For Instructors

Course Learning Objectives describe what students can expect to engage with during the course. Learning Objectives should highlight the unique pathways students will take in your course to reach desired Learning Outcomes.

Utica College maintains a useful resource about Bloom's verbs instructors can use to more precisely craft Learning Objectives.

Eli Review provides a helpful page about the Describe-Evaluate-Suggest feedback pattern.

Artist, choreographer, and educator Liz Lerman has developed a Critical Response Process for "giving and getting feedback on work in progress, designed to leave the maker eager and motivated to get back to work." Special thanks to Jennie McStotts, Associate Professor of Practice in the Honors College, for this link.  

The University of Arizona provides a useful video about popular vs. scholarly articles. The library also provides several additional tutorials related to the research process, including discovering, evaluating, and properly citing sources.

The Office of Instruction and Assessment (OIA) has published a Teaching Models website to help instructors design courses in different modalities.

The UArizona Writing & Learning Project hosts a useful resource for Guiding Peer Review.

In addition to this local resource, Colorado State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have published useful resources about conducting successful peer review.

A Signature Assignment is an assignment that demonstrates at least one key learning outcome from a Gen Ed Refresh course. These assignments emphasize students’ meaning-making and connect their learning to perspective-taking and interdisciplinary thinking. These assignments will also be included in the learning ePortfolio.

The Assignment Database hosted by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) provides a list of assignments that have undergone a three-step review process. The assignments are organized by discipline, assignment characteristics, degree levels, and Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP) proficiencies.

Deep Dive Signature Assignments: A collaboration between OIA and the Office of General Education at UArizona where instructors present on their assignments.

"Learning Outcomes and Backwards Design" OIA Mini-Primer

Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) 

"Will Students Actually Want To Do This Assignment?" Article from The Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Writing Resources below align with the vision of best writing practices in the new General Education curriculum, which include (but are not limited to): teaching writing as a process in course activities and assignments; identifying previous writing experiences and transfer writing practices to different genres of writing across academic disciplines; and defining various disciplinary or field-specific writing expectations. 

An example of a grid that demonstrates a course meets the 60% threshold of writing assignments. Thanks to Samantha Orchard, Associate Professor of Practice, School of Plant Sciences, for this example.

Learn more about how Writing-to-Learn can be a great strategy to have students discover new connections and deepen their understanding of concepts while also actively engaged as writers.

Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" is a short chapter about the writing process that emphasizes the important role that even poor first attempts at an assignment can play in an ultimately successful piece of writing.

For instructors interested in Science Writing and its evolving place in Writing Studies, Lisa Emerson's book The Forgotten Tribe: Scientists as Writers (available as an open-source text) details the substantial presence of writing in the scientific process and scientific education.