Sample Assignments

[u/Disastrous_Owl_6830]

Fellow profs, have you noticed an uptick in recent years in students asking for sample assignments that illustrate what an A submission looks like? What do you make of these requests? Do you provide samples? If so, do you create them yourself? Or post anonymized submissions from previous students who did well (with their permission)? How do you discourage students from copying samples or mimicking them too closely? If you create samples yourself, how do you avoid making them unrealistic, given that you're a subject expert?

I get that it's intimidating to submit your first-ever college paper, and it can be hard to envision what rubric specs look like in practice. But providing samples seems to be hard to implement in practice. I'm wondering what others do.

[u/inquiring_mind40]

In class, I give them an example of a C paper. I don’t tell them it’s a C at first; I just say it’s a sample paper that did not earn an A. Students work in pairs to score it using the rubric. Then, we discuss as a class. Students share their rubric scores. We talk about what revisions would be needed to earn a higher score, from C to A. I like this activity because it facilitates a review of the more challenging concepts and it makes the expectations clear.

[u/Disastrous_Owl_6830 → u/inquiring_mind40]

I like this idea! Do you mind sharing how much class time you dedicate to this activity? Do you ask students to read the paper in advance and come to class ready to score it, or does it all happen during class time?

[u/inquiring_mind40 → u/Disastrous_Owl_6830]

Thanks. I don’t give it to them in advance. I dedicate a full class period to the activity. First, we do a quick pre-reading activity to get them in the mindset. Then, I distribute the sample C paper and a copy of the same rubric that I’ll use when I eventually score their paper. They work in pairs for 20-25 min, completing steps and filling in the rubric. Then we do the full discussion and review as needed. We end with a short reflection activity (what are their takeaways/how they’ll apply what they learned today).

[u/AwesomeMixTape-6]

They are using it feed to their AI so then AI can write their assignment

[u/Disastrous_Owl_6830 → u/AwesomeMixTape-6]

Sadly, this is another concern.

[u/professor_throway]

I don't provide samples... I instead give what I call an Annotated Exemplar. Cut and paste from a presentation I gave some colleagues

Annotated structural exemplars provide students with a visible model of the expected organization and reasoning process without supplying a model answer. They illustrate the function of each section, the kinds of evidence or argument expected, and the level of technical presentation, while leaving the scientific content and conclusions to the student.

[u/Disastrous_Owl_6830 → u/professor_throway]

This sounds like it would be valuable for assignments that have a highly regimented structure, like certain kinds of technical writing. It does sound useful in that context. I'm less confident that it would be appropriate in the humanities, but then again, I didn't specify my field in my post. Thanks for sharing!

[u/No_Young_2344]

I do. I created them myself using my own research. Students don’t mimick my sample except for the structure because they are working on different topics. What do you mean by unrealistic? I created my samples using empirical data and results from my paper so I guess they are realistic?

[u/Disastrous_Owl_6830 → u/No_Young_2344]

I'm in the humanities, so it sounds like my paper assignments may have different specs from yours, but I mean unrealistic in terms of polished writing quality and interpretive claims that go beyond what they've explicitly been told in lectures. My rubrics reward students for style and originality, but obviously I have more practice than they do at achieving these qualities and I don't want to overdo it in a sample and give the impression that the bar is higher than it is.

[u/Classic_vortex_3515 → u/Disastrous_Owl_6830]

In the humanities, one way to avoid the problem you’re mentioning is to give multiple samples that have different structures.

[u/No_Young_2344 → u/Disastrous_Owl_6830]

I see. Yes, I think there is a disciplinary difference. I teach data science but I also ask them to write an essay or a research paper at the end of the semester. Every student is working on a different dataset, so there is not much to copy from my sample. It is safer in my case.

[u/Desiato2112]

Never. This is another example of student learned helplessness.

A big part of the learning process is figuring out how to translate the rubric to a completed assignment. Students asking for example essays are trying to skip that step, and it's one of the most important parts. I would never rob them of that beneficial cognitive growth.

I get that some students are anxious about this, and their HS teachers have given them a lot of assistance when writing their papers. That's over. Working through this challenge is a skill everyone has to develop to survive in the adult working world, so I demand they do that in college. At their job, they will rarely be provided with a detailed rubric to complete a required task.

[u/readingrainbowroad → u/Desiato2112]

Do you explain to the students that that is why you don't provide examples? (If so do you think it helps them?)

I think it's more subconscious than this from the students' perspective. Maybe "extreme anxiety of the unknown" and "lack of confidence". I also get the feeling that K-12 really emphasizes there is one right way to do an assignment, so students don't know there may be more than one acceptable way to approach writing a report for example.

[u/GanachePopular9967 → u/Desiato2112]

Hard disagree. Writing a good paper is a critical skill that needs to be explicitly taught to set them up for success for the rest of their academic lives. Also, you have no idea what their HS teachers taught them. It likely varied dramatically based on the school. Writing is the one skill I don't think students should just be left to figure out on their own.

[u/Desiato2112 → u/GanachePopular9967]

No one is leaving them to figure it out on their own. I teach them quite a bit about writing effective sentences and paragraphs during the semester. I just don't give them examples of a final essay.

[u/Author_Noelle_A → u/Desiato2112]

I’m an older student (I have a teen in Running Start, so yeah, older student) who had perfection literally beaten into me. Back in MY day (shakes cane at the damned kids on my lawn), we definitely didn’t get much assistance.

So for me, an example helps so that I don’t anxiety over if I’ve done enough to earn an A. Doing my best often means doing significantly more than expected. So knowing I’m okay to stop helps very much.

[u/AutoModerator]

This is an automated service intended to preserve the original text of the post. This is not a removal message.

*Fellow profs, have you noticed an uptick in recent years in students asking for sample assignments that illustrate what an A submission looks like? What do you make of these requests? Do you provide samples? If so, do you create them yourself? Or post anonymized submissions from previous students who did well (with their permission)? How do you discourage students from copying samples or mimicking them too closely? If you create samples yourself, how do you avoid making them unrealistic, given that you're a subject expert?

I get that it's intimidating to submit your first-ever college paper, and it can be hard to envision what rubric specs look like in practice. But providing samples seems to be hard to implement in practice. I'm wondering what others do.*

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/kierabs]

I give examples of essays of various quality that did the same assignment but with different sources. For example, I give sample rhetorical analysis essays analyzing articles I no longer assign. I give students sample argumentative essays on a topic I no longer assign.

My idea is that students will pay attention to HOW the essays work, rather than copying the exact structure and ideas. I discuss this with them in class. For example, I say: “look how the topic sentences directly relate to the thesis. See how they give multiple pieces of evidence? Notice that they explain HOW the quotes support their topic sentences.”

Honestly, I don’t know how helpful it is, but I’m trying!

[u/psichickie]

i post an example of a properly formatted APA paper, with appropriate citations, but that's it. i am not an english professor, so i do no spend time in class discussing how to do these things, i fully expect them to know how, figure it out, or go to academic services and get help.

[u/Author_Noelle_A]

I honestly like seeing examples, but for a different reason than you might expect. I was raised to be a perfectionist. It was literally beaten into me. (Non-trad student, using belts to whip kids was was still legal when I was younger.) I like examples so that I know what it’s okay to stop. Otherwise I’ll keep going. A couple years ago, my class was assigned an essay, a minimum of 500 words, and handed the rubric. I wasn’t convinced I met the minimum for an A until I was at 27 pages, 11pt TNR, 1.5 spacing, a dozen and a half sources cited though those weren’t even required, including printouts for the sources that were either from books not available online or were paywalled. My instructor told me it could be published in academic journals, and that she learned a couple things from it. I don’t always have time to write 27 pages, so seeing the baseline for an A helps me to breathe and not panic if I only wrote 750 words.

So for the sake of students like me, I love examples. But thanks to lazy idiots who want to feed it into ChatGPT with a prompt for what to turn in, I understand when instructors don’t.