Documentation:CPR/Tips

Tips

Experienced CPR authors have found that three key features make an effective assignment topic. Because a full assignment requires additional student time beyond the writing, the topic must be:

• significant and central to the course,
• appropriate for a writing assignment, and

• interesting and challenging, but not overwhelming for students.

The topic must have sufficient depth that not only the writing stage but also the reviewing stages of the assignment probe higher level concepts of a topic and contribute to student learning. Otherwise, students rightly find the assignment, in general, and the reviewing process, in particular, a waste of their time. Students learn how to evaluate their peers’ documents by reviewing three carefully crafted samples, which include not only an exemplary text but also two that contain common student errors and misconceptions.