiting until submission. This will help the student better understand assignment expectations.
• Get Notified of Late Assignments – Select notification settings to get notified each time an assignment is turned in late.
• Global Classroom – Partner with international teachers to create a co-teaching classroom without borders where students can work on collaborative assignments.
• Graphic Organizers – Upload graphic organizers for students to collaborate on assignments and projects.
• Group Collaboration – Assign multiple students to an assignment to create a collaborative group. Give students editing rights to allow them access to the same document.
• HyperDocs – Create and upload a hyperdoc as an assignment.
• Link to Assignments – Create links to assignments not created in Classroom.
• Link to Class Blog – Provide the link to a class blog in Classroom.
• Link to Next Activity – Provide a link to the next activity students must complete after finishing an assignment.
• Make a Copy for Each Student – Chose “make a copy for each student” when uploading assignment documents to avoid students having to share one copy of the document. When a copy for each student is made, Classroom automatically adds each student’s name to the document and saves it to the Classroom folder in Google Drive.
• Move to Top/Bottom – Move recent assignments to the top of the Classwork feed so students can find new tasks more quickly.
• Multiple File Upload – Upload multiple files for an assignment in one post.
• Naming Conventions for Assignments – Create a unique naming system for assignments so they can be easily found in the Classroom folder in Google Drive.
• Offline Mode – Change settings to allow students to work in offline mode if internet connections are weak. Once an internet connection is established, students can upload assignments to Classroom.
• One Student One Sheet – In Google Sheets, assign one tab (sheet) per student for the student to complete the assignment.
• One Student One Slide – In Google Slides, assign one slide to each student to present findings on a topic or to complete an assignment.
• Organize Student Work – Google Classroom automatically creates calendars and folders in Drive to keep assignments organized.
• Peer Tutors – Assign peer tutors to help struggling students with assignments.
• Protect Privacy – Google Classroom only allows class members to access assignments. Also, it eliminates the need to use email, which may be less private than Classroom.
• Provide Accommodations – Provide accommodations to students with disabilities in Google Classroom by allowing extra time to turn in assignments, using text to speech functions, and third-party extensions for colored overlays.
• Reorder Assignments by Status – Instead of organizing assignments by student first or last name, organize them by status to see which students have or have not turned in work.
• Reuse Posts – Reuse post from prior assignments or from other Classrooms.
• See the Process – Students don’t have to submit their assignments for you to see their work. When you chose “make a copy for each student” for assignments, each student’s work can be seen in the grading tool, even if it’s not submitted. Teachers can make comments and suggestions along the way.
• Share Materials – Upload required materials such as the class syllabus, rules, procedures, etc. to a Class Resources Module, or upload assignment materials within the assignment.
• Share Resources – Create a resource list or a resource module for students.
• Share Solutions to an Assignment – Share solutions to an assignment with a collaborator or students after all assignments have been turned in.
• Stop Repeating Directions – By posting a directions document to assignments, the need to continually repeat directions is lessened, if not eliminated altogether. Keep in mind that some students will still need directions to read orally or clarified.
• Student Work Collection – Use Classroom to collect student work from assignments.
• Summer Assignments – Create summer assignments for students through Classroom.
• Templates – Create templates for projects, essays, and other student assignments.
• Track Assignments Turned In – Keep track of which students turned in assignments by going to the grading tool.

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Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, creating assignments.

Here are some general suggestions and questions to consider when creating assignments. There are also many other resources in print and on the web that provide examples of interesting, discipline-specific assignment ideas.

Consider your learning objectives.

What do you want students to learn in your course? What could they do that would show you that they have learned it? To determine assignments that truly serve your course objectives, it is useful to write out your objectives in this form: I want my students to be able to ____. Use active, measurable verbs as you complete that sentence (e.g., compare theories, discuss ramifications, recommend strategies), and your learning objectives will point you towards suitable assignments.

Design assignments that are interesting and challenging.

This is the fun side of assignment design. Consider how to focus students’ thinking in ways that are creative, challenging, and motivating. Think beyond the conventional assignment type! For example, one American historian requires students to write diary entries for a hypothetical Nebraska farmwoman in the 1890s. By specifying that students’ diary entries must demonstrate the breadth of their historical knowledge (e.g., gender, economics, technology, diet, family structure), the instructor gets students to exercise their imaginations while also accomplishing the learning objectives of the course (Walvoord & Anderson, 1989, p. 25).

Double-check alignment.

After creating your assignments, go back to your learning objectives and make sure there is still a good match between what you want students to learn and what you are asking them to do. If you find a mismatch, you will need to adjust either the assignments or the learning objectives. For instance, if your goal is for students to be able to analyze and evaluate texts, but your assignments only ask them to summarize texts, you would need to add an analytical and evaluative dimension to some assignments or rethink your learning objectives.

Name assignments accurately.

Students can be misled by assignments that are named inappropriately. For example, if you want students to analyze a product’s strengths and weaknesses but you call the assignment a “product description,” students may focus all their energies on the descriptive, not the critical, elements of the task. Thus, it is important to ensure that the titles of your assignments communicate their intention accurately to students.

Consider sequencing.

Think about how to order your assignments so that they build skills in a logical sequence. Ideally, assignments that require the most synthesis of skills and knowledge should come later in the semester, preceded by smaller assignments that build these skills incrementally. For example, if an instructor’s final assignment is a research project that requires students to evaluate a technological solution to an environmental problem, earlier assignments should reinforce component skills, including the ability to identify and discuss key environmental issues, apply evaluative criteria, and find appropriate research sources.

Think about scheduling.

Consider your intended assignments in relation to the academic calendar and decide how they can be reasonably spaced throughout the semester, taking into account holidays and key campus events. Consider how long it will take students to complete all parts of the assignment (e.g., planning, library research, reading, coordinating groups, writing, integrating the contributions of team members, developing a presentation), and be sure to allow sufficient time between assignments.

Check feasibility.

Is the workload you have in mind reasonable for your students? Is the grading burden manageable for you? Sometimes there are ways to reduce workload (whether for you or for students) without compromising learning objectives. For example, if a primary objective in assigning a project is for students to identify an interesting engineering problem and do some preliminary research on it, it might be reasonable to require students to submit a project proposal and annotated bibliography rather than a fully developed report. If your learning objectives are clear, you will see where corners can be cut without sacrificing educational quality.

Articulate the task description clearly.

If an assignment is vague, students may interpret it any number of ways – and not necessarily how you intended. Thus, it is critical to clearly and unambiguously identify the task students are to do (e.g., design a website to help high school students locate environmental resources, create an annotated bibliography of readings on apartheid). It can be helpful to differentiate the central task (what students are supposed to produce) from other advice and information you provide in your assignment description.

Establish clear performance criteria.

Different instructors apply different criteria when grading student work, so it’s important that you clearly articulate to students what your criteria are. To do so, think about the best student work you have seen on similar tasks and try to identify the specific characteristics that made it excellent, such as clarity of thought, originality, logical organization, or use of a wide range of sources. Then identify the characteristics of the worst student work you have seen, such as shaky evidence, weak organizational structure, or lack of focus. Identifying these characteristics can help you consciously articulate the criteria you already apply. It is important to communicate these criteria to students, whether in your assignment description or as a separate rubric or scoring guide . Clearly articulated performance criteria can prevent unnecessary confusion about your expectations while also setting a high standard for students to meet.

Specify the intended audience.

Students make assumptions about the audience they are addressing in papers and presentations, which influences how they pitch their message. For example, students may assume that, since the instructor is their primary audience, they do not need to define discipline-specific terms or concepts. These assumptions may not match the instructor’s expectations. Thus, it is important on assignments to specify the intended audience http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm (e.g., undergraduates with no biology background, a potential funder who does not know engineering).

Specify the purpose of the assignment.

If students are unclear about the goals or purpose of the assignment, they may make unnecessary mistakes. For example, if students believe an assignment is focused on summarizing research as opposed to evaluating it, they may seriously miscalculate the task and put their energies in the wrong place. The same is true they think the goal of an economics problem set is to find the correct answer, rather than demonstrate a clear chain of economic reasoning. Consequently, it is important to make your objectives for the assignment clear to students.

Specify the parameters.

If you have specific parameters in mind for the assignment (e.g., length, size, formatting, citation conventions) you should be sure to specify them in your assignment description. Otherwise, students may misapply conventions and formats they learned in other courses that are not appropriate for yours.

A Checklist for Designing Assignments

Here is a set of questions you can ask yourself when creating an assignment.

• Provided a written description of the assignment (in the syllabus or in a separate document)?
• Specified the purpose of the assignment?
• Indicated the intended audience?
• Articulated the instructions in precise and unambiguous language?
• Provided information about the appropriate format and presentation (e.g., page length, typed, cover sheet, bibliography)?  
• Indicated special instructions, such as a particular citation style or headings?  
• Specified the due date and the consequences for missing it?
• Articulated performance criteria clearly?
• Indicated the assignment’s point value or percentage of the course grade?
• Provided students (where appropriate) with models or samples?

Adapted from the WAC Clearinghouse at http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm .

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How to write the best college assignments.

By Lois Weldon

When it comes to writing assignments, it is difficult to find a conceptualized guide with clear and simple tips that are easy to follow. That’s exactly what this guide will provide: few simple tips on how to write great assignments, right when you need them. Some of these points will probably be familiar to you, but there is no harm in being reminded of the most important things before you start writing the assignments, which are usually determining on your credits.

The most important aspects: Outline and Introduction

Preparation is the key to success, especially when it comes to academic assignments. It is recommended to always write an outline before you start writing the actual assignment. The outline should include the main points of discussion, which will keep you focused throughout the work and will make your key points clearly defined. Outlining the assignment will save you a lot of time because it will organize your thoughts and make your literature searches much easier. The outline will also help you to create different sections and divide up the word count between them, which will make the assignment more organized.

The introduction is the next important part you should focus on. This is the part that defines the quality of your assignment in the eyes of the reader. The introduction must include a brief background on the main points of discussion, the purpose of developing such work and clear indications on how the assignment is being organized. Keep this part brief, within one or two paragraphs.

This is an example of including the above mentioned points into the introduction of an assignment that elaborates the topic of obesity reaching proportions:

Background : The twenty first century is characterized by many public health challenges, among which obesity takes a major part. The increasing prevalence of obesity is creating an alarming situation in both developed and developing regions of the world.

Structure and aim : This assignment will elaborate and discuss the specific pattern of obesity epidemic development, as well as its epidemiology. Debt, trade and globalization will also be analyzed as factors that led to escalation of the problem. Moreover, the assignment will discuss the governmental interventions that make efforts to address this issue.

Practical tips on assignment writing

Here are some practical tips that will keep your work focused and effective:

–         Critical thinking – Academic writing has to be characterized by critical thinking, not only to provide the work with the needed level, but also because it takes part in the final mark.

–         Continuity of ideas – When you get to the middle of assignment, things can get confusing. You have to make sure that the ideas are flowing continuously within and between paragraphs, so the reader will be enabled to follow the argument easily. Dividing the work in different paragraphs is very important for this purpose.

–         Usage of ‘you’ and ‘I’ – According to the academic writing standards, the assignments should be written in an impersonal language, which means that the usage of ‘you’ and ‘I’ should be avoided. The only acceptable way of building your arguments is by using opinions and evidence from authoritative sources.

–         Referencing – this part of the assignment is extremely important and it takes a big part in the final mark. Make sure to use either Vancouver or Harvard referencing systems, and use the same system in the bibliography and while citing work of other sources within the text.  

–         Usage of examples – A clear understanding on your assignment’s topic should be provided by comparing different sources and identifying their strengths and weaknesses in an objective manner. This is the part where you should show how the knowledge can be applied into practice.

–         Numbering and bullets – Instead of using numbering and bullets, the academic writing style prefers the usage of paragraphs.

–         Including figures and tables – The figures and tables are an effective way of conveying information to the reader in a clear manner, without disturbing the word count. Each figure and table should have clear headings and you should make sure to mention their sources in the bibliography.

–         Word count – the word count of your assignment mustn’t be far above or far below the required word count. The outline will provide you with help in this aspect, so make sure to plan the work in order to keep it within the boundaries.

The importance of an effective conclusion

The conclusion of your assignment is your ultimate chance to provide powerful arguments that will impress the reader. The conclusion in academic writing is usually expressed through three main parts:

–         Stating the context and aim of the assignment

–         Summarizing the main points briefly

–         Providing final comments with consideration of the future (discussing clear examples of things that can be done in order to improve the situation concerning your topic of discussion).

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Lois Weldon is writer at  Uk.bestdissertation.com . Lives happily at London with her husband and lovely daughter. Adores writing tips for students. Passionate about Star Wars and yoga.

7 comments on “How To Write The Best College Assignments”

Extremely useful tip for students wanting to score well on their assignments. I concur with the writer that writing an outline before ACTUALLY starting to write assignments is extremely important. I have observed students who start off quite well but they tend to lose focus in between which causes them to lose marks. So an outline helps them to maintain the theme focused.

Hello Great information…. write assignments

Well elabrated

Thanks for the information. This site has amazing articles. Looking forward to continuing on this site.

This article is certainly going to help student . Well written.

Really good, thanks

Practical tips on assignment writing, the’re fantastic. Thank you!

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5 tips on writing better university assignments

Lecturer in Student Learning and Communication Development, University of Sydney

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Alexandra Garcia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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University life comes with its share of challenges. One of these is writing longer assignments that require higher information, communication and critical thinking skills than what you might have been used to in high school. Here are five tips to help you get ahead.

1. Use all available sources of information

Beyond instructions and deadlines, lecturers make available an increasing number of resources. But students often overlook these.

For example, to understand how your assignment will be graded, you can examine the rubric . This is a chart indicating what you need to do to obtain a high distinction, a credit or a pass, as well as the course objectives – also known as “learning outcomes”.

Other resources include lecture recordings, reading lists, sample assignments and discussion boards. All this information is usually put together in an online platform called a learning management system (LMS). Examples include Blackboard , Moodle , Canvas and iLearn . Research shows students who use their LMS more frequently tend to obtain higher final grades.

If after scrolling through your LMS you still have questions about your assignment, you can check your lecturer’s consultation hours.

2. Take referencing seriously

Plagiarism – using somebody else’s words or ideas without attribution – is a serious offence at university. It is a form of cheating.

In many cases, though, students are unaware they have cheated. They are simply not familiar with referencing styles – such as APA , Harvard , Vancouver , Chicago , etc – or lack the skills to put the information from their sources into their own words.

To avoid making this mistake, you may approach your university’s library, which is likely to offer face-to-face workshops or online resources on referencing. Academic support units may also help with paraphrasing.

You can also use referencing management software, such as EndNote or Mendeley . You can then store your sources, retrieve citations and create reference lists with only a few clicks. For undergraduate students, Zotero has been recommended as it seems to be more user-friendly.

Using this kind of software will certainly save you time searching for and formatting references. However, you still need to become familiar with the citation style in your discipline and revise the formatting accordingly.

3. Plan before you write

If you were to build a house, you wouldn’t start by laying bricks at random. You’d start with a blueprint. Likewise, writing an academic paper requires careful planning: you need to decide the number of sections, their organisation, and the information and sources you will include in each.

Research shows students who prepare detailed outlines produce higher-quality texts. Planning will not only help you get better grades, but will also reduce the time you spend staring blankly at the screen thinking about what to write next.

During the planning stage, using programs like OneNote from Microsoft Office or Outline for Mac can make the task easier as they allow you to organise information in tabs. These bits of information can be easily rearranged for later drafting. Navigating through the tabs is also easier than scrolling through a long Word file.

4. Choose the right words

Which of these sentences is more appropriate for an assignment?

a. “This paper talks about why the planet is getting hotter”, or b. “This paper examines the causes of climate change”.

The written language used at university is more formal and technical than the language you normally use in social media or while chatting with your friends. Academic words tend to be longer and their meaning is also more precise. “Climate change” implies more than just the planet “getting hotter”.

To find the right words, you can use SkELL , which shows you the words that appear more frequently, with your search entry categorised grammatically. For example, if you enter “paper”, it will tell you it is often the subject of verbs such as “present”, “describe”, “examine” and “discuss”.

Another option is the Writefull app, which does a similar job without having to use an online browser.

5. Edit and proofread

If you’re typing the last paragraph of the assignment ten minutes before the deadline, you will be missing a very important step in the writing process: editing and proofreading your text. A 2018 study found a group of university students did significantly better in a test after incorporating the process of planning, drafting and editing in their writing.

You probably already know to check the spelling of a word if it appears underlined in red. You may even use a grammar checker such as Grammarly . However, no software to date can detect every error and it is not uncommon to be given inaccurate suggestions.

So, in addition to your choice of proofreader, you need to improve and expand your grammar knowledge. Check with the academic support services at your university if they offer any relevant courses.

Written communication is a skill that requires effort and dedication. That’s why universities are investing in support services – face-to-face workshops, individual consultations, and online courses – to help students in this process. You can also take advantage of a wide range of web-based resources such as spell checkers, vocabulary tools and referencing software – many of them free.

Improving your written communication will help you succeed at university and beyond.

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Creating and Adapting Assignments for Online Courses

Online teaching requires a deliberate shift in how we communicate, deliver information, and offer feedback to our students. How do you effectively design and modify your assignments to accommodate this shift? The ways you introduce students to new assignments, keep them on track, identify and remedy confusion, and provide feedback after an assignment is due must be altered to fit the online setting. Intentional planning can help you ensure assignments are optimally designed for an online course and expectations are clearly communicated to students.  

When teaching online, it can be tempting to focus on the differences from in-person instruction in terms of adjustments, or what you need to make up for. However, there are many affordances of online assignments that can deepen learning and student engagement. Students gain new channels of interaction, flexibility in when and where they access assignments, more immediate feedback, and a student-centered experience (Gayten and McEwen, 2007; Ragupathi, 2020; Robles and Braathen, 2002). Meanwhile, ample research has uncovered that online assignments benefit instructors through automatic grading, better measurement of learning, greater student involvement, and the storing and reuse of assignments. 

In Practice

While the purpose and planning of online assignments remain the same as their in-person counterparts, certain adjustments can make them more effective. The strategies outlined below will help you design online assignments that support student success while leveraging the benefits of the online environment. 

Align assignments to learning outcomes. 

All assignments work best when they align with your learning outcomes. Each online assignment should advance students' achievement of one or more of your specific outcomes. You may be familiar with  Bloom's Taxonomy,  a well-known framework that organizes and classifies learning objectives based on the actions students take to demonstrate their learning. Online assignments have the added advantage of flexing students' digital skills, and Bloom's has been revamped for the digital age to incorporate technology-based tasks into its categories. For example, students might search for definitions online as they learn and remember course materials, tweet their understanding of a concept, mind map an analysis, or create a podcast. 

See a  complete description of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy  for further ideas. 

Provide authentic assessments. 

Authentic assessments call for relevant, purposeful actions that mimic the real-life tasks students may encounter in their lives and careers beyond the university. They represent a shift away from infrequent high-stakes assessments that tend to evaluate the acquisition of knowledge over application and understanding. Authentic assessments allow students to see the connection between what they're learning and how that learning is used and contextualized outside the virtual walls of the learning management system, thereby increasing their motivation and engagement. 

There are many ways to incorporate authenticity into an assignment, but three main strategies are to use  authentic audiences, content, and formats . A student might, for example, compose a business plan for an audience of potential investors, create a patient care plan that translates medical jargon into lay language, or propose a safe storage process for a museum collection.  

Authentic assessments in online courses can easily incorporate the internet or digital tools as part of an authentic format. Blogs, podcasts, social media posts, and multimedia artifacts such as infographics and videos represent authentic formats that leverage the online context. 

Learn more about  authentic assessments in Designing Assessments of Student Learning . 

Design for inclusivity and accessibility. 

Adopting universal design principles at the outset of course creation will ensure your material is accessible to all students. As you plan your assignments, it's important to keep in mind barriers to access in terms of tools, technology, and cost. Consider which tools achieve your learning outcomes with the fewest barriers. 

Offering a variety of assignment formats is one way to ensure students can demonstrate learning in a manner that works best for them. You can provide options within an individual assignment, such as allowing students to submit either written text or an audio recording or to choose from several technologies or platforms when completing a project. 

Be mindful of how you frame and describe an assignment to ensure it doesn't disregard populations through exclusionary language or use culturally specific references that some students may not understand. Inclusive language for all genders and racial or ethnic backgrounds can foster a sense of belonging that fully invests students in the learning community.  

Learn more about  Universal Design of Learning  and  Shaping a Positive Learning Environment . 

Design to promote academic integrity online. 

Much like incorporating universal design principles at the outset of course creation, you can take a proactive approach to academic integrity online. Design assignments that limit the possibilities for students to use the work of others or receive prohibited outside assistance.  

Provide   authentic assessments  that are more difficult to plagiarize because they incorporate recent events or unique contexts and formats. 

Scaffold assignments  so that students can work their way up to a final product by submitting smaller portions and receiving feedback along the way. 

Lower the stakes  by providing more frequent formative assessments in place of high-stakes, high-stress assessments. 

In addition to proactively creating assignments that deter cheating, there are several university-supported tools at your disposal to help identify and prevent cheating.  

Learn more about these tools in  Strategies and Tools for Academic Integrity in Online Environments . 

Communicate detailed instructions and clarify expectations. 

When teaching in-person, you likely dedicate class time to introducing and explaining an assignment; students can ask questions or linger after class for further clarification. In an online class, especially in  asynchronous  online classes, you must anticipate where students' questions might arise and account for them in the assignment instructions.  

The  Carmen course template  addresses some of students' common questions when completing an assignment. The template offers places to explain the assignment's purpose, list out steps students should take when completing it, provide helpful resources, and detail academic integrity considerations.  

Providing a rubric will clarify for students how you will evaluate their work, as well as make your grading more efficient. Sharing examples of previous student work (both good and bad) can further help students see how everything should come together in their completed products. 

Technology Tip

Enter all  assignments and due dates  in your Carmen course to increase transparency. When assignments are entered in Carmen, they also populate to Calendar, Syllabus, and Grades areas so students can easily track their upcoming work. Carmen also allows you to  develop rubrics  for every assignment in your course.  

Promote interaction and collaboration. 

Frequent student-student interaction in any course, but particularly in online courses, is integral to developing a healthy learning community that engages students with course material and contributes to academic achievement. Online education has the inherent benefit of offering multiple channels of interaction through which this can be accomplished. 

Carmen  Discussions   are a versatile platform for students to converse about and analyze course materials, connect socially, review each other's work, and communicate asynchronously during group projects. 

Peer review  can be enabled in Carmen  Assignments  and  Discussions .  Rubrics  can be attached to an assignment or a discussion that has peer review enabled, and students can use these rubrics as explicit criteria for their evaluation. Alternatively, peer review can occur within the comments of a discussion board if all students will benefit from seeing each other's responses. 

Group projects  can be carried out asynchronously through Carmen  Discussions  or  Groups , or synchronously through Carmen's  Chat function  or  CarmenZoom . Students (and instructors) may have apprehensions about group projects, but well-designed group work can help students learn from each other and draw on their peers’ strengths. Be explicit about your expectations for student interaction and offer ample support resources to ensure success on group assignments. 

Learn more about  Student Interaction Online .

Choose technology wisely. 

The internet is a vast and wondrous place, full of technology and tools that do amazing things. These tools can give students greater flexibility in approaching an assignment or deepen their learning through interactive elements. That said, it's important to be selective when integrating external tools into your online course.  

Look first to your learning outcomes and, if you are considering an external tool, determine whether the technology will help students achieve these learning outcomes. Unless one of your outcomes is for students to master new technology, the cognitive effort of using an unfamiliar tool may distract from your learning outcomes.  

Carmen should ultimately be the foundation of your course where you centralize all materials and assignments. Thoughtfully selected external tools can be useful in certain circumstances. 

Explore supported tools 

There are many  university-supported tools  and resources already available to Ohio State users. Before looking to external tools, you should explore the available options to see if you can accomplish your instructional goals with supported systems, including the  eLearning toolset , approved  CarmenCanvas integrations , and the  Microsoft365 suite .  

If a tool is not university-supported, keep in mind the security and accessibility implications, the learning curve required to use the tool, and the need for additional support resources. If you choose to use a new tool, provide links to relevant help guides on the assignment page or post a video tutorial. Include explicit instructions on how students can get technical support should they encounter technical difficulties with the tool. 

Adjustments to your assignment design can guide students toward academic success while leveraging the benefits of the online environment.  

Effective assignments in online courses are:  

Aligned to course learning outcomes 

Authentic and reflect real-life tasks 

Accessible and inclusive for all learners 

Designed to encourage academic integrity 

Transparent with clearly communicated expectations 

Designed to promote student interaction and collaboration 

Supported with intentional technology tools 

• Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty (e-book)
• Making Your Course Accessible for All Learners (workshop reccording)
• Writing Multiple Choice Questions that Demand Critical Thinking (article)

Learning Opportunities

Conrad, D., & Openo, J. (2018).  Assessment strategies for online learning: Engagement and authenticity . AU Press. Retrieved from  https://library.ohio-state.edu/record=b8475002~S7 

Gaytan, J., & McEwen, B. C. (2007). Effective online instructional and assessment strategies.  American Journal of Distance Education ,  21 (3), 117–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923640701341653   

Mayer, R. E. (2001).  Multimedia learning . New York: Cambridge University Press.  

Ragupathi, K. (2020). Designing Effective Online Assessments Resource Guide . National University of Singapore. Retrieved from  https://www.nus.edu.sg/cdtl/docs/default-source/professional-development-docs/resources/designing-online-assessments.pdf  

Robles, M., & Braathen, S. (2002). Online assessment techniques.  Delta Pi Epsilon Journal ,  44 (1), 39–49.  https://proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eft&AN=507795215&site=eds-live&scope=site  

Swan, K., Shen, J., & Hiltz, S. R. (2006). Assessment and collaboration in online learning.  Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks ,  10 (1), 45.  

TILT Higher Ed. (n.d.).  TILT Examples and Resources . Retrieved from   https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources  

Tallent-Runnels, M. K., Thomas, J. A., Lan, W. Y., Cooper, S., Ahern, T. C., Shaw, S. M., & Liu, X. (2006). Teaching Courses Online: A Review of the Research.  Review of Educational Research ,  76 (1), 93–135.  https://www-jstor-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/stable/3700584  

Walvoord, B. & Anderson, V.J. (2010).  Effective Grading : A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College: Vol. 2nd ed . Jossey-Bass.  https://library.ohio-state.edu/record=b8585181~S7

Related Teaching Topics

Designing assessments of student learning, strategies and tools for academic integrity in online environments, student interaction online, universal design for learning: planning with all students in mind, related toolsets, carmencanvas, search for resources.

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Differentiated Instruction Strategies: Tiered Assignments

Janelle cox.

• September 23, 2014

Many teachers use differentiated instruction strategies  as a way to reach all learners and accommodate each student’s learning style. One very helpful tactic to employ differentiated instruction is called tiered assignments—a technique often used within flexible groups.

Much like flexible grouping—or differentiated instruction as a whole, really—tiered assignments do not lock students into ability boxes. Instead, particular student clusters are assigned specific tasks within each group according to their readiness and comprehension without making them feel completely compartmentalized away from peers at different achievement levels.

There are six main ways to structure tiered assignments: challenge level, complexity, outcome, process, product, or resources. It is your job, based upon the specific learning tasks you’re focused on, to determine the best approach. Here we will take a brief look at these techniques.

Ways to Structure Tiered Assignments

Challenge level.

Tiering can be based on challenge level where student groups will tackle different assignments. Teachers can use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a guide to help them develop tasks of structure or questions at various levels. For example:

• Group 1:  Students who need content reinforcement or practice will complete one activity that helps  build  understanding.
• Group 2:  Students who have a firm understanding will complete another activity that  extends  what they already know.

When you tier assignments by complexity, you are addressing the needs of students who are at different levels using the same assignment. The trick here is to vary the focus of the assignment based upon whether each group is ready for more advanced work or simply trying to wrap their head around the concept for the first time. You can direct your students to create a poster on a specific issue—recycling and environmental care, for instance—but one group will focus on a singular perspective, while the other will consider several points of view and present an argument for or against each angle.

Tiering assignments by differentiated outcome is vaguely similar to complexity—all of your students will use the same materials, but depending on their readiness levels will actually have a different outcome. It may sound strange at first, but this strategy is quite beneficial to help advanced students work on more progressive applications of their student learning.

This differentiated instruction strategy is exactly what it sounds like—student groups will use different processes to achieve similar outcomes based upon readiness.

Tiered assignments can also be differentiated based on product. Teachers can use the Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences to form groups that will hone particular skills for particular learning styles . For example, one group would be bodily/kinesthetic, and their task is to create and act out a skit. Another group would be visual/spatial, and their task would be to illustrate.

Tiering resources means that you are matching project materials to student groups based on readiness or instructional need. One flexible group may use a magazine while another may use a traditional textbook. As a tip, you should assign resources based on knowledge and readiness, but also consider the group’s reading level and comprehension.

How to Make Tiering Invisible to Students

From time to time, students may question why they are working on different assignments, using varied materials, or coming to dissimilar outcomes altogether. This could be a blow to your classroom morale if you’re not tactful in making your tiers invisible.

Make it a point to tell students that each group is using different materials or completing different activities so they can share what they learned with the class. Be neutral when grouping students, use numbers or colors for group names, and be equally enthusiastic while explaining assignments to each cluster.

Also, it’s important to make each tiered assignment equally interesting, engaging, and fair in terms of student expectations. The more flexible groups and materials you use, the more students will accept that this is the norm.

Tiering assignments is a fair way to differentiate learning. It allows teachers to meet the needs of all students while using varying levels of tasks. It’s a concept that can be infused into homework assignments, small groups, or even learning centers. If done properly, it can be a very effective method to differentiate learning because it challenges all students.

• #DifferentiatedInstruction , #TieredAssignments

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And #11 Successful Students Learn Independently

16 Dealing With Assignments

Understanding your first assignment.

The number of assignments you will receive in a semester often surprises students. For some students, figuring out how to manage assignments is a new experience. For others who have had assignments in the past, the amount of work needed to complete assignments at the college level is what is unexpected. Most of the assignments you will receive will take longer than one session of study to complete. You will likely need to work on your assignment over several days or weeks. In this section, we will provide you with advice on how to understand the requirements of your assignment, and how to manage and track the tasks you will need to complete. We will provide you with some time management tips and an assignment tracker to try.

Assignment Terms

Assignment questions, outlines and marking schemes, breaking down large assignments.

How to breakdown assignments into tasks

• Understand the assignment: Read the assignment instructions carefully, and make sure you understand what is required. If you do not understand what you need to do, ask your professor as soon as possible.
• Create a task list: What are the smaller tasks you need to do to complete this assignment? Smaller tasks are activities like conducting research at the library or setting up group meetings for a group project.
• Create a timeline: Create a timeline that includes all the tasks that need to be completed. Consider how much time you will need to complete that task and when you will work on it. Set due dates for each task.
• Brainstorm ideas: Before you start writing, brainstorm ideas for the assignment. Think about the main points you want to cover, any research you need to do, and any supporting evidence you might need.
• Create an outline: Once you have a list of ideas, create an outline for your assignment. An outline can help you organize your thoughts and make sure you cover all the necessary points.
• Schedule time for research: Do your research before you begin writing. As you find sources, gather the information you will need to create a reference and take notes about essential information the source will provide and where this information fits in with your outline.
• Schedule time for revision: Plan to review your work before you submit. This can include checking your work against the assignment instructions or rubric, making changes to the content, and proofreading.

Here is an example of this process:

Key Takeaway from video

• Breaking down a large or medium-sized assignment into smaller pieces can help reduce stress, ensure completion of all parts of the assignment, and allow you to get other important tasks done too.

Using an Assignment Tracker

Time Management Considerations

Time management is the practice of organizing and prioritizing one’s activities and tasks effectively in order to maximize productivity and achieve one’s goals. For college students, time management involves creating a plan for allocating their time efficiently and balancing academic responsibilities with social activities, work, and personal obligations. It requires identifying tasks and goals, setting realistic deadlines, and using tools such as schedules, to-do lists, and reminders to stay on track. Effective time management helps students to reduce stress, increase productivity, and achieve academic success while still enjoying a balanced lifestyle.

• Procrastination:  Students tend to put off starting a large writing assignment until the last minute, leaving themselves with insufficient time to complete the assignment.
• Lack of Planning:  Many students do not adequately plan their time for the writing process, which can result in poor time management and a lower quality of work.
• Perfectionism:  Students may spend too much time trying to perfect every aspect of their writing, which can lead to time wastage and increased stress.
• Break the Task into Smaller Parts:  Instead of attempting to complete the entire assignment in one sitting, break it down into smaller, more manageable parts, and set specific deadlines for each.
• Create a Schedule:  Create a schedule for the writing process and stick to it. This will help you stay on track and ensure that you have enough time to complete the assignment.
• Avoid Distractions:  Avoid any distractions that can lead to time wastage, such as social media, television, and video games.
• Set Priorities:  Set priorities for your writing tasks, focusing on the most critical aspects of the assignment first.
• Use Writing Tools : Utilize writing tools such as spell check, grammar check, and citation generators to save time and reduce the need for extensive revisions.
• Take Breaks:  Taking regular breaks can help you stay focused and prevent burnout, ensuring that you produce your best work.

Avoiding Procrastination

Key Takeaways

Want more? The Learning Portal has more ideas for Managing Assignments.

A Guide for Successful Students 2nd ed. Copyright © 2023 by Irene Stewart, Aaron Maisonville, and Nicolai Zriachev, St. Clair College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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5 Ways to Teach Students the Skill of Active Studying

Explicit instruction on studying is invaluable for students, who often choose ineffective methods of reviewing material.

As students progress through their schooling, they are exposed to concepts that vary significantly in the content and skills needed for comprehension. A student first learning fractions, another in middle school English language arts, and an AP Biology student are all undergoing quite different educational experiences. While these classes will ask different things of the students, they all require the development of study skills. Unfortunately, while all teachers recognize the importance of these skills, they are rarely, if ever, explicitly taught.

This is something that I have taken more seriously in recent years, and I have explicitly worked to teach all of my students better ways to study. In order to properly teach this, I think it’s helpful to understand why certain strategies work. If you want to learn the basics of the neuroscience of learning and memory, you might take a look at an article I wrote on that for my students . In essence, there are two general types of thinking: System 1 (which uses long-term memory and is easier) and System 2 (which uses working memory and requires more effort). Strategies that center on using System 2 thinking result in stronger neuron ensemble formation, meaning better recall and learning.

Active studying is the name of practices that involve more System 2 thinking. A lot of people think of studying as simply reading over one’s notes, which is a passive form and results in minimal learning. Active studying includes retrieval, synthesis, and analysis of the material. As these methods take longer, students are often resistant to using or attempting them. However, research has shown that these techniques result in greater recall of the studied material . As such, I believe that, along with teaching strategies for active studying, you should design lessons around their incorporation.

5 Active Studying Practices

1. Teaching others: It’s as simple as it sounds. When students work to teach others, they are coming up with information from memory (rather than just reading it), and they often need to think of new ways to explain something. This not only helps students figure out what they do or don’t know but strengthens and reinforces the memories.

2. Pure retrieval practice: This is when students retrieve the information from their memory. It can be something simple like using flash cards, but my personal favorite method is when students use a whiteboard, a piece of paper, or a tablet to write out and draw everything they can about the topic. They should then check their notes to see what they missed or got wrong before trying again later.

I like to combine the above two in class by having students work in small groups. Students take turns, with one student having a small whiteboard and teaching the others a topic, while the other students use their notes to correct their classmate or ask clarifying questions about missed aspects. We call these “whiteboard days,” and students have reported finding these days to be very helpful as a review before tests, and many use these strategies at home now.

3. Study guides: Study guides are a common form of studying and a lot of times are given to students by their teachers. Students often fall into a pit of copying definitions word-for-word from their notes, which might aid in memorization of certain terms or facts but limits understanding and the ability to apply the information.

I teach my students how to make a good study guide , where they synthesize and summarize the information into their own words. I don’t require these every unit, but once students have developed the skill, they are able to apply it to any course, and some choose to make them even if not required because they find them helpful.

4. Concept maps: These are visual representations of the connections and relationships between concepts. Although not as helpful for some subjects or topics, these cause students to think more deeply about the material and strengthen their memory of the topics, as they have to think more deeply to come up with connections they may not have otherwise thought of.

While you can assign specific words and require everyone to form maps with the same list as an in-class or homework assignment, my personal favorite way to do this is to gamify it—students draw random cards with vocabulary words on them and compete to develop the most connections.

5. Practice questions: Practice questions are a tried-and-true and very helpful way to study, especially in certain classes. The most helpful practice questions are application-based and allow students to test how well they truly understand the material, as opposed to having just memorized certain facts or definitions. I like to have students study sometimes by making their own and then trading those questions and trying to answer each other’s. By developing their own application-style questions, the students are thinking about the material in a deeper manner to put it into new contexts. They can study both by developing their own questions, attempting to answer another’s, and explaining the right answer for the other students.

There are a variety of ways to work these methods into your course, with some of my ways mentioned above. Whichever you choose, make sure you also emphasize the importance of getting enough sleep and having shorter but more frequent study sessions, as these both are necessary for maximizing retainment of concepts. By teaching these techniques, and also requiring their use, you will help to reinforce and build good study habits within students that can help them in all their future academic endeavors.

Do you teach your students strategies for active studying? Let us know what they are in the comments!

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75 digital tools and apps teachers can use to support formative assessment in the classroom

There is no shortage of  formative assessment strategies, techniques, and tools  available to teachers who use formative instructional practice in their classrooms. Here is an extensive list of 75 digital tools, apps, and platforms that can help you and your students use formative assessment to elicit evidence of learning. We didn’t just add any old tool to this list. Here are the criteria we used for those that made the cut:

• Supports formative instructional strategies and ways to activate learners to be resources for themselves and peers
• Is free or awful close to it (under $10 per year, where possible)
• Allows both students and teachers to take the activator role when possible (sometimes teachers need to get things started)

Before you dig into the tools, I encourage you to spend some time thinking about exactly what you want to accomplish with your students.  “How to pick the right digital tool: Start with your learning goal”  by Erin Beard can help you wrap your head around goals and guide you in choosing the best tool for the task.  “27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning”  can help you decide what strategies work best for you and your students.

Record audio and video

• Animoto  Gives students the ability to make a 30-second video of what they learned in a lesson.
• AudioNote  A combination of a voice recorder and notepad, it captures both audio and notes for student collaboration.
• Edpuzzle  Helps you use video (your own, or one from Khan Academy, YouTube, and more) to track student understanding.
• Flip  Lets students use 15-second to 5-minute videos to respond to prompts. Teachers and peers can provide feedback.
• QuickVoice Recorder  Allows you to record classes, discussions, or audio for projects. Sync your recordings to your computer easily for use in presentations.
• Vocaroo  Creates audio recordings without the need for software. Embed the recording into slideshows, presentations, or websites.
• WeVideo  Lets you use video creatively to engage students in learning. Teachers and students alike can make videos.

Create quizzes, polls, and surveys

• Crowdsignal  Lets you create online polls, quizzes, and questions. Students can use smartphones, tablets, and computers to provide their answers, and information can be culled for reports.
• Edulastic  Allows you to make standards-aligned assessments and get instant feedback.
• FreeOnlineSurveys  Helps you create surveys, quizzes, forms, and polls.
• Gimkit  Lets you write real-time quizzes. And it was designed by a high school student!
• Google Forms  Part of the Google suite, Google Forms lets you create quizzes, polls, and surveys and see answers in real time.
• Kahoot!  A game-based classroom response system that lets you create quizzes using internet content.
• MicroPoll  Helps you create polls, embed them into websites, and analyze responses.
• Naiku  Lets you write quizzes students can answer using their mobile devices.
• Poll Everywhere  Lets you create a feedback poll or ask questions and see results in real time. Allows students to respond in various ways. With open-ended questions, you can capture data and spin up tag clouds to aggregate responses.
• Poll Maker  Offers unique features, like allowing multiple answers to one question.
• ProProfs  Helps you make quizzes, polls, and surveys.
• Quia  Lets you create games, quizzes, surveys, and more. Access a database of existing quizzes from other educators.
• Quizalize  Helps you create quizzes and homework.
• Quizizz  Guides you through designing quizzes and lets you include students in the quiz-writing process.
• Quizlet  Lets you make flashcards, tests, quizzes, and study games that are mobile friendly.
• Quizmaker  Helps you write quizzes quickly and easily.
• Survey Hero  Designed to build questionnaires and surveys.
• SurveyMonkey  Helpful for online polls and surveys.
• SurveyPlanet  Also helpful for online polls and surveys.
• Zoho Survey  Allows you to make mobile-friendly surveys and see results in real time.

Brainstorm, mind map, and collaborate

• AnswerGarden  A tool for online brainstorming and collaboration.
• Coggle  A mind-mapping tool designed to help you understand student thinking.
• Conceptboard  Software that facilitates team collaboration in a visual format, similar to mind mapping but using visual and text inputs.
• Dotstorming  A whiteboard app that allows digital sticky notes to be posted and voted on. This tool is best for generating class discussion and brainstorming on different topics and questions.
• Educreations Whiteboard  A whiteboard app that lets students share what they know.
• iBrainstorm  Lets students collaborate on projects using a stylus or their finger.
• Miro  Allows whole-class collaboration in real time.
• Padlet  Provides a blank canvas for students to create and design collaborative projects.
• ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard  Another whiteboard tool to check understanding.
• XMind  Mind-mapping software for use on desktop computers and laptops.
• Equity Maps  These discussion maps can help you ensure every student has a chance to share their ideas.

Present, engage, and inspire

• BrainPOP  Lets you use prerecorded videos on countless topics to shape your lesson plan, then use quizzes to see what stuck.
• Buncee  Helps students and teachers visualize, communicate, and engage with classroom concepts.
• Five Card Flickr  Uses the tag feature from photos in Flickr to foster visual thinking.
• PlayPosit  Allows you to add formative assessment features to a video from a library or popular sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo, to survey what students know about a topic.
• RabbleBrowser  Allows a leader to facilitate a collaborative browsing experience.
• Random Name/Word Picker  Facilitates random name picking. You can also add a list of keywords and use the tool to prompt students to guess words by providing definitions.
• Socrative  Uses exercises and games to engage students with a topic.
• Adobe Express  Lets you add graphics and visuals to exit tickets.
• Typeform  Helps you add graphical elements to polls.

Generate word or tag clouds

• EdWordle  Generates word clouds from any entered text to help aggregate responses and facilitate discussion. Word clouds are pictures composed of a cloud of smaller words that form a clue to the topic.
• Tagxedo  Allows you to examine student consensus and facilitate dialogues.
• Wordables  Helps you elicit evidence of learning or determine background knowledge about a topic.
• WordArt  Includes a feature that allows the user to make each word an active link to connect to websites, including YouTube.

Get real-time feedback

• Formative  Lets you assign activities, receive results in real time, and provide immediate feedback.
• GoSoapBox  Works with the bring-your-own-device model and includes an especially intriguing feature: a confusion meter.
• IXL  Breaks down options by grade level and content area.
• Kaizena  Gives students real-time feedback on work they upload. You can use a highlighter or give verbal feedback. You can also attach resources.
• Mentimeter  Allows you to use mobile phones or tablets to vote on any question a teacher asks, increasing student engagement.
• Pear Deck  Lets you plan and build interactive presentations that students can participate in via their smart device. It also offers unique question types.
• Plickers  Allows you to collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices.
• Quick Key  Helps you with accurate marking, instant grading, and immediate feedback.

Foster family communication  

• Remind  Lets you text students and stay in touch with families.
• Seesaw  Helps you improve family communication and makes formative assessment easy, while students can use the platform to document their learning.
• Voxer  Lets you send recordings so families can hear how their students are doing, students can chat about their work, and you can provide feedback.

Strengthen teacher-to-student or student-to-student communication

• AnswerGarden  Gives you access to formative assessment feedback.
• Biblionasium  Lets you view books students have read, create reading challenges, and track progress. Students can also review and recommend books to their peers.
• Classkick  Helps you post assignments for students, and both you and your students’ peers can provide feedback. Students can also monitor their progress and work.
• TeacherEase Rubrics . This paid tool can help you ensure your rubrics are clear and accurate.
• Lino  A virtual cork board of sticky notes, it lets students ask questions or make comments on their learning.
• Online Stopwatch  Provides dozens of themed digital classroom timers to use during small- and whole-group discussions.
• Peergrade  Helps you create assignments and upload rubrics. You can also anonymously assign peer review work. Students can upload and review work using the corresponding rubric.
• Verso  Lets you set up learning using a URL. Space is provided for directions. Students can add their assignment, post comments, and respond to comments. You can group responses and check engagement levels.
• VoiceThread  Allows you to create and share conversations on documents, diagrams, videos, pictures, and more.

Keep the conversation going with live chats

• Yo Teach  A backchannel site great for keeping the conversation going with students.
• Chatzy  Supports live, online chats in a private setting.

Create and store documents or assignments

• Google Drive  Google Drive allows you to create documents students can collaborate on in real time using smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
• Piazza  Lets you upload lectures, assignments, and homework; pose and respond to student questions; and poll students about class content. This tool is better suited for older students as it mimics post-secondary class instructional formats.

There are several resources for learning more about formative assessment and responsive instruction strategies. Consider our  formative practices workshops , where school and district teams can gain a better understanding of the role formative practice plays in instruction and the four foundational practices to use in the classroom. Or for a quick start, download our eBook  “Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice.”

Jump in, try new tools and methods, and have fun!

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27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning

What are classroom assessment standards, and how do they impact student learning?

Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice

Formative assessment isn’t new. But as our education system changes, our approaches to any instructional strategy must evolve. Learn how to put formative assessment to work in your classroom.

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Bot or Not? Lessons on Using AI in the Classroom

• Through prompt engineering exercises, students discover how to craft the types of questions that will return helpful answers.
• Non-native speakers benefit from AI tools that enable them to communicate more clearly and confidently.
• Students learn that today’s technology can still be limited, unethical, biased—or simply wrong.

  Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are playing an increasingly prominent role in both the classroom and the workplace. Such tools include large language models (LLMs), which learn from and generate text, as well as robotic process automation tools such as UiPath , Appian , and MuleSoft .

Most universities are exploring the best ways to take advantage of these powerful new technologies. For instance, several years ago, one school used AI to create an experimental teaching assistant that provided automated responses to hundreds of basic questions that students posted about coursework in an online forum—and the students couldn’t even tell they weren’t interacting with a human TA.

Because so many students, faculty, and staff are already using AI tools, it’s essential for institutions of higher learning to develop parameters for what constitutes acceptable usages on their campuses. At Baruch College of the City University of New York, we recently drafted guidelines specifying that students can use generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT , Microsoft’s Copilot , or Google’s Gemini . However, such usage is only allowed when the instructor permits it, when students cite AI as a source, and when students show exactly how they used the technology.

At Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business, we know that if students learn to use AI in the classroom, they will have a better chance of knowing how to leverage it in the workplace. Here, four Zicklin instructors share their insights about what AI can do, how it can be used, and what limitations still exist.

AI Helps Students Think Critically

Yafit Lev-Aretz, an assistant professor in the Zicklin School’s law department, gives students opportunities to experiment with GenAI in her undergraduate business law class. During a recent take-home midterm exam, Lev-Aretz posed a question, then provided an answer that had been generated by AI. By itself, she estimated, that answer would score 60 out of a possible 100 points.

Lev-Aretz had students devise more precise prompts that would return more detailed answers and earn better grades. “I did not ask to see their prompts or provide feedback on them,” she explains. “My goal was simply to encourage them to use this tool, which I think can be extremely helpful in their thinking and writing process.”

She adds, “This engagement and willingness to experiment are precisely the learning outcomes I aim to foster.”

AI Can Be a Source of Information…

AI can quickly provide supplemental knowledge on an almost limitless number of topics, as Curtis Izen tells students in his undergraduate computer information systems honors course. Izen is a senior information specialist in Baruch’s Computing and Technology Center and an adjunct lecturer in the Paul H. Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics.

AI can quickly provide supplemental knowledge on an almost limitless number of topics, as Curtis Izen tells his undergraduate students.

“For example, if students don’t know about database management systems, they can ask ChatGPT to explain what a database management system is and provide some examples,” he says.

Instructors might find GenAI equally useful, Izen notes, especially when they’re creating course materials. “They can feed it a paragraph of information and ask it to generate questions,” he says. “It can also change the type of question—say, from a multiple-choice question to a fill-in-the-blank one, or an open-ended question.” It can even help write syllabi, he adds.

…But Only With The Right Prompting

AI can help users reduce gaps in their knowledge— if they know how to use it properly, says Danny Park, an adjunct lecturer in the Chook department. Before students begin his graduate course on business analytics and artificial intelligence, Park provides them with a list of prompts they can feed to ChatGPT to bone up on certain topics.

He hand-feeds them the prompts to show them that only properly crafted questions will return helpful answers. Unless users are effective at prompt engineering, Park explains, they might find themselves illustrating the truth of the old programming mantra of “garbage in, garbage out.”

Prompt engineering is also a key part of the marketing analytics MBA courses taught by Joshua Moritz, a lecturer in the Allen G. Aaronson Department of Marketing and International Business.

“Because AI is pretty new, we need to learn how to ‘train’ AI to avoid generating bad results,” Moritz says. “So, students need a stable, accurate benchmark to know if their answers are going to be right or wrong.”

To that end, Moritz first has students use Microsoft Excel to solve a basic statistical problem—say, creating a linear regression from raw data points. Next, students feed the same data into ChatGPT, making requests and asking questions to see if they can generate the same results as they did in Excel. Students keep tweaking the prompts until the ChatGPT answer matches the Excel answer, which Moritz refers to as “the truth.” Once students get the prompts right, they can save them and use them repeatedly to solve the same simple statistical problems.

“Because AI is pretty new, we need to learn how to ‘train’ AI to avoid generating bad results.”—Joshua Moritz

For this exercise to work, each student must pay a monthly 20 USD fee for the 4.0 edition of ChatGPT, because the free version doesn’t do statistical analysis. “Students can’t share accounts because people write and speak differently. Sometimes small differences such as using ‘the’ versus ‘a’ or making a change in punctuation can generate different answers, believe it or not,” Moritz says.

Even when the prompts are exactly the same, ChatGPT sometimes generates a slightly different and therefore incorrect answer, Moritz says. “I am not clear why this happens,” he admits. “The technology is improving, but it’s not 100 percent. If this were medicine or cybersecurity, getting one answer wrong out of a hundred would not be OK. But this is marketing—you might lose money, but no one will die.”

AI Aids Non-Native Speakers

One advantage of allowing students to use AI during assignments, says Lev-Aretz, is that it reduces language barriers for those who are not native English speakers. That’s a critical consideration for a school like Baruch, whose students hail from more than 150 countries and speak more than 100 languages.

Izen agrees. For some course assignments, he has students record comments asynchronously through voiced-based tools such as the commercial product VoiceThread . (A similar product, Vocat , is an open-source option that was developed at Baruch.) He has found that his students’ public speaking skills improve the more they use the tool.

“Some of my students’ communication was so poor that if I called on them in class, they wouldn’t answer, or they’d mumble and speak so softly I couldn’t understand them,” Izen says. “But now that I’ve been using VoiceThread for several years, I notice that their verbal communication and confidence improve by the end of each course.”

But There Are Downsides

While AI offers enormous benefits to students, it also carries potential risks. One is that it could interfere with the learning process if students use it to complete homework assignments instead of doing the work themselves. Therefore, instructors need to devise strategies to mitigate the possibility that students are merely plagiarizing from AI.

That’s one reason Izen uses VoiceThread in his classrooms. After students make video or voice recordings, they share the files on the learning management system, where VoiceThread is integrated.

Because students must provide answers in their own words and post their sources in text comments, Izen can use these recordings to check whether his students are grasping the basic concepts they might have asked AI to explain. If they are describing their efforts with algorithms or computer programs, students must verbally explain their codes or formulas for their submitted assignments.

AI Cannot Be Blindly Trusted

In addition, AI poses legal and ethical risks, which means that neither students nor business leaders can simply accept the answers AI tools provide. Baruch instructors make certain students are aware of four risks in particular.

1. AI is limited in what it can do. Park notes that many users seem to ignore the word “artificial” in the phrase “artificial intelligence”—they start to believe AI is superior to human ingenuity, creativity, and wisdom. But he points out that, unlike humans, LLMs cannot provide value that is greater than the quality of the material they were trained on.

“People use ChatGPT as if it were a search engine, but in most cases, they’d be better off just using Google instead.”—Danny Park

2. Legal issues abound. It is not always clear exactly how generative AI products have been trained. In an interview published by The Wall Street Journal in April 2024, OpenAI’s chief technology officer claimed she didn’t know how Sora, the company’s text-to-video generator, had been taught. In a subsequent interview with Bloomberg, YouTube’s CEO said that if Sora had been trained on YouTube, that would violate his company’s terms of service.

Meanwhile, a slew of newspaper publishers, from The New York Times to the Chicago Tribune to California’s Orange County Register, are suing Microsoft and OpenAI for reusing their articles without permission.

Similarly, actress Scarlett Johansson might take legal action against OpenAI for creating a ChatGPT voice that sounds like the character she created in the 2013 film “Her”—even after Johansson had declined the offer to voice the AI assistant herself.

3. AI perpetuates harmful biases. Facial recognition technology has been accused of discrimination against Black and brown people. Ask Freepik —an image bank website that includes an AI image generator—to create a photo of a CEO, and you’ll get nothing but images of white men. A query for an image of a nurse gives you white women only.

4. AI is simply wrong sometimes. Recently, Google had to disable its Gemini text-to-image feature because it generated historically inaccurate images of popes who were female and American Founding Fathers who were Black.

“People use ChatGPT as if it were a search engine, but in most cases, they’d be better off just using Google instead,” Park comments. He adds that his teenage son once failed a math quiz because he plugged the questions into a chatbot, which produced incorrect results, and his son didn’t check the answers.

AI Is Part of the Future

Despite the challenges it presents, AI will be an integral part of tomorrow’s workplace. That’s why the Zicklin School has gone beyond integrating AI into the classroom. We’ve also developed programs—including an undergraduate AI minor and a graduate-level AI certificate—that are designed to help students leverage technology once they’re on the job. Because AI potentially impacts all business disciplines, we collaborate extensively with philosophy professor Elizabeth Edenberg, an expert on technology and ethics, as we develop these programs.

Armed with this information, our graduates will know how to use AI tools in ways that are effective, useful, ethical, and trustworthy—which will give them and their companies a competitive advantage.

• artificial intelligence
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• learner success

Move Your Way® Toolkit for Schools

This toolkit is for anyone working to encourage physical activity in a school setting — like physical education and health education teachers, classroom teachers, coaches, after-school program leaders, and school administrators. Others promoting student health and well-being — like school nurses and parent teacher associations (PTAs) — can also use the information in this toolkit to support their work. 

Want to learn about the Move Your Way campaign? Check out this short video ! 

Browse this toolkit to:

Learn how physical activity benefits students — at school and beyond

Make a plan to get students moving, step into action , share move your way materials with parents and caregivers.

Kids and teens need movement to grow healthy and strong. Regular physical activity strengthens muscles and bones, helps prevent health problems like diabetes and heart disease, and reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression. 

Physical activity also has clear benefits for life at school. For example, students who are physically active tend to:

• Have better grades
• Miss fewer school days
• Have better focus in class 

Beyond that, physical activity in schools can help support school connectedness — students’ belief that peers and adults in the school support, value, and care about their well-being. School connectedness can make it less likely that students engage in risky behaviors like substance use and help improve students’ mental and physical health and well-being.

• Browse CDC Healthy Schools’ Physical Education and Physical Activity webpage for facts, figures, and frameworks.
• Learn about School Connectedness and how to promote it.
• Check out these 10 Actionable Tips to Support Youth Mental Health Through Sports [PDF - 2.2 MB] .

Whether you’re starting a school-wide physical activity initiative or you just want to provide students, parents, and caregivers with educational materials — it helps to make a plan. That way, you can be sure everybody is on the same page and working toward a clearly defined goal. Use these tips to plan your physical activity project:

• Set clear, achievable goals. What are you trying to achieve with your efforts? It helps to be specific — instead of “Get students to be more active,” set clearly defined goals like “Get students to move for at least 10 minutes each day during recess.” 
• Build support within your school. Who in your school community can support your physical activity project? Consider involving school leadership, PTA representatives, or other teachers. 
• Involve students. Try to include students of all ages in the planning process — they can add an important perspective and voice. Students can also serve as “ambassadors” to promote physical activity and model healthy behaviors for their peers.
• Keep accessibility top of mind. Make sure your physical activity project or initiative is accessible to everyone in the school community. For example, do you need to adapt activities to work for students with movement limitations or non-verbal communication styles? Or choose playground equipment suitable for students who use mobility devices? 
• Find partners in your community. Don’t forget about the larger community outside of school — are there organizations or individuals who can support your physical activity efforts? Think local health departments, hospitals, or community organizations. Also consider partnerships that might help you better engage all students, like an organization that could donate adaptive equipment. Use this National Youth Sports Strategy (NYSS) Champions directory to find organizations in your area that focus on youth with disabilities.
• Evaluate your progress. When trying a new strategy, it’s important to assess what’s working well — and what isn’t. Check in with school leadership and other teachers regularly: Have they noticed a difference in students’ activity levels? What problems are they experiencing? You can also use more formal evaluation measures like surveys. 

Want to learn more about planning a community-wide physical activity campaign? Check out the Move Your Way Community Playbook .

Move Your Way in the field: Building community partnerships

Move Your Way campaign pilot community Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) partnered with the student wellness club at a local elementary school to plan and host a Move Your Way event for students. Students collaborated with their physical education teacher to create lesson plans focused on the Physical Activity Guidelines. After the student-led lesson, all students were encouraged to get active outside. Parents, faculty, and staff joined the students as they walked, ran, or skipped laps around the school. SNHD attended the event, offered more information about the campaign, and distributed Move Your Way materials to families. 

Now that you’ve made a plan, it’s time to put it into action. Try the strategies below to get students moving throughout the school day and beyond. And use Move Your Way’s engaging materials in English and Spanish to support your efforts!

Around school

Kids and teens spend a big chunk of their time at school — that’s why creating a school environment that encourages physical activity is so important. Start with these simple tips:

• Show the benefits of getting active at a glance. Print the “60 Minutes” Poster for Kids and hang it in hallways, classrooms, and the gym.
• Focus on fun. Getting physically active is a great way to build some play into the school day and enhance learning. Whether it’s playing active games or having a classroom dance party — just have fun with it!

In the classroom

Try these strategies to encourage physical activity in the classroom:

• Take movement breaks. Getting up and moving together can get antsy students back on track and reduce disruptive behaviors. Try arm circles, jumping jacks, or running in place — and consider incorporating yoga and other mindfulness activities to help improve students’ focus and lower anxiety and stress.
• Add activity to academics. Why not use movement to practice and reinforce academic lessons? For example, play a round of “beach ball spelling” — where students take turns calling out the letters of a word as they throw a beach ball to one another. Or you can set up movement-based learning stations so students can stand and walk around the classroom while completing tasks.
• Get smart about getting active. Use the Fact Sheet for Kids to teach students the what, how, and why of physical activity — and send home a copy of the Fact Sheet for Parents .
• Make a pledge. Print the Move Your Way Pledge Sheet and have students write down how they plan to get active. Then hang students’ pledge sheets up in the classroom. At the end of the week, ask students to share their experiences: Did they meet their physical activity goals? If not, how can the school community support them? 
• Check out CDC Healthy Schools’ Classroom Physical Activity webpage for additional resources and strategies.
• For more movement break ideas and printable cards, download this CDC fact sheet [PDF - 4.1 MB] .

Recess is an opportunity for students to have unstructured playtime with their friends — and you can use this time to encourage them to get creative and have fun while getting active. Try these tips:

• Call on young artists. Use chalk or paint to draw game boards or areas for activities like hopscotch on sidewalks or blacktops. This is also a great way to engage older students in creating something for their peers.
• Promote active play. Offer a variety of games and activities so each child can find something they enjoy. And you don’t have to plan every activity yourself — let kids design and lead their own games to help them build leadership and social skills. If your budget allows, consider investing in play equipment like jump ropes, playground balls, or bean bag toss games to support different ways to play. 
• Plan for bad weather days. Identify indoor spaces where students can get moving when it’s raining or too cold or hot to spend recess outside — like the gym, empty classrooms, or a spacious hallway. You might have to create a schedule to avoid overcrowding.
• Get your community involved. Ask local businesses to donate new or gently used adaptive play equipment — or partner with nearby community centers, YMCAs, or gyms to provide access to indoor activity spaces.
• Check out CDC Healthy Schools’ Recess webpage to learn about strategies and policies for recess planning.
• Get more tips for Active Outdoor Recess and Active Indoor Recess .
• Use this Painted Play Spaces Playbook [PDF – 1.2 KB] as a guide to add colorful game designs to outdoor play areas.
• Looking for games that don’t require equipment? Check out this Game Library for ideas.  

Avoid using physical activity to discipline students

Kids and teens are much more likely to get moving if they have positive associations with physical activity. That’s why it’s important not to use physical activity as a punishment (like having kids run laps) or take away opportunities for getting active (like not allowing students to go to recess).

During school events

Take advantage of school events — like open houses and back-to-school festivities — to educate parents, caregivers, and people in the community about the benefits of physical activity. Try these tips:

• Set up shop. Decorate a table or booth with the Move Your Way posters for parents — and use them as conversation starters to talk with people about physical activity. You can also hand out the Fact Sheet for Kids and the Fact Sheet for Parents . 
• Engage local partners. Local health departments, hospitals, or community organizations with a physical activity focus may be willing to set up a table and share educational materials — and even hand out goodies like water bottles, jump ropes, or balls.
• Show (and tell). If you have multimedia equipment available, consider streaming the Move Your Way videos for families during the event. 
• Get moving together. Incorporating movement breaks or active games into events can help parents and caregivers remember the joy of physical activity. Need inspiration? Watch this video showcasing accessible exercises.
• Create a challenge! Many kids love a bit of friendly competition — and they love getting their adults involved. Set up a sack race, obstacle course, or a scavenger hunt and have kids compete against parents, caregivers, or teachers.  

Use the Move Your Way teen video challenge to engage older students

Most young kids naturally want to move,   but encouraging older middle school or high school students to get active can be tough. If you’re looking for a way to engage older students, consider a multimedia classroom project — like the Move Your Way teen video challenge! 

The  Tips for Creating Your Own Move Your Way ®  Teen Video Fact Sheet [PDF - 805 KB] has everything teens need to get started, and they can watch the  Move When You Can and  Try Something Different videos for inspiration. Consider making it an assignment or an extra credit activity. Or make it a raffle —  students who create a video get the chance to win a prize!

Want to learn more about making physical activity accessible for youth with disabilities?

Explore the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability’s educator webpage . 

Interested in customizing materials for your school? You can swap out photos or add your school’s logo to Move Your Way materials through the  CDC State and Community Health Media Center. If you have questions about using Move Your Way materials, want to create your own, or would like help implementing physical activity strategies in your school, please contact ODPHP.

One of the best ways to encourage physical activity outside school is to get families moving together. Getting active as a family not only helps kids and teens stay healthy — it also means everyone gets to reap the benefits of physical activity. The Move Your Way campaign has lots of resources to help families find activities that fit their lives and create healthy, sustainable routines. Try the strategies below to support parents and caregivers in getting the family active.

Hand out educational materials

You can print these materials and send them home with students — or hand them out at school events.

• The Fact Sheet for Parents helps parents and caregivers understand what kinds of activity kids and teens need to stay healthy and offers tips for helping kids get active.
• The Sports Fact Sheet for Parents helps parents and caregivers understand the benefits kids and teens can get from playing sports and offers tips to help them get their kids involved.
• With the Pledge Sheet , parents can be role models for their kids by showing how they’ll get active and making a commitment to move more.

Promote physical activity in your newsletter, email, or blog

Use or adapt the content below to promote physical activity in your email outreach, newsletter, or blog. 

Subject: Get tips to get your kids moving

Body copy:  It’s no secret that kids and teens need regular physical activity — it makes their bodies grow strong, it helps them stay at a healthy weight, and it can even help them focus better in the classroom. 

How much is enough? Kids and teens need at least 60 minutes of physical activity throughout the day. That includes a mix of heart-pumping movement like running, dancing, or jumping rope, plus activities that strengthen muscles and bones — like playing sports or climbing at the playground. Use this interactive tool to help you fit more activity into your kids’ day.

But the best way to encourage kids and teens to get active? Get the whole family moving so everyone can enjoy the benefits of physical activity!

Check out the Move Your Way campaign for actionable tips and resources to add more physical activity to your family’s routine. 

Promote Physical Activity Through Social Media 

Use Move Your Way sample messages, graphics, and GIFs to promote physical activity on your own or your school’s social media channels. You can adapt the messages to fit your needs!

Add Move Your Way to your website 

Want to make Move Your Way part of your website? Download the Move Your Way web badges and widget for an easy way to add physical activity resources to your site. 

• With the Move Your Way Activity Planner web badge and widget , school staff, parents, caregivers, and other adults can use an interactive tool to help them build their own personalized weekly activity plan.
• The Move Your Way Parent Interactive Graphic web badge links parents and caregivers to an interactive tool they can use to see how kids can fit in 60 minutes of activity a day. 

The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) cannot attest to the accuracy of a non-federal website.

Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by ODPHP or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website.

You will be subject to the destination website's privacy policy when you follow the link.

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126 Molokaʻi students participate in STEM Day

Maui Economic Development Board STEMworks™ team members and local STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) experts traveled to Molokaʻi on May 22 to lead STEM Day activities for Kaunakakai Elementary School and Molokaʻi Middle School students. The event occupied an entire school day, with hands-on activities utilizing a wide variety of technology tools. In total, 126 students participated.

In a session on artificial intelligence (AI), students learned how to use AI to design their own books and generate images using original story ideas. This was led by Gabrial Yanagihara, an AI consultant and e-sports coach with Iolani School. One student shared, “I loved designing stories,” adding that she would like to be an artist and author when she grows up.

Another session on recognizing signs of stroke used 3D pens to help students visualize the anatomy of the brain and was led by Cassandra Saranillio, the stroke program manager with Maui Health. A student explained, “My favorite was when we got to trace the brain with 3D doodlers…I want to be a doctor when I grow up so if there is an emergency and I don’t have a phone on me, I’ll know what to do.” Saranillio helped the students memorize the signs of stroke using the acronym, BEFAST: Balance issues, Eyesight issues, Facial drooping, Arm weakness, Slurred speech, and Time to call 911.

Anna Sikkink, the STEMworks computer science specialist, led a session using virtual reality (VR) headsets to teach students about astronomy and Hawaiian history: “This immersive experience puts students on board the sailing canoe Hōkūleʻa under a clear night sky, where they can highlight constellations and the Hawaiian starlines, and observe how the stars rise and set relative to the Hawaiian star compass.” More information about the Kilo Hōkū VR application used during the activity can be found at  kilohokuvr.com . 

Joseph Abraham, a Maui-based game developer and artist, introduced the students to the basics of game design. They were able to design videogames of their own using RPG Maker. Computer programming was also covered by Daniel Valente, an IT specialist and computer programmer with the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College. Students learned the basics of coding using a free online program,  Scratch.MIT.edu , which can be used to create animations and games.

STEMworks also offers free afterschool programming to middle school students across Maui County, including Molokaʻi Middle School, through its STEMworks AFTERschool program. For more information about STEMworks, visit  https://www.facebook.com/STEMworksHI/  or  https://www.instagram.com/stemworks/ .

STEMworks is a program of Maui Economic Development Board, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation established in 1982 with a mission to diversify Maui County’s economy, building pathways to innovation, jobs, and opportunity for Maui residents.

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Free All-in-One Office Suite with PDF Editor

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How to Compress PDF [For Students]

Students' lives have undergone drastic changes, transitioning from traditional on-site schooling to the option of online education. Now, assignments and homework are often submitted through portals or email, where file size requirements may vary. To meet these specifications, compressing PDF files containing assignments becomes essential. I'll guide you through the process to compress PDF for students to ensure your documents meet the necessary size constraints without compromising content quality.

When Should Students Compress PDFs?

Students and PDFs are inseparable when it comes to academic tasks and assignments. Knowing when to compress PDF files is crucial for seamless document management and efficient sharing. Convenient sharing is one scenario where compression is necessary. When transferring files through email or other communication software, there are often file size restrictions. Therefore, when you need to submit e-copies of your assignments via email or messenger apps, compressing PDFs ensures they meet size requirements without sacrificing quality.

Another scenario where compression is beneficial is during cloud disk transfer. Many students store learning materials, e-books, and other resources in cloud storage, but storage space is often limited. To optimize space usage and ensure smooth uploading, it's wise to compress PDFs before transferring them to your cloud disk. By compressing PDF files, students can effectively manage their documents, meet size limitations, and streamline their digital workflow.

How to Compress PDF for Students

Students face numerous challenges with assignments and homework, often struggling to meet specific criteria, including file size requirements. To alleviate this burden, I'll share the two easiest and fastest ways to compress files, helping you save precious time and meet your assignment deadlines efficiently.

How to Compress PDF Using WPS Office

WPS Office is a suite that I'd always recommend, especially for students, because it offers a comprehensive set of tools for free. Among its many features, the ability to compress PDF files stands out as incredibly useful. Let me guide you through the simple steps of how to compress a PDF using WPS Office:

Step 1: Open the homework assignment that we need to compress in WPS Office .

Step 2: Once the PDF is open, click on the "Tools" tab to view the various PDF tools available in WPS PDF.

Step 3: To compress the file, click on the "PDF Compressor" option in the Tools ribbon.

Step 4: The Kingsoft PDF Compression window will pop up, and you can go through a few settings to customize your compression.

Step 5: The first setting is the Level of Compression. Students can choose from 3 options, each of which will reduce the file size differently.

Note: The size of the PDF after compression can be viewed in the Size column.

Step 6: Next are the Saving options. Students can compress the original document or click on the "Save to Directory" box to make a compressed copy of the original PDF.

Step 7: Once the settings are done, simply click on "Convert" to convert the document.

WPS Office is by far one of the smoothest tools available, offering a plethora of free features that cater to various document management needs. Its built-in tool for compressing files effortlessly is particularly impressive, making you wonder if it truly delivers on its promise of being an all-in-one suite. With WPS Office, users can enjoy seamless document management, efficient file compression, and a range of other functionalities, all within a single, user-friendly platform.

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How to Compress PDF Online

For a quick and convenient way to compress your PDF files on the go, you can utilize WPS Office, and transfer your file to a PDF compressor. Here's how:

Step 1: First, open your preferred browser and visit the WPS PDF Tools website.

Step 2: WPS PDF Tools provides an online PDF compressor tool. To use it, simply click on the "Compress PDF" tool.

Step 3: Now, click on the "Select PDF File" button to upload your assignment or other coursework PDF that you need to compress in the online WPS PDF Compressor.

Step 4: Once the PDF is uploaded, WPS Office will give you three levels of compression to choose from. To compress your file to the lowest possible size for sharing, click on "Smallest" .

Step 5: After selecting the level of compression, click on the "Compress" button to compress your PDF.

Step 6: And you're all set! You can now preview the compressed PDF by clicking on the "Preview" button.

Having the option to compress files online is incredibly convenient, especially when you're on the go. When you already have the file and simply need to open a website to compress it instantly, it's a fantastic option. With online compression tools, you can quickly reduce the file size of your documents without the need for additional software or downloads, making it a hassle-free solution for managing your files while on the move.

Best AI Assistant for Students - WPS AI

Being a writer isn't easy; igniting the spark of creativity can be challenging. Thankfully, WPS AI has been instrumental in fueling my creative spark. I understand how students also struggle to find inspiration and improve the quality of their work. WPS AI supports various aspects of content creation, summarization, data analysis, and interactive engagement with PDFs.

Students can utilize it to write essays, summarize texts, analyze data, and participate in discussions. Likewise, educators can leverage its capabilities to create interactive lessons, generate quizzes, and enhance the learning experience for their students. With WPS AI, both students and educators can unlock new levels of productivity and creativity in their academic endeavors.

Boost Productivity with WPS Office

WPS Office is a versatile, all-in-one suite designed for people of all calibers, from students to professionals. While it caters to students, professionals can also benefit greatly from its features. Whether you're a student managing assignments or a professional handling business documents, WPS Office offers a range of tools to streamline your tasks and enhance productivity.

Customized Compression:

With WPS Office, users can easily compress PDF files to reduce their size without compromising on quality. This feature is particularly useful when sharing PDF documents via email or messaging apps, as it ensures faster transfer speeds and compatibility with size restrictions. Additionally, customized compression options allow users to tailor the compression level according to their specific needs, striking the perfect balance between file size and document clarity.

WPS Office facilitates seamless sharing of PDF documents across various platforms and devices. Whether it's collaborating on group projects or sharing important reports with colleagues, users can effortlessly distribute PDF files via email, cloud storage services, or social media platforms. With WPS Office, sharing PDFs becomes a hassle-free process, enhancing productivity and collaboration among users.

WPS Office's Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature enables users to convert scanned documents and images into editable and searchable text. By utilizing advanced OCR technology, WPS Office accurately recognizes text from scanned PDFs, images, and other documents, allowing users to edit, copy, and search for text within these files. This functionality is invaluable for students, professionals, and educators who need to digitize and manipulate printed materials for academic or professional purposes.

PDF Document Security:

WPS Office offers robust security features to protect PDF documents from unauthorized access and ensure the confidentiality of sensitive information. Users can encrypt PDF files with passwords to prevent unauthorized viewing, copying, or printing. Also, digital signatures can be applied to PDFs to verify the authenticity and integrity of the document. With WPS Office, users have full control over document security, allowing them to safeguard their PDFs against potential threats and maintain the privacy of their data. Whether it's personal files, financial documents, or confidential reports, WPS Office provides the peace of mind knowing that PDF documents are secure and protected from unauthorized access.

FAQs about How to Create PDF for Business

1. how can i send a pdf file that exceeds 25 mb via email.

If your PDF file exceeds 25 MB, Gmail will insert a Google Drive link in the email instead of attaching the file directly. If you prefer not to send the file as a Google Drive link, you can use WPS PDF Tools to compress the PDF file before emailing it.

2. What is the max PDF size for Gmail?

Gmail has a maximum attachment size limit of 25 MB. While you can include multiple attachments, their combined size cannot exceed 25 MB. If your file surpasses this limit, Gmail will automatically convert it into a Google Drive link instead of attaching it directly to the email.

Enhance Your Student Experience With WPS Office

This method should always stay with you throughout your life because, as a student, you're not just preparing for your academic journey but also for the challenges ahead in your professional life. Knowing how to compress PDF for students will be a valuable skill that you'll need time and again. Even if you happen to forget, this guide will remain a reliable resource to assist you whenever the need arises. With WPS Office by your side, you can count on even more efficiency and ease in managing your documents. Download WPS Office now and empower yourself with the tools you need for success, both now and in the future.

• 1. How to Compress Excel Files Online: A Guide for Free and Large Files
• 2. How to compress PDF files in windows 10?
• 3. Compress PDF file in a smartest way
• 4. 10 Must-have software for college students to start school
• 5. How to Compress PDFs for Free with WPS Office
• 6. How to compress PDF for free

15 years of office industry experience, tech lover and copywriter. Follow me for product reviews, comparisons, and recommendations for new apps and software.

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Big Island police, students celebrate DARE Day in East Hawai‘i

The Hawai‘i Police Department and its school resource officers send congratulations to the 2024 graduates of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, also known as DARE.

East Hawai’i students from Hilo Intermediate, Waiākea Intermediate, Pāhoa Elementary, Kea‘au Elementary and Pāhoa Intermediate schools on May 23 celebrated completing the DARE program.

This year’s event was especially meaningful as it was the first large gathering of DARE graduates since 2019, after a hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hosted at the Kawamoto Swim Stadium in Hilo, the day began with master of ceremonies Capt. Roy Valera delivering opening remarks to more than 600 enthusiastic students in attendance.

Police Chaplain Renee Godoy gave the benediction, followed by the presentation of colors by the Hilo Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and singing of the National Anthem by Kaylan Gomes of Honoka‘a High School.

Hawai‘i Police Department Chief Ben Moszkowicz then gave his opening remarks and words of encouragement before awarding the students with a day of fun and excitement for all of their hard work.

After the opening ceremony and the students reciting the DARE pledge, they were presented with a scenario reenacting a traffic collision.

Big Island police worked with the Hawai‘i Fire Department in simulating how medics would provide aide in the event of a collision that resulted in severe injuries. The Fire Department’s police helicopter arrived and airlifted the victim out of the area, much to the amazement and cheers of the students.

Students were also treated to a demonstration by the Police Department’s Special Response Team addressing a bomb threat using a robot.

The event also featured waterslides, swimming, carnival games and other activities. A tug-of-war championship between the schools resulted in Waiākea Intermediate School winning. A perpetual trophy will be displayed in the school’s trophy case.

The Hawai‘i Police Department extends its gratitude to public and private volunteer groups for assisting with the event, as well as to county agencies, particularly the Hawai‘i County Parks and Recreation Department and Prosecutor’s Office, for donating many of the prizes handed out that day.

Big Island police hope the DARE Day celebration will continue to grow in appreciation among the students who completed the program.

DARE is a nationally recognized initiative that teaches students how to make good decisions, be responsible and handle bullying and peer pressure.

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• Grade assignments

View all your students' work

This article is for teachers. This feature is only available in the computer version of Classroom.

You can get a quick overview of work you assigned across all your classes. You can see which work is turned in, graded or not graded, or returned. You can also mark work reviewed.

See work across all classes

Go to classroom.google.com  and click Sign In.

Sign in with your Google Account. For example,  [email protected] or [email protected] .  Learn more .

• Click a title to view submissions.

Mark work as reviewed

• At the top, click  To review .
• (Optional) To filter your work by class, click All classes and select a class.

After you mark work as reviewed, you can see it in the Reviewed list.

• View all of a student's work in one place

You can see a list of an individual student’s assignments, grades, and missing work all in one place. You can filter the list by status—turned in, returned with grade, or missing. You can also email it to the student and their guardian.

• Click the class.

Note: You can only view the work of a student who has joined the class.

• The list of the student’s assigned work for the class—assignments, questions, or quizzes—with the due date, if there is one.
• The status of work assigned, turned in, late, or missing.
• Any grades for classwork.

• (Optional) To filter the student's work, under Filters , click Turned in , Returned with grade , or Missing .

You can email the list to the student. You can also email it to the student's guardian if email summaries for guardians are turned on. For more details, see Set up guardian email summaries .

• At the top, click People and then the student's name.
• At the top, click Classwork and then click an assignment or question and on the left, click the student’s name. Then, on the right, click their name again.

• (Optional) Enter a message.
• Check the Include student work summary box and click Send .

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• Grade and return an assignment

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