How to Design Successful Writing Assignments

Closeup of a desk showing someone's hand using a laptop and some books.

As writing instructors ourselves, we are all too familiar with the many difficulties that come with assigning writing. It’s difficult to create meaningful assignments that help students learn what you want them to learn. While thoughtful writing instruction tied to learning outcomes takes time to implement, that initial effort can make your course more accessible for your students, and lead to greater efficiencies for you over the long run. Some writing you do not even need to grade! Once you know some of the key components of writing assignment design, you will be able to create a collection of effective teaching materials that you can adapt for years to come. Also, your students will learn more, and will be better equipped to handle complexity.

Designing successful writing assignments involves some or all of the following eight strategies:

Distinguish Between Writing to Learn, and Learning to Write
Explicitly State Assignment Goals
Tie Assignment Goals to Course Goals
Create Antiracist Writing Assignments
Offer Clear Instructions for Completion
Clarify Expectations About Genre, Audience, and Formatting
Provide Examples of the Kinds of Writing You Assign
Asses Your Own Work

1. Distinguish Between Writing to Learn, and Learning to Write

Writing is an incredibly important teaching tool because it serves a dual purpose.

On the one hand, it can help students think through and reinforce course concepts that you are already trying to get them to learn. This is called “writing to learn”.

On the other hand, writing can serve as an outcome in itself, especially when it is written with a particular audience or occasion in mind. This kind of writing is often field-specific and can include genres like lab reports, historiographies, or business memos. This is called “learning to write” or “writing to communicate.”

Most instructors want their students to do both: writing to learn and learning to write, though some place greater emphasis on writing to learn at earlier stages of learning, and on learning to write as the student is in more advanced stages of their major. In any case, this site is designed to help you think through implementing both approaches, specifically through four sections: assignment design, academic integrity, equitable grading strategies, and approaches for faculty working with TAs.

Before you begin to explore these topics, we also encourage you to explore the tri-campus Guidelines for Teaching W Courses, which articulate expectations and best practices for all who design, teach, or TA courses that fulfill the Additional Writing requirement (“W courses”) at the University of Washington’s three campuses.

2. Explicitly State Assignment Goals

Sometimes it is hard to articulate to our students our learning goals for a particular assignment because our own expertise has become tacit over years of immersion in a field. As Writing Studies scholars Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle write,

Experts approach all of their work from particular perspectives that reflect their experiences. Experts often see their jobs as teaching students to learn to cultivate the same abilities—the same expertise that they themselves have. But [field-specific expertise]... is often not something instructors think about explicitly because the whole structure of this learning is so familiar.

Your first step for conceptualizing a writing assignment, then, is to ask yourself how your student writing should engage concepts, theories, and methods specific to your field. Many of us throw around words like “argument,” “research,” and “clarity” as values, but don’t define them for our contexts.

Also, ask yourself: are students “writing to learn” key course concepts from course materials or “learning to write” a new and specific form of communication in the class, such as a lab report, business memo, or ethnography? Or do you want your assignment to do some of both? Try to be as specific about your goals to your students as possible when thinking about an assignment’s purpose. We encourage you to even jot down some of your desired outcomes. Being detailed about what you want students to gain from completing the assignment will help you create clear instructions for the assignment.

The example below is a strong example of a “writing to learn” assignment. In this assignment the instructor uses words such as "read," “explore,” “shape,” and “reflect” to clearly indicate that the act of composing in this assignment is more about attaining knowledge than it is about the creation of a final product.
From a prompt for a personal narrative in a science writing course:
All scientists have intellectual, cultural, and linguistic histories. For the sake of “neutrality” and “objectivity,” apprentices are often trained to separate themselves from these histories, especially when it comes to conducting and communicating research. This assignment asks you to read examples of scientists’ memoirs in various genres and then you will compose your own narrative in the mode of your choice, exploring how your identities, investments, and intellectual interests have shaped your science training and your trajectory as a scientist. This assignment serves as a form of reflection, orientation to/within a scientific field, and even as a professional credential (if desirable).

3. Tie Assignment Goals to Course Goals

While you know why you are assigning a particular writing assignment, your students may not. Being clear about how completing the writing assignment will help achieve larger course goal can help create expectations and motivation for students. So, just as it’s important to explicitly define the assignment-specific goals as described in the previous strategy, it’s also important to situate the assignment within the larger context of the course.

The example below is drawn from the final paper assignment for a course called “Imagining and Dreaming: Indigenous Futures,” taught by Lydia Heberling. In this assignment, the instructor not only clearly shows students how the assignment aligns with the course content, but it also reminds students how the third section of the course builds upon content learned in earlier units.
Throughout the quarter we have examined various writing practices that affirm the ongoing existence of American Indian peoples in spite of settler colonial attempts to remove, erase, and eradicate them. In our first sequence, we reflected on the relationship between place and identity and learned from Momaday that the land possesses stories from the past that can be accessed through interaction with and memories of those places.
In our second sequence, we examined a contemporary activist moment to deepen our understanding of the ongoing relational formations between Indigenous peoples and how those relations revitalize cultures from the brink of extinction. In learning about how various tribes worked together to protect a valuable natural resource by employing media and storytelling practices to garner support and attention, we learned that regardless of the outcome, activist moments like Standing Rock demonstrate a strong trans-Indigenous community that continues to survive in spite of ongoing settler colonial tactics of dispossession and erasure.
In this third, and last sequence, we are focusing on imagining, or dreaming about, vibrant Indigenous futures. Athabascan poet and scholar (and UW professor) Dian Million defines dreaming the following way [. . .]
Your task in this next assignment is to return to the place you described in Paper 1, imagine what that place looks like 100 years from now. . .
Here’s a second example of a writing assignment, created by Jen Malone for a course on writing in environmental science, which clearly demonstrates to students how the writing assignment both builds on previous course content and how it will help students cultivate research skills that they will be able to use in future writing assignments. Note, too, how explicit Jen is about what she means by “research.”
Thus far in this class, we’ve written an Op-Ed about ecotourism, and we will be moving into writing a short research paper on the topic of your choice later on in the quarter. But first, we’re going to do something a bit different.
Learning to research well is largely about practice—both in terms of growing accustomed to search engines (particularly scholarly ones) and library databases, and in terms of learning to plug different versions of your research terms into these search engines/databases until you find useful sources. Using research well is largely about figuring out how to analyze your sources--particularly in combination with one another, as a body of research. In order to practice both of these skills (which will totally help us to prepare for Paper #3, later on in the quarter), for Paper #2 we will. . .

4. Create Antiracist Writing Assignments

Equitable writing instruction is often discussed in terms of pedagogical approaches (especially with respect to grading), but it should be considered earlier than that, particularly in curriculum and class culture. In this section we will focus on how assignment design can support these aims. According to Kyoko Kishimoto (2018), anti-racist teaching includes both incorporating topics of race and justice into course content (what you teach), and adopting teaching approaches that advance equity, access, inclusion, and justice (how you teach). Some brief suggestions for each follow.

Incorporating topics of race and justice into curriculum

Take a step back and discuss knowledge frameworks in your course and in your field. Every discipline has knowledge traditions and methods that can be problematic. How did these traditions come to be? Who do they serve, and who do they harm? For example, in a course that requires research introduce citation justice as a topic and share histories of citation practices in your field.
Avoid reductionist binaries when discussing complex questions. For example, framing a question like "What are the pros and cons of conducting medical research without subjects' knowledge or consent?" may lead students to consider both sides as having equal moral weight. A more specific (so a particular context can be considered) and open-ended (so students are not led to one or the other answer) question might work better. For example, "What are some of the ethical considerations of conducting flu vaccine clinical trials without participants' consent?"
Give students opportunities to explore their own identities in relation to the course content. Drawing personal connections not only helps foster deeper learning, but it can also cultivate a student’s sense of belonging in the field. It may also help you see how your field might serve some but not others.
Encourage students to engage academic and non-academic source material. Have discussions about what “counts” as authoritative information in your field, and why.
Invite students to constructively critique your reading lists. What are other authors or ideas you might have included? Crowd-sourcing content like this will help you find source material that better represents your students’ identities and interests; it also positions them as authoritative contributors to a body of knowledge. You may discover texts you want to assign in future courses!

Adopting teaching approaches that advance equity, access, inclusion, and justice

Acknowledge and validate students’ identities and social positions, lean in to the complexities of identity, and bring these to the fore during class discussions and out-of-class assignments. For example, discuss issues like ethics, consent, privacy, and power during a research project.
De-center your own authority by involving students in the creation of class materials. Invite students to annotate or suggest revisions to the course syllabus; co-create assessment criteria (more on this below); let students choose their own topics related to the course curriculum; create AI committee (learn more in the module on academic integrity). These approaches not only help deconstruct hierarchies but also encourage students to become agents of their own learning.
Encourage students to use their own linguistic traditions whenever possible. For example, let students freewrite in a native language or dialect. Encourage them to draw connections between their own language backgrounds and the disciplinary discourse you are teaching. This is called translanguaging, and it can be a powerful tool for learning.
Avoid penalizing language use. This is not the same thing as ignoring all language use (a common misconception)! In fact, style, vocabulary, and syntax of course are inseparable from content, and should be discussed. However, invite your students to think of language use rhetorically. Instead of saying “always use passive voice in lab reports,” try, “In what ways does authorial voice matter in lab reports?”
Use assignment-specific, higher order criteria for assessing student writing. Responding to and assigning grades on these criteria and these criteria alone will help mitigate unconscious bias against students. You might even take your assessment practices a step further by implementing self-assessment or ungrading approaches.

Further reading: 10 Ways to Tackle Linguistic Bias in Our Classrooms (Inside HigherEd)

5. Offer Clear Instructions for Completion

Investigative or writing techniques that seem obvious to you—such as making an argument, analyzing, evaluating—might mean something different to students, especially if they are from outside your specific discipline. Being clear about what you mean when you use certain terms can help students navigate an assignment more successfully. While it might feel clunky or obvious to you, including this information in assignment descriptions will help steer your students in the right direction and minimize miscommunication.

Consider asking your students to “user test” your assignment materials, too, both before and after they complete the assignment. Their feedback will really help! Here are a couple examples of assignment excerpts with clear instructions and definitions.

In the following excerpt from a prompt for a writing-in-history course taught by Sumyat Thu, the instructor asks students to use research in their papers, and then clearly describes, and supports with examples from the class and library resources, what counts as appropriate source material.
This essay is based on research. Students are expected to use primary sources and secondary works in developing their essays. We do not frown on the use of on-line resources; indeed, some very good reference works (identified on the history librarian Ms. Mudrock's research guide) are available as on-line books, and the library has e-book versions of Paul Spickard's Almost All Aliens. Nonetheless, we strongly urge students to utilize the very rich materials available in the UW Libraries, particularly scholarly books and articles. The UW Libraries' on-line catalog can be explored with keyword searches, and such indexes as America: History and Life (again, see Ms. Mudrock’s website) are very helpful as well.
In this second example, again by Jen Malone, we see how the instructor not only indicates what chronological steps students must take to complete the assignment, but also how she includes thorough and clear instructions for how students can complete each step.
So, the first step you’ll need to take will be to choose a topic. You may wish to choose the same topic you’ll be using for your research paper in ENVIR 100 (if you’ve chosen that option—if so, please follow any instructions they’ve given you for choosing a topic for that), or something related to environmental science that simply interests you, or a topic from the following list of suggestions:
- GMOs (particularly with regards to the ecosystem and/or biodiversity),
- The environmental impact of meat production
- Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder
- ...etc.
The second step you’ll need to take will be to do the research—you’ll need to find some sources (via library search engines, Google scholar, etc.). Keep some notes or a log of this process, since you’ll have to talk about how this went for you in your final report. Then you’ll need to read/skim the sources you’ve selected, and then you’ll need to create an annotated bibliography in which you list and briefly summarize those sources. An annotated bibliography is a particularly handy step when performing research, or when writing a paper that involves research. Basically, it is a list of the sources you intend to use for your paper (like a Works Cited page, you may use either MLA or APA format), but with the addition of a substantial paragraph (or two, if you wish) beneath each entry in which you summarize, and often evaluate, the source. This will help you to consider the sources you find as a body of research, and this makes using sources easier because you’ll have these initial notes handy as you write your report.
After you find and skim through your sources, the third step you’ll need to take will be to write the report.
- In the first section of the report, you’ll want to talk about your research process (What was this like? What was easy for you and what was difficult? What did you learn? What search terms did you use? How did those terms change?).
- In the second section of the report, you’ll want to talk about the body of research as a whole (How would you describe the issues/terms/debates surrounding the topic? What did you find? What do these sources indicate—both in terms of conclusions drawn and questions raised? How do these sources fit together and/or differ? What did you find most interesting?)
- In the third section of the report, you’ll want to take a moment to consider how this body of research fits it with what you’re learning in ENVIR 100 and where you might take the topic in a future paper (How do you see what you found regarding this topic as relating to what has been discussed in class thus far? What are the stakes of this topic and for whom? What aspects of this topic do we seem to know little about? What are the questions you still have about this topic? And, finally, now that you’ve read through this body of research, if you were going to write a paper on this topic, what might your basic argument be?). We’ll discuss this all in more detail next week, after you’ve compiled your sources.

Note: the second example may be a lot longer of a writing prompt than many of us are used to. This is not a bad thing. In fact, students tend to really appreciate such clear instruction and it reduces the amount of time you will spend clarifying confusion about what is expected. Also, instructions like these can be easily re-purposed for other, similar assignments in the future so you will not have to reinvent the wheel each time.

6. Clarify Expectations About Genre, Audience, and Formatting

Students will approach your writing assignment with varying amounts of knowledge and experience; you cannot make assumptions about what they already know (even if you have beliefs about what they should know). While detailed, explicit prompts are essential, we also strongly urge you to discuss in class the genre you are assigning as well. Offer examples, both from professionals in the field, and from former students. The more exposure students have to the kinds of writing you want to see, the more accessible your assignments will be. We know of a history TA who said that one of her students, an engineering major, wasn't clear on the nature of a historiography, so he turned in his paper formatted like a technical report! This is an understandable mistake for a student to make, and providing examples can prevent mistakes like this from happening in your own classroom.

Below are two examples of how instructors communicate their expectations about genre, audience, and formatting to students. The first example is less helpful for students because it leaves key parts of the instructor’s expectations vague. (What is the writing assignment’s audience? What citation style does the instructor prefer? Is the works cited page part of the assignment or not?) The second example provides more detail for students.

Paper must be 4-5 pages double spaced and must include a works cited page.
The business memo should be formatted according to the parameters we have discussed in class: no more than two pages long, typed, single-spaced with one space between paragraphs, with standard margins, in Times New Roman font (12 point), written for an audience of industry professionals. It should contain some combination of the following elements, depending on your context:
- Header
- Introduction
- Context/Background
- Body/Details
- Action/Conclusion

7. Provide Examples of the Kinds of Writing You Assign

Studies have shown that examples can be a powerful learning tool in writing instruction. We recommend that instructors distribute examples of both successful and unsuccessful student writing to their students and explain why the examples are successful or unsuccessful. Some tips for providing examples follow below.

Tips:

Ask students who have submitted successful assignments if you can borrow their work as examples for future classes. Be sure to remove students’ identifying information from the assignments before they are given to future students.
If you do not have examples of unsuccessful writing (remember, sharing even anonymized student writing without the author's consent would be unethical), you can alternatively create a list of common pitfalls and mistakes to avoid when completing the writing assignment. Distribute the list to your students. Be sure to ground these pitfalls in terms of higher order issues specific to this genre, rather than just distributing a one-size-fits-all personal list of writing pet peeves.
Ask students which examples help them learn the genre, and which do not. Over time your students will help you curate a really great collection of samples.
Create occasional reading assignments where you ask students to find and analyze examples of writing by professionals in the field. What makes them effective or ineffective examples of the genre? What are some of the text's defining characteristics? These kinds of analyses can really help students improve their own writing.

- Ask students who have submitted successful assignments if you can borrow their work as examples for future classes. Be sure to remove students’ identifying information from the assignments before sharing with future students.
- If you do not have examples of unsuccessful writing (remember, sharing even anonymized student writing without the author's consent would be unethical), you can alternatively create a list of common pitfalls and mistakes to avoid when completing the writing assignment. Distribute the list to your students. Be sure to ground these pitfalls in terms of higher order issues specific to this genre, rather than just distributing a one-size-fits-all personal list of writing pet peeves.
- Ask students which examples help them learn the genre, and which do not. Over time your students will help you curate a really great collection of samples.
- Create occasional reading assignments where you ask students to find and analyze examples of writing by professionals in the field. What makes them effective or ineffective examples of the genre? What are some of the text's defining characteristics? These kinds of analyses can really help students improve their own writing.

8. Assess Your Own Work

Assessment is not just for student writing: it’s also important to assess the efficacy of the assignments you create. If student work is disappointing or students have struggled with an assignment, it is most likely a result of ineffective assignment design. Please remember: everyone, even seasoned writing instructors, has assignments that do not go well initially. That is normal and ok!

We recommend that you engage in self-reflection as to why your assignment did not turn out well, and make tweaks to the assignment and/or grading criteria as needed. Here are some self-reflection questions and strategies for getting feedback on your assignments.

Did many students turn in work which did not meet your expectations? In what specific ways did they fall short?

Did many students struggle with the assignment or a particular piece of the assignment? Where, exactly, did they struggle and how do you know?

Were many students surprised or dissatisfied by their grades on the assignment? Why do you think this happened?

Ask your students, either in class, on Canvas, or in a survey like a Google Form, to debrief the assignment. What was easy for them about the assignment? What did they learn from it? What was challenging? What was unclear?

Take writing assignments to writing centers such as OWRC or CLUE to get student feedback on updated or streamlined assignments. Student writing tutors can be a great resource-- they've seen hundreds of writing assignments!