Digital Assignments in the Classroom
A Crash-Course Guide
Prepared by Dr. Emily Lynell Edwards
Integrating Digital Assignments into the Classroom
This guide provides an overview of detailed sample examples of digital assignments that can be adapted for a variety of course modalities. Each assignment includes the particular platform or technology used, a sample assignment structure or requirements, context and commentary, and learning outcomes.
The goal of this guide is to provide faculty with examples of digital assignments that can be integrated and modified for a variety of courses, particularly in the context of the hybrid teaching modality. This guide outlines a series of assignments that are designed to ensure student learning outside of the physical classroom that is rigorous, dynamic, and engaging. Digital assignments allow students to collaborate with their peers, gain technical skills and knowledge, and offer faculty the ability to ensure student content comprehension and proficiency.
This overview guide features six assignments that can be adjusted to meet instructor needs focusing on addressing three main topics of focus, specifically within the hybrid course modality: promoting collaboration, building community, and encouraging student creativity and competency. Adapting activities and assignments to digital contexts is an opportunity for students to engage in self-directed learning, improve their communication skills, and acquire new technical and creative skills all while producing knowledge in tangible ways. These example assignments are also designed to center iterative feedback, for students to refine their skills and content proficiency over time as they produce a series of multi-modal assignments over the semester.
Primarily this guide seeks to serve as a resource for faculty to move within and beyond Canvas, to make use of the current Learning Management System (LMS), while incorporating other digital platforms into the learning process to facilitate creative and collaborative learning. These digital assignments are thus designed to address “Canvas fatigue” felt by students and captured succinctly and humorously in a social media exchange on Twitter, depicted below in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Canvas fatigue strikes again.
Alt text: Screen-shot of an exchange on Twitter between kala and Hannah Reading. kala Tweets “discussion boards on canvas are so fake it kills me.” Hannah Reading replies “Kala, I completely agree. I too, find the boards of discussion found on canvas to be fake. Awesome post.”
This guide features assignment titles, technologies required, steps including sample readings, general student learning outcomes, and goals of the assignment with commentary matched with generic sample courses. Finally, each digital assignment includes additional readings from a variety of journalistic and academic sources discussing the pedagogical application of integrating the relevant technology used in the sample assignment.
Assignment: Rock Your Discussion Board with Tik Tok
Sample Course: Introduction to Digital Humanities
Technological Requirements: Canvas, Cellphone or Laptop, Tik Tok Account
Description of Assignment:
- Make a Tik Tok account.
- Film a Tik Tok that responds to the discussion question and post to our discussion board. You may post a URL or share the draft video file as an attachment.
- Shoot for around 1-2 minutes.
- Respond to a classmate’s video between 100 to 150 words.
Your Tik Tok/video should engage with the following questions and any additional points from the reading, “Introduction” in New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Risam 2018).
- We talked about the “Archive Gap” and the creation of a cultural “canon” in class. What do you think is the prevailing “canon” in terms of literature, film, or music?
- What types of cultures or perspectives do you think are left out of literary, filmic, or musical “canons”?
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Students will apply and synthesize key concepts from the field of Digital Humanities in their own words.
- Students will experiment with a new digital platform to produce educational multi-media content.
- Students will improve their critical communication, thinking, and writing skills.
Goals of the Assignment:
This assignment includes the production of a short creative video and a textual response. With this combined Tik Tok-discussion board assignment, students formulate a response to an assigned reading in video format that enables them to apply creative license—adding in music, background images, and other audio—while communicating complex topics concisely. This assignment allows faculty to check for reading comprehension of key concepts and terms but gives students the opportunity to literally “remix” course content in a creative way. The Tik Tok-discussion board assignment makes use of technologies and platforms many students are already familiar with; smartphones and Tik Tok. However, this assignment allows for simple modification for students to simply record a 1-3 minute reaction video using campus resources in computer labs as an alternative. Uploading draft video files ensures students can keep their responses private within the community context of the Canvas discussion board. This assignment thus is designed to allow students to produce a digital product, engage in minor creative video and audio editing within the structure of the Tik Tok application, and enables faculty to ensure student comprehension of course topics.
Resources:
“Marquette Professor uses TikTok in the classroom” https://marquettewire.org/4045900/news/professor-uses-tiktok-to-enhance-learning-in-the-classroom/
Dezuanni, Michael Luigi. 2021. “TIKTOK’S PEER PEDAGOGIES - LEARNING ABOUT BOOKS THROUGH #BOOKTOK VIDEOS”. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research 2021 (September). https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.11901.
Assignment: Podcasting as Alternative Response
Sample Course: Introduction to Criminal Justice
Technological Requirements: Canvas, Laptop, Anchor Account
Description of Assignment:
- Make your Anchor account.
- Record a 10-15 minute podcast responding to the assigned reading and questions with your co-host partner.
- After reading Chapter 1 of Grubb, J. & Posick, C.’s Crime TV: Streaming Criminology in Popular Culture, respond to the following questions in your podcast response:
How are defendants represented in crime television shows? How does this diverge from juridical expectations for defendants’ rights within the criminal justice system?
- When you have edited and completed your response, publish the podcast to Spotify along with an episode description.
- Upload the URL to your podcast on Canvas.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Students will assess how criminal policy is represented in popular culture.
- Students will analyze issues of race, gender, and class in relation to the field of criminology.
- Students will articulate and apply knowledge of criminology policy.
Goals of the Assignment:
This assignment is designed to be deployed in lieu of a Canvas discussion board, allowing students to produce on-going responses in podcast format. This allows faculty to ensure student comprehension of course concepts and enables instructors to provide on-going feedback. By podcasting with a partner and producing a weekly podcast, students are able to have a dynamic conversation and engage in peer-to-peer learning in the hybrid course format. Furthermore, this format provides students with the opportunity to refine technical skills in terms of basic audio editing, design, and marketing by publishing a tangible audio project. By synthesizing course materials and critically reflecting within the podcast format, students translate academic, theoretical concepts into accessible language. This assignment uses free digital platforms and technologies such as cell phones and laptops. Using the free platform Anchor students can record directly into a computer or laptop, compile audio clips, edit audio, and include music or background effects. For a partnered project, students have the ability to meet in-person or through their SFC Zoom accounts and record audio files thus ensuring flexible collaboration in a hybrid course.
Resources:
“Hear this! Podcasts as an assessment tool in higher education https://teachingblog.mcgill.ca/2013/06/19/hear-this-podcasts-as-an-assessment-tool-in-higher-education/
“It’s Time for Academe to Take Podcasting Seriously” https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2021/09/28/how-harness-podcasting-teaching-and-scholarship-opinion
Assignment: Digital Social Annotation
Sample Course: Global Communication
Technological Requirements: Laptop, Chrome browser, Hypothes.is Account
Description of Assignment:
- Log into your Hypothes.is account.
- Navigate to the shared assigned reading for the class period:
Boulianne, Shelley, Mireille Lalancette, and David I lkiw. 2020. “‘School Strike 4 Climate’: Social Media and the International Youth Protest on Climate Change.” Media and Communication 8 (2). https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v8i2.2768.
- Read the assigned reading and annotate the article with at least two questions or comments.
- Reply to one classmates’ comment or question.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Students will attain an understanding of protest movements in a global context.
- Students will analyze how new media technologies affect strategies of political communication.
- Students will develop an understanding of theories and concepts that define intercultural communication.
Goals of the Assignment:
This assignment is designed to take a key component of any undergraduate class—assigned readings of scholarly materials—to make this practice more collaborative in the hybrid course modality. By having students not only read assigned texts but make notes as part of a closed, classroom group using the free platform Hypothes.is, students are able to engage in a virtual class discussion, refining their own understanding of the reading and collaborating with peers to work through the material. This assignment flips the traditional form of in-class close reading or group-reading to function in a hybrid space. Furthermore, this assignment enables faculty to directly check for student engagement and comprehension, responding to student comments and questions as part of the group. This assignment is designed to supplement traditional methods of assessment such as a reading quiz administered on Canvas. Using the Hypothes.is platform, this assignment makes reading comprehension a collaborative and communal exercise with minimal requirements for technical knowledge.
Resources:
“The Pedagogy of Collaborative Annotation” https://web.hypothes.is/blog/annotation-pedagogy/
“Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothes.is” https://academictech.uchicago.edu/2021/03/03/social-annotation-and-the-pedagogy-of-hypothesis/
Brown, M., & Croft, B. (2020). Social Annotation and an Inclusive Praxis for Open Pedagogy in the College Classroom. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020(1), 8. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jime.561
Assignment: Assessment in Augmented Reality
Sample Course: Women in Film and Video
Technological Requirements: Canvas, Cellphone and laptop, Metaverse Account (Note: This is not affiliated with Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook)
Description of Assignment:
- Make an account with Metaverse Studio (https://studio.gometa.io/landing)
- Complete the assigned reading.
hooks, bell. 2012. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” In Critical Theory A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies, edited by Robert Dale Parker, 269–82. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Create a Metaverse “Experience” with quiz questions about the reading. Your quiz should include three multiple choice questions and one short answer question about what you think are the most important topics, definitions, and themes brought up in the reading.
- Publish your Metaverse “Experience” and submit the URL or QR code on Canvas.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Students will trace the development of Black Feminist film criticism.
- Students will consider how conditions of race, gender, and class impact audience reception of visual medias.
- Students will apply knowledge of histories of women in media industries to understand contemporary issues of representation and gender inequality.
Goals of the Assignment:
For this assignment, students engage in a form of self-assessment by producing their own short reading quiz. By writing their own questions and answers students identify key concepts and terms they found important in the reading, thereby improving their own critical thinking skills. This assignment ensures faculty are able to identify the student level of material comprehension. Furthermore, by producing a quiz using the augmented reality app Metaverse, students have the ability to apply course concepts in creative ways, adding in backgrounds, avatars, and virtual items. This assignment could also be deployed in a more collaborative way, with a weekly student classroom leader/presenter developing a more in-depth augmented reality quiz that is assigned to the entire class, thereby promoting community in the hybrid format. The Metaverse App, while requiring some technical knowledge, does not require students to code and only requires a laptop and cellphone. This assignment “gamifies” the assigned reading experience and allows students to produce their own augmented reality experiences.
Resources:
“Not just the same old drill: Student-authored test questions improve critical thinking” https://crlt.umich.edu/blog/not-just-same-old-drill-student-authored-test-questions-improve-critical-thinking
“Augmented Reality for the Classroom: A Pedagogy”
https://medium.com/ixda/augmented-reality-for-the-classroom-a-pedagogy-f998067f7354
Assignment: Class Discussion on Discord
Sample Course: Modern European History
Technological Requirements: Cellphone or laptop, Discord account
Description of Assignment:
- Log into your account on Discord and navigate to our class channel.
- Within the 24-hour window in our class Discord server, after reading Chapter 1 of Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson, post a link to a newspaper that you think creates an “imagined community” and respond to the following questions.
What “community” is being created by the publication you chose?
- After posting, return to the server to read the conversation and respond to three another people in the chat.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Students will identity socio-cultural processes that contributed to the development of European nationalism.
- Students will locate evidence and critically assess sources.
- Students will compare and identify a variety of historical arguments placing them in broader scholarly context.
Goals of the Assignment:
This assignment shifts class discussion to a dynamic social media platform, a Discord channel. Discord has traditionally been used by gaming communities but is increasingly used for academic conferences and by faculty as a digital classroom space. Discord as a platform enables audio/text and image posting and archives all chats so users can log in and out of the server and easily and quickly access the conversation that happened in their absence, ideal for hybrid classes where users are posting at different times. This platform prioritizes shorter and more frequent communication than the discussion board model, encouraging on-going conversations. Faculty can create multiple channels, for example Weekly Reading Response, General Q & A, etc., letting conversation occur organically organized by particular topic. Moving class discussions to Discord enables more continuous communication and a high degree of interactivity among faculty and students while still remaining grounded within the medium of textual communication.
Resources:
“Discord App Adds Options for Remote Learning & Teamwork”
“Teaching with Discord: A beginner’s guide” https://teachingpals.wordpress.com/2020/08/13/teaching-with-discord-a-beginners-guide-written-by-a-beginner/
Assignment: Student Responses in Timeline Format
Sample Course: World Religions
Technological Requirements: Laptop, Google Drive account, TimelineJS Account, Canvas
Description of Assignment:
- Log into your Timeline JS account and log into your Google account.
- Complete the reading, “Chapter Five Founding Discourses” in Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam (1992).
- Using Google Sheets with the pre-made timeline sheet, add a photograph and description of the following key event. Summarize the event in your own words and include a quote from the reading.
The reign of the second caliph, Umar, 643-44 CE.
- Publish your timeline and submit a URL link on Canvas.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Students will identify the core beliefs and practices of Islam.
- Students will critically evaluate primary and secondary sources related to Islam.
- Students will analyze the historical articulation of Islam in global and transnational contexts.
Goals of the Assignment:
This assignment is an alternative to individual assigned notetaking or reading-comprehension quizzes and is designed for classes that focus on linear temporal development but can be modified to track the development a variety of topics. Students, using free accounts with TimelineJS and Google Drive, build out a progressive timeline that involves writing descriptions and analyses of events and find complementary visual or video sources. TimelineJS is an educational resource produced by Northwestern University’s Knight Lab and has been used in a variety of educational and professional journalistic contexts to make temporal narratives visually interactive. This project allows for on-going faculty feedback for student content comprehension. This assignment is individually based and may be built out over the course of the semester, with students developing their own narratives of course topics. This digital assignment complements well as a study aid for students to revisit their descriptions and assessments of events in relation to midterm and final exams while providing students with the ability to creatively modify and design a digital project with only minimal technical knowledge required.
Resources:
Keralis, Spencer D. C., Courtney E. Jacobs, and Matthew Weirick Johnson. 2021. “Collaborative Digital Projects in the Undergraduate Humanities Classroom: Case Studies with TimelineJS.” The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, no. 19 (May). https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/classroom-timeline-projects/.
“A Pedagogy That Spans Semesters”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-pedagogy-that-spans-semesters/