Most courses that use active blended learning ask students to complete partial assignments during the course. To help them learn optimally, it’s important that they receive feedback and, in some cases, a grade.
In a previous teaching tip, we showed how a simplified grading scheme and delaying the release of grades can help you, as a teacher, to implement active blended learning. This week, we build on that by focusing on providing well-developed examples of finished assignments.
Show students examples of high-quality completed assignments
For larger assignments – such as solving physics problems, conducting a research study, working on a project, or giving a presentation – you can save time by showing students good examples of completed assignments beforehand. Ideally, these are examples where you provide feedback through comments (either written or video) and explain what you consider strong or weak and why (so-called worked examples).
For example, see:
- these example papers that illustrate what APA-formatted documents look like;
- this website with fully worked-out physics problems;
- this website with examples of academic phrases.
This approach is an effective way to give so-called feed-up: you make it clear from the start what students should strive for.
The examples you provide should of course use a different case study than the one you assign to your students. This way, the examples mainly demonstrate the structure of a finished product or the problem-solving method. Providing good and bad examples in advance also saves time later, as you’ll need to give less explanation during feedback.
This tip differs slightly from Didactic Tip 7, where students are asked to first formulate their own answers and are not given access to examples in advance.
Digital support
Canvas makes it easy to share sample materials with students.