Location: WAC Home > Your Course > Effective Assignments > Questions about Designing an Assignment   Author: L&S Program in Writing Across the Curriculum Description: Here are some questions you (and, if applicable, your teaching staff) should consider and brainstorm about before you start writing a new assignment.   Some Questions to Ask as You Design an Assignment   What do I want students to learn from doing this assignment? Why is writing an appropriate way to accomplish the goals in #1? What kind of writing do I want students to do? A standard genre in my discipline? Formal? Informal? Exploratory? A report that covers what's known about a topic? An argument that proves a conclusion? How familiar are my students with this genre? If they're not familiar, how can I teach them what they'll need to do in this paper? Who's the audience for this paper? How well will my students understand this audience? How long should the paper be? Why this length? What's the central task in this assignment? In other words, what's the single main question students should answer, or the main thing they should do? And how can I make that main task stand out clearly in the written version of my assignment? What's likely to be difficult about this assignment? How can I help my students with what may be difficult, without constraining them or over-specifying what they do? What are some (perhaps more creative) alternatives to this kind of assignment, ones that may accomplish the same goals? How will I build some process into this assignment, and how will I make the assignment visible and important in class (discuss the assignment, discuss models, have students share plans or main arguments, teach a brief writing workshop to address a common difficulty in this kind of paper, have a draft deadline, incorporate peer review, comment on drafts myself, conference with students about their drafts . . .)? What are my evaluation criteria? How well do these criteria line up with my goals for this assignment? Of these, which are most important? How can I share the final versions of these papers--so that my students take pride in their writing and so that students learn from each other?