But what if we assign it so that it helps students learn and saves all of us time?
I think we all agree that it’s important for students to “do the reading” in our classes. For many of us, the academic literature is where the conversation is, and where we learn about new ways of thinking and doing and being in our scientific communities. And, therefore, when we teach, we want to pull students into this core component of the academic world, whether directly with peer-reviewed articles or with texts that compile or complement that literature.
But I long struggled to help my students really engage with and learn from my reading assignments, and I struggled to find a way to foster this engagement and learning without overburdening my students’ (and my) already time-constrained schedules. However, through trial and error (and some helpful technology!) I’ve finally found an approach to reading assignments that helps students learn, makes student learning transparent, and respects everyone’s time.
Here’s how my assignments have changed over time, and why!
How I assigned readings, in the beginning:
Assignments:
I listed reading assignments in the syllabus. Sometimes I told students to read before class, sometimes after. Sometimes, I would provide a reading guide or reading questions, but not always.
This approach to reading assignments works for any course modality.
Student learning:
You all know how this traditional reading assignment approach works. Some students do the reading, some don’t. Some students who “do the reading” magically figure out what I want them to get out of it; many students don’t know why they are reading and get little out of it.
Student time:
Most students quite reasonably strategically prioritize their time: if they’ve got a lot going on, a reading assignment without clear requirements falls to the bottom of the priority list. When students do this reading assignment, there’s also nothing to ensure that they are using their time effectively to get something useful out of the readings. Reading guides can obviously help, but students are largely on their own to try to sort out whether they actually approached the reading correctly.
My ability to see student learning and understanding:
It’s quite difficult for me to see student learning in real time with this approach. I can definitely see what a handful of students are getting from the readings, if they come talk to me one-on-one, or if they speak up in class. But other students’ learning is a mystery until it’s largely too late (i.e. when they eventually turn in assignments). This means I often have to guess what students might have understood or not from the readings, and what would be helpful to go over more in class. Sometimes I guess right, sometimes I guess wrong!
My time:
This is the easiest approach for me, time-wise. Reading guides or questions can take a while to write up, but once they are written, they can be reused forever. And, there’s nothing at all for me to assess or grade about the reading assignment itself. That said, I usually need to spend more time assessing and providing feedback on other assignments because students missed key parts of readings (“Make sure to read Ali & Zhi 2015 to help you with this concept!!”). And I spend a lot more of my time feeling frustrated about the whole process!
Verdict: 🙃🥱🤨
This traditional approach leads to all the traditional frustrations for everyone. I’m frustrated that “my students don’t do the reading!”. My students are frustrated that they’re assigned a ton of reading, but it’s not obvious when or why they need it. Student learning is hit or miss, largely based on whether students have been lucky enough to gain the hidden-curriculum skills of figuring out “what the instructor probably wants me to get out of this reading.” And there is very little immediate feedback for me to find out what students are learning or not as the class progresses, so I’m playing a guessing game to help students learn.
How I tried to “incentivize” reading, but increased the burden on everyone, without really improving student learning:
Assignments:
In addition to listing reading assignments in the syllabus, I linked each reading assignment (or set of reading assignments, for the class or week) to a graded assignment. Over several years, I have tried a number of approaches to incentivize reading, including in-class reading quizzes, online (Canvas) reading quizzes, reading questions asked in class, and reading journals. The exact structure of each of these is different (i.e. multiple-choice vs. open-ended questions or prompts; participation credit vs. letter grades), but the basic idea is that they were required assignments for students that were graded by me.
Some of these approaches require in-person or synchronous class time, other approaches work in any course modality.
Student learning:
These approaches definitely incentivize students to try to do the reading, at the very least with a graded assignment in mind. Knowing that there is going to be a quiz absolutely gives students a reason to do the reading. But after trying these approaches, I’m not convinced that they all consistently help students learn from the readings, and they definitely add enormously to student stress (which is not helpful for learning). Narrow multiple choice questions can feel like arbitrary “gotchas” when students who did do the reading still didn’t guess which question I would ask, and they don’t necessarily help students remember concepts later. Reading journals actually seemed to be the most effective for learning, but they are really really dependent on how good the prompt is. In other words, the benefits for student learning are pretty varied here.
Student time:
These approaches do incentivize reading, but if students have constrained schedules (which is true for nearly everyone!), then the extra assignments also effectively reduce the time students have for just reading (since there is extra work to do on top of the reading) or for learning in class (if they take up class time). For many reading assignments, this ends up making students feel like they are doing a lot of busy work just to prove to me that they did the reading. Extra assignments that aren’t directly and concretely linked into broader class assignments or projects just end up as extra work.
My ability to see student learning and understanding:
Adding assignments to readings does make certain kinds of student learning and understanding more visible, but not necessarily the kinds of learning and understanding I wanted to see. For example, multiple-choice questions can help me see student learning on narrow aspects of a reading (vocabulary, concepts, etc.), but don’t give me much insight into broader engagement. In-class discussions about readings help students learn from each other about the readings (which is a definite benefit compared to quizzes and individual reading journals), but I usually only hear from a small subset of students. Reading journals can be very effective for engaging students with the reading, and for helping me see their engagement and understanding (though it very much depends on the quality of the prompt!). But all of these approaches still left me somewhat unsatisfied, because I realized that what I really wanted was to understand how students engaged with and understood the readings themselves, and these are all at least one step removed.
My time:
These approaches almost all added a lot of extra work for me, not least because I needed to individually assess each student’s quiz, or reading journal, or class participation, and then add it all into the gradebook. In-person quizzes require the additional work of photocopying before class, and the time grading after class; online Canvas quizzes take zero time to grade (as long as there are no open-ended questions) but they are often tedious to set up! And quizzes make any time I spend giving feedback feel kind of fruitless, because there isn’t much reason for students to look at it. It takes a fair amount of time to check if students have done reading journal entries, and while I would have liked to provide each student with a direct response to each reading journal (making it a conversation, and ensuring that students received useful feedback), responding thoughtfully in writing to each student on each journal takes an enormous amount of time. And as for asking students questions in class, I admit it’s not always easy (for me) to engage in conversations with the class while also taking good notes on who is participating (and looking like you’re grading their every utterance is not the best way to foster open discussion, as it turns out).
The take-away for me with all of these approaches was that I felt like I had taken on a higher administrative burden for the class, but that the extra work was not really benefiting my students’ learning or reading. And I was busy locating and assessing assignments, and entering grades, instead of engaging with my students.
Verdict: 😱😱😱
These approaches definitely incentivize student reading, but they add to everyone’s work loads and stress levels without fully addressing the core need: helping students engage with and learn from the reading, and helping me help students engage with and learn from the reading. All of this extra work would be fine, if I felt like students were really learning because of it. But it was frustrating to have given myself (and my students) a lot of extra work without it necessarily having a big impact on learning and reading engagement.
For me, the costs to students and to myself were much too high for the more limited benefits to student reading and learning. I wanted to find an approach that let me use my time engaging directly with students, rather than just counting and checking off reading assignments.
How I assign reading now, both improving student learning and reducing the burdens on everyone:
Assignment:
Students complete reading assignments (and watch video assignments) using online social annotation tools integrated into Canvas. I ask students to make a specific number of annotations/comments on each reading assignment (usually depending on the length of the readings and the amount of time I want them to spend on it), with a specific task in mind for their annotations/comments. Some assignments focus on a single text, while some assignments span multiple texts; other assignments give students a choice of text. Annotation tasks might include identifying and explaining key concepts, applying course concepts, raising questions about the material, explaining which elements of the reading they found most compelling and why, or discussing with their colleagues through their annotations. I tailor these annotation tasks to the type of reading assignment (background information, introductory texts, in-depth texts, case studies, etc.). When students complete the assignment (reading + annotation task), they submit a “declaration quiz” through Canvas, attesting that they have fully completed the assignment, and they immediately earn full credit for doing it.
While students complete these assignments online, I use them for all my classes regardless of modality.
Student learning:
Students learn by reading and thinking, which is what the goal of reading assignments has been all along! By giving students specific annotation tasks, I help guide students to approach the readings in effective and strategic ways. And since they are completing those specific tasks as they read, they stay focused on those reading and thinking goals.
The additional (and enormous) benefit here is that students not only see their own learning when they annotate, but they also see what every other student in the class is learning and understanding from the readings. By reading together, through shared annotations, students can build a shared understanding of the course readings. And they do it, in the moment, while they are engaged with the reading. At the same time, all annotations are visible throughout the class, so when students go back to a reading (when preparing written assignments, for example) they can immediately see what they and other students were thinking when they read it.
This has an extra bonus of strengthening the classroom community, which is especially helpful for online classes, but can be helpful for in person classes as well (especially if your students don’t have a lot of opportunities to talk to each other in class). As one of my students noted: “I’ve had a great time learning from our readings and discussing the readings [online] with my classmates.” Another added: “When I read my colleague’s viewpoint about the texts we read in Perusall, everyone brings a perspective, and the discussions get exciting.”
I should also note that since these reading assignments are completion based (i.e. students receive full credit if they complete the reading and the specified number & type of annotations), students are able to focus on the reading itself and the task at hand, and have the space to really engage with the reading where they are – to grapple with what they do and do not understand – without stressing about it.
Student time:
The time it takes to complete these assignments is the time it takes to read and engage with the assignments, plus a teensy bit more to write their thoughts down in annotations as they go, and a teensy bit more to submit their attestation that they’ve completed the assignment. What this means is that students put all of their work into the core academic tasks that I want them to focus on: reading and thinking. As one of my students wrote: “Considering that this course was reading intensive, I did not feel like reading was a burden.”
My ability to see student learning and understanding:
This approach really shines here. I can see, directly, what students are learning and understanding about the reading itself. I can see what each individual student was thinking while they were reading. But I can also see the patterns of student comments across the entire reading, giving me a real window into where students were confused, concepts we might need to revisit or spend more time with, etc. More importantly, I can see all of the fabulous thoughts and insights that our students have as they read. Since I started doing this, I have been absolutely delighted to see how deeply our students think about their courses. They make connections between the readings, and a course more broadly, and their other courses, and the world beyond UM-Dearborn. I can see their “a-ha” moments as they read, and where they change their minds, or where they build their arguments. All of this was hidden from me when students just read on their own, and only shared their thoughts in the narrowly-structured confines of exams or quizzes, or even reading journals.
My time:
With this approach, the bulk of my time is spent reading and responding to student annotations. I highlight student annotations that are exactly on point and that catch the key elements of the readings that I hoped students would notice. I answer questions students ask about the readings and the material. I clarify misunderstandings and misconceptions. And I encourage students to dig deeper on their annotations, or focus more clearly on the annotation tasks at hand. All of these responses are visible to the student I am directly responding to, but they are also visible to every other student. This means my feedback and comments can be helpful to every student.
Since students use “declaration quizzes” to attest that they have completed the assignments, I don’t need to spend a lot of time counting up annotations, making decisions about whether the assignment has been completed or not, and then entering the points (making inevitable mistakes along the way). Instead, students let me know they’ve completed the work, and they immediately earn credit for the assignment in the Canvas gradebook. I can see if students have declared their work complete, and I can see their work when I am reading through and engaging with the annotations. Since each student’s work is fully visible, I can quickly see if a student incorrectly declared that the work was done. And I can easily let the student know what they need to do to complete the work (i.e. “This annotation assignment asked you to apply this course concept to the reading; your annotations are more focused on your personal reaction to the reading. Can you redo your annotations following the assignment prompt?”). In my experience, it only takes one or two comments like these for students to fully complete the reading assignments for the rest of the semester.
In other words, instead of my time going towards counting and accounting in the gradebook, my time goes towards fostering student learning, helping students engage with the reading, and providing helpful feedback to improve future assignments. It’s still work, but it’s better work. And it’s more in line with my teaching goals and student learning goals.
Verdict: 😎🤓😊
One of my students stated: “I’ll say that some of my favorite assignments were the [reading assignments].” And I agree. I like assigning reading, now. With this approach, my students “do the reading.” Students have the opportunity to learn from each other, and get more out of the reading. Student time goes towards actually reading. And it’s less stressful for students than unexpected quiz questions. I can see immediately and clearly what my students get out of the reading. And my time goes towards engaging with students on that reading. This approach has been an unequivocal win, in my opinion. And it’s an approach that I will continue using into the future.
How you can try this approach, too:
For more on how to set up reading assignments using social annotation, check out Alfonso Sintjago’s Hub blog post on “Increasing Student Engagement with Social Annotation,” and enroll in the associated self-paced Canvas workshop, linked at the bottom of that post.
For more on how to set up “declaration quizzes” in Canvas for these assignments, check out Laura Gibbs’ “Canvas Tips: Gradebook Declarations” blog post that explains how she pairs a clear objective checklist for each assignment with a single “true-false” question in a Canvas quiz, to allow students to formally declare that they have fully completed an assignment.