Effective course design begins with understanding the process of thinking and learning. These processes are commonly termed "metacognition." Metacognition includes a critical awareness of one’s ...

Assignments: Make Them Effective, Engaging, and Equitable. At their best, assignments are one of the most important learning experiences for students in a course. Students grapple with course content, ...

Modern students constantly face many challenges in the form of complex topics, deadlines, and high requirements for assignments. Under stress and pressure against the background of responsibility for ...

The students’ assignment: Write an op-ed about lead poisoning in Lewiston-Auburn. Or write a caption for a photo, or text about a campus tree. Write about how strange quantum theory is, or write a ...

Journals have become a popular format in recent years for courses that require some writing. In-class journal entries can spark discussions and reveal gaps in students' understanding of the material.

The Writing Center's consultants strive to help students understand and engage with writing assignments in productive ways. Unfortunately, we sometimes encounter assignment sheets that are difficult ...

Travis Grandy is a PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Find him on Twitter @travisgrandy or at his website. I work with a lot of instructors who use ...

Howe Writing Across the Curriculum recently partnered with consultants in the Howe Writing Center to present a series of workshops on Assignment Design, featuring real-time feedback from our student ...

Writing assignments can feel overwhelming for many African students. Heavy course loads, unreliable internet, part-time jobs, crowded study spaces, and strict academic expectations often make writing ...