Writing Assignment Templates

SW template: Short Writing Assignment: Topic here.

• Stage 1: Please write an 500 word maximum answer to the following question by TBD, 11:59pm.

• Topic:

• Advice about collaboration: I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes and readings, and your own notes. Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. It's a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. Put a word count in the file.
2. In Word, check "File" and "Options" to make sure your name does not appear as author. You may want to change this to "anon" for this document.
3. Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font, using normal margins.
4. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "FILENAME HERE".
5. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Points dropbox.

• Stage 2: Please evaluate four student answers and provide brief comments and a score. Review the Assignment Rubric for this exercise. We will be using all four areas of the rubric for this assignment. We will tie specific elements of the prompt to the content assessment, so be sure to consider that in composing your answer! Complete your evaluations and scoring by TBD, 11:59pm.

• Use [this Google Form] to evaluate four peer papers. The papers will be on the Sharepoint site under Student Writing.
• To determine the papers you need to peer review, I will send you a key with saint names in alphabetically order, along with animal names. You will find your saint name, look to the right for your animal name, and review the next four (4) animals' work in the list, going to the top of the list if necessary.
• Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go ahead and review enough papers to get to four reviews. This assures that you will get enough "back evaluations" of your work to get a good average for your peer review credit. (You will also have an opportunity to challenge a back evaluation score of your reviewing that is out of line with the others.)

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, I will give you the higher of the two grades.

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [google form]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. You will receive 5 points for doing your back evaluations and up to 5 points, from the backevaluation score (averaged and divided by 2).

• Back evaluations are due TBD, 11:59pm.