The standard view of this forum does not always work well with assistive technology. We also provide a simpler view, which still contains all features. Switch to simple view.

Jennifer Englund Post 1

14 June 2018, 9:15 PM

Recyclable assignments as a middle space?

Something about the binary nature of disposable and renewable assignments bothers me...I have been trying to untangle it since David Wiley wrote that blog post.

Here's where I think I'm landing on it...While I am all in for open educational practices of instructors, I tend to be a hesitant in jumping all in for students. I strongly feel that students should have a way to forget their content, to try something on and discard it, and to simply experiment in a controlled environment. I have three things that an LMS is handy for, and that's one of them. (providing a central spot for due dates and grades are the two others :)


Yes, you could argue that students can achieve what I wrote above by adopting pseudonyms for a single-use website, or by creating an archive of google drive folders and curating content. All viable options. Sometimes that works well from a grading perspective. But if you have more than 20 students, and use a handful of external platforms, and many students use pseudonyms for those platforms, then as an instructor you could potentially be juggling a lot of usernames, handles, etc in an effort to wrangle content and provide meaningful feedback. All of this is doable and there are workarounds. Some smart folks already probably already figured out all of this, I'm guessing :) I want to find small ways to move from disposable assignments in meaningful ways, and, in collaboration with students.