12 Aligning an assignment with your learning goals
Introduction
In the last chapter, we talked about video projects that have been incorporated in Dr. Li’s courses, including the weekly peer-reviewed presentations or midterm video submissions in the form of critical analysis. Those assignments naturally have technology components, as it involves video productions and evaluation. This time, we want to introduce the final project, as it’s the main assessment of cultural courses (CHIN/WCL 3342 Tales of East Asian Cities and CHIN/WCL 3343 Chinese Popular Culture). We will first introduce the traditional way of the final project and a new format used in the Fall 2022 semester.
In the previous semesters, students have been given a choice to do one of three assignments as their final project (25% of the final grade):
1. Fan Fiction (Take one of the stories of the films we’ve watched, either write a story assuming an alternative plot, different ending, different characters, etc…or write a creative ending connecting to the original story). 2000 to 3000 words.
2. Critical Essay on one of the topics covered in this class. Students are encouraged to develop their midterm project for the final project. However, they must make substantial improvement, such as adding in depth analysis of the artist/movie/TV show/novel, or add another for comparison, and utilizing external sources. 2000-3000 words.
3. Make a film. Students are encouraged to make a short film, but the multimedia project must include at least 800 words written analysis in addition to the audio/visual components. (15 mins film minimum).
The most popular choice students opt to do it the Fan Fiction assignment, which is interesting to read as well. Some reflect that writing a fan fiction made them engage with the original materials, and some realize their creative talents while doing this assignment. This creative assignment, though different from the traditional critical essay (as in option 2), aligns with the course objectives. In order to write a good fan fiction of some of the materials we’ve covered, they’d have to comprehend the material they pick thoroughly, then they would have to identify the major writing/shooting style and learn to imitate it. Their writing should demonstrate their writing, reading, and learning skills gained from this class.
Here’s the rubric made for this particular assignment:
Starting from the fall semester of 2022, collaborating with the wonderful two OER librarians in UH Library, Ariana Santiago and Katherine M. Carter, the assignments have incorporated Open Educational Textbook projects. Dr. Li has been a strong advocate for OER student-authored publications because she wants to feature the fantastic student research and assignments they’ve done. Also, just like this book demonstrates, open access publishing can be more accessible to the public than traditional publishing. We have then created a couple student-authored OER textbooks throughout 2022 Fall semester and 2023 Spring semester.
Here is one book written by CHIN/WCL 3342 Tales of East Asian Cities students. We’ve learned a lot throughout this process, the good and the bad. However, in general, this project can make students can engage students’ learning, research and writing abilities, as it:
- Helps students more engaged with the process of learning, reading and writing because of the nature of open access publications and the visibility of their work.
- Gets students to think more deeply about the work they are doing and the information they are engaged with.
- Enhances student-student and student-professor collaboration as students works in groups in these OER projects.
- Helps the class to form an academic community and also get themselves in conversation with other academic
This course, “CHIN/WCL 3342: Tales of East Asian Cities,” already has a good structure for a book. The course contents are divided into six major cities in East Asia, including Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, and Seoul, with the course covering a new city every two weeks. The OER project replaced the previous assignment, which is the biggest assessment for the class. The course contents have determined the OER book format easily: the chapters are named after the cities, and each chapter includes an introduction of the city coauthored by the group, as well as their individual sections that involve critical analysis of the literature and films of that city. The weekly contents were redesigned toward this goal. In the beginning of the semester, students sign up for each city and are grouped according to the cities. Students of each city present on the history, tourist attractions, and other media information related to the city every two weeks. Every couple of weeks, students learn about OER knowledge and concepts, and work on creating the OER book in Pressbooks with OER librarians Ariana and Kate. We were hoping through this project for students to not only obtain the critical analytical skills but also learn about e-publishing, Pressbooks, and copyright. Most importantly, through this project, they have learned to work with each other as a group and as a class, which they did not get to do as much during the pandemic.
We are excited to see the final product and are very proud of it. First of all, even though some students found the assignment confusing in the beginning, as it’s the first time we are trying this out, in the end, everyone followed the format and chapter guidelines nicely. Second, many of the students’ works are amazing, not only exposing the readers to the new media and literature that are worth reading and watching, but also demonstrating interesting, in-depth discussions. Third, the book has shown students’ intense interest in the subjects they pick, as well as the group work and self-learning they have put in. It really looks good as a student-authored e-book. This will inspire other educators and students to adapt the model and produce more e-books. Meanwhile, this OER publishing format allows us to share works faster and more conveniently than the traditional form, enabling many more to benefit from this work.
Media Attributions
- fan fiction rubric © Melody Yunzi Li adapted by Melody Yunzi Li is licensed under a CC BY-NC (Attribution NonCommercial) license
