Advice on Process

Why It Matters

Imagining how your students might “do” an assignment and breaking down its steps will not only help them feel more confident, it will also help you support them at each step of the process. Ideally, some of this advice will occur in the prompt itself, but this kind of frame is also a great way to start (and/or end) any section as an assignment is unfolding, e.g., “Today we’re going to do x, which picks up on y from last week, and will help us pivot to z as we approach the draft deadline on _____.” 

What It Looks Like

In the tabs below you'll find annotated examples of “advice on process” in assignment prompts, drawn from recent Gen Ed courses across a range of Gen Ed categories.

Histories, Societies, Individuals

 

from Policy Memo Assignment

Each member of the group [1] will be primarily responsible for one of the approaches—the creation of separate states, consociational power-sharing, or integrative power-sharing—laid out in the Policy Memo Assignment document. Here’s how the workflow of the writing process will look:

1. First, decide which member of the group will take which of the three approaches.

2. Then, on your own you will prepare an annotated bibliography [2] that will provide fodder for the collaborative memo and a develop preliminary bullet points about the pros and cons of the approach.

3. For the collaborative phase of writing, you will circulate copies of your bibliography and bullet points to your fellow team members in advance of the project Hackathon on Wednesday, April 17th, when you will work with your teammates to give each other feedback, brainstorm collectively and create a plan that you will use to complete the memo. [3] 

4. Finally, the group will work together (a) to decide on the core solution advocated in the policy memo, (b) create a plan to combine the individual and collective research and writing into one policy memo, and (c) craft an integrated draft and revise it to produce the final product.

This exercise is intended to help you think through your ideas and come up with the strongest, yet most concise way of arguing for them. [4] 

__________
[1] Advice on process can be especially helpfully with group projects, where different stages of the assignment might require more individual or more collaborative work.
[2] The assignment is broken down into a smaller step with a clear role: here, an annotated bibliography aimed at generating ideas and starting to weigh them. 
[3] Students know when they’ll get feedback during the assignment and what role smaller steps will play in building up to larger ones.
[4] The advice on process is coupled with an explanation of why the process has been designed this way. 


Adapted from Gen Ed 1008: Power and Identity in the Middle East | Spring 2020
Professor Melani Cammett

Aesthetics & Culture

 

from Creative Project 2

Podcast Part 1: Planning [1] 

Due no later than Sun, Sept 27, 24 hours before your assigned section time

Choose three different tracks from the Golden Record and study them carefully. Of those three, choose [2] the one that sounds strangest or most interesting to you and take notes on the kinds of things that you would want to communicate to others.

Start doing research, using the research tools that you picked up during our virtual excursion to the music library. A good starting point [3] is Timothy Ferris's chapter on the selection of the music for the Golden Record. But be careful. [4] There are several errors, some of them pretty serious, in the identification of the music. Be sure to cross-check all the claims you find in Murmurs of Earth.

Start writing a script of the points and arguments you want to include in your podcast. [5] Think particularly about how you can make good use of the sonic dimension of your presentation. How can you use words (and your voice), and sound examples? Think of various possibilities of mixing them.

__________
[1] Calling this phase of the assignment "Podcast Part 1: Planning" signals to students that it's part of a multi-step process that'll be broken down into parts. 
[2] Students are getting advice about how to get started with this part of the larger assignment. 
[3] The guidance here on the research stage of things isn’t prescriptive, but it also isn't without direction: students have had a library visit and are given a starting point for their research.  
[4] Here the prompt points out a pitfall to avoid. 
[5] While the finished product of the podcast project won't be words on a page, writing will still play a clear role in the in the planning stages of the process. 


Adapted from Gen Ed 1006: Music from Earth | Fall 2020
Professor Alex Rehding

Science & Technology in Society

 

Final Project Deadlines [1] 

  1. Wednesday 11/6, 10:00am: Complete the “Final Project Pre-Proposal” assignment (on Canvas).
  2. Labs, weeks of 11/11, 11/18, 11/25, and 12/2: We will hold normal lab times those weeks (other than University holidays). We suggest that you provide updates on your progress during your lab times (these final lab times will also be opportunities for you to work on your final projects with your peers and the teaching staff). Note that the subject of the labs the week of 11/11 is music storage (you will be cutting your compositions onto records that lab), but there will also be some free time to work on your final projects.
  3. Friday, 12/6, 9:00am: Deadline to let the teaching staff know if your project has any special requirements (e.g., larger space, AV equipment, instrument(s), etc) for your demonstration or performance.
  4. Wednesday 12/11, 9:00am (Presentation/demo day) Turn in your final report on Canvas.
  5. Wednesday 12/11, 2:00pm-5:00pm (Presentation/demo day) Present your project to the class.

__________
[1] This detailed list of deadlines serves as a timeline for the assignment as a whole, breaking down the overall process into smaller parts and letting students know how and for whom they’ll submit each part.

 

Adapted from Gen Ed 1080: Engineering the Acoustical World | Fall 2020
Professor Robert Wood

Aesthetics & Culture

 

from Letter of Condolence 
 

This is partly an exercise in empathy. In planning your letter, try to get inside the emotional world of an elephant. [1] The readings for Class 5 by Barbara King and Frans de Waal are a start. You may also find it helpful to watch videos on YouTube that illustrate the behavior of elephants in the wild. Here are a few to start you off:

[links to videos]

⋮

Think about your reading and discussion of letters of condolence in Section 2, and apply those insights to an attempt to offer comfort and sympathy to the elephant. [2] 

Once you have decided how to approach this assignment, make an outline. It should indicate in brief what you will say, and the order in which you will say it. [3] Getting your thoughts into a coherent order is sometimes hard, so think carefully about this.

Please submit the outline to your TF via Canvas by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, September 30, and make an appointment to see him or her to discuss it. You can schedule the appointment in advance; no need to wait until you have submitted the outline to reserve a slot. [4]

__________
[1] Students are given an abstract task in terms of "audience," but are immediately given clear guidance about how to approach that task.
[2] Writers get advice about how to draw on earlier course material in the early stages of the assignment. 
[3] Writers are given a concrete strategy for moving from brainstorming to outlining—all before attempting to write the assigned letter. 
[4] The prompt encourages students to seek out feedback and spells out how to find it, both of which help lower the barrier to entry for getting support.


Adapted from Gen Ed 1131: Loss
Professor Kathleen Coleman