Introduction
Some years ago I made an empirical investigation on assignments and two-way communication. The research report had this short and simple title: Postal Contacts and Some Other Means of Two-Way Communication: Practices and Opinions at a Number of European Correspondence Schools.
Among many other things, I asked representatives of correspondence schools which were members of the two associations at that time—the European Home Study Council, and the European Council for Education by Correspondence—as well as the British Open University, about their overall attitude to assignments. The question was worded: 'What do you think about the following statement: Assignments for submission constitute an important element in correspondence courses?' 31 out of 34 schools answered 'strongly agree' and the remaining three schools 'agree'. Obviously, assignments were regarded as important.
Several schools commented on their answers. A few of them tended to moderate the statement to some extent, by relating the importance of assignments to subject, type of course, and tutor. The remaining comments, however, emphasised the importance. One school even wrote:
The flow of assignments between student and tutor constitutes the major teaching element in home study courses.
Three schools asserted that the submission of work for correction is a decisive criterion of correspondence education. One of them wrote:
To our mind assignments for submission are an essential element-otherwise it is not correspondence education, but something else.
I believe that many of us—perhaps most of us—would tend to agree with this statement. Without assignments to be sent in, no correspondence education, or distance education, at all.
I am not completely sure of that, however. In a comment one of the responding schools suggested:
What is of vital importance is two-way communication. The normal form is at present submission of and answers on assignments.
This is a very good distinction, I think. Without two-way communication at a distance, no distance education. Such two-way communication can be maintained without assignments to be sent in. The tutor may contact the students by telephone, the students may send in questions to the tutor, tutor and students may have a seminar at a distance, throughout the course, by means of computer communication—a so-called computer conference—or they may meet at a distance in one or more video conferences. All these are characterised by contacts at a distance-that is, two-way communication or even multi-way communication-and should therefore be regarded as distance education, whether there are any assignments or not in the courses.
Nevertheless, in most types of distance education assignments of various kinds constitute not only an important, but an essential component. It is therefore quite relevant to look into this component more closely. Here are a number of important questions: for what purpose do we design assignments? What types of assignment should we use? In order to answer this latter question we have to examine the goals and objectives of our courses. We must also be aware of the fact that there can be objectives at various levels, and that consequently, there should also be assignments at various levels. Finally: what amount of assignment tasks should we provide?
Purposes of Assignments in Distance Education
So, when we use assignments in distance education—and we most often do, after all—why do we do so?
The basic aim of questions, exercises, tasks, assignments—whatever we call them—in all forms of education and training should of course be to promote students' learning. This is obvious—or should at least be so.
But in what ways can assignments promote distance students' learning? I think we may consider quite a number of subordinated and otherwise related purposes.
From the students' point of view we can see purposes directly related to learning, as well as motivational and social purposes. In addition, from the organiser's point of view we might find evaluation purposes, both formative and summative, of students as well as of courses. In this context I will, however, confine myself to the student-related purposes.
Directly related to learning is the students' opportunity to apply what they have learnt to new and perhaps more comprehensive tasks. There is of course also the opportunity to obtain feedback from the tutor, and to get help when needed-not only corrections, but also explanations of misunderstandings, remedial teaching of various kinds, as well as comments aimed at reinforcing and deepening what the student has learnt.
In some investigations, students have pointed out assignments as a component in distance education with a particularly high motivational value. Assignments can stimulate students' motivation in at least three ways:
- Assignments serve as part goals on the way towards the completion of the whole course. It is in itself rewarding to have reached so far—to have finished a study unit, with a satisfactory result.
- Assignments can also be highly stimulating in themselves—if they are well designed. They may provide something of an intellectual challenge, they may stimulate students' creativity, or they may present interesting cases from realistic settings, with concrete problems to be solved.
- In addition, assignments provide the student with opportunities to get encouragement and praise for good work from his or her tutor—a motivational factor, the importance of which should certainly not be overlooked.
Closely related to these three motivational factors is what we could call a social factor. Assignments can promote a student's learning indirectly, due to the fact that he or she—through the assignments—get in contact (although at a distance) with a tutor, that is with a human being, not only with the course material. For quite a number of students this may be of great importance in order to counteract possible feelings of loneliness and isolation in their study situation. Of course, this implies that the tutor is really a human being, a human being with empathy and a genuine interest for other people, and not just a cold, exclusively subject-oriented person.
The Relationship Between Assignments and Objectives
In order really to promote students' learning in an appropriate way, we have to design our assignments in accordance with the goals of the course and the learning objectives of each study unit. There should always be 'a straight line' between the goals and the assignments, through the learning material.
So, we should make clear to ourselves, as well as to our students, as distinctly as possible, the goals and the objectives of learning. Then we have to teach according to the objectives. And the assignments must also reflect the same objectives. Otherwise they will not be of any real use to the students.
When planning the assignments we must consider that learning objectives may vary with regard to level. We can for instance make use of Benjamin Bloom's well-known taxonomy, or classification, of cognitive learning objectives. (The word 'cognitive' is here used as a contrast to attitudinal and psychomotor objectives, which can also be classified in a similar manner. In other words, cognitive objectives deal with various levels of knowledge.)
Bloom's classification has six major levels:
6 Evaluation
5 Synthesis
4 Analysis
3 Application
2 Comprehension
1 'Knowledge'
From below up to the highest level we have first what is here called 'knowledge', which means nothing more than the ability to reproduce various kinds of information: facts, rules, etc. Then we reach the level of comprehension, that is, the ability to show that you have really understood what you have learnt, for instance by giving explanations or relating various facts to each other, or facts to rules.
The third level is application, the ability to apply what you have learnt to new examples or situations. Each higher step requires that you have mastered the previous steps. So when we reach analysis, synthesis and, finally, evaluation, we master all the possible steps in the learning process up to the highest level of knowledge.
In all forms of education, but especially in distance education, we must be most careful when planning our assignments in accordance with the objectives. We have to be aware that assignments which look very good, assignments which seem to be at a very high level, may actually test knowledge only at the lowest level—and perhaps not even that!
Let me explain by means of an example. Here is an assignment task:
Compare Plato's and Aristotle's thinking with regard to
a. ontology
b. ethics, and
c. political philosophy.
Also try to assess Plato's and Aristotle's respective influence, in the above-mentioned areas, on later European thinking.
This looks like a rather difficult task, doesn't it? I would regard it to be at the analysis level, with an additional component of evaluation.
However, imagine that the students have already found this comparison between Plato and Aristotle in their learning material, and also an assessment of their influence on later thinking. If so, they have only to remember what they have read and to reproduce it. In that case, the assignment task is certainly not at the analysis and evaluation levels, but instead at the lowest level: 'knowledge', which means the ability to remember and reproduce information.
Or even worse. In distance education, students can of course always have their course material available when they prepare their assignments. If it is possible to find the answer to a question more or less directly in the material, such a task doesn't even require any knowledge at all, but only the ability to find the right section in the material and to copy it correctly.
So we see that we must really be aware that we secure the appropriate level of our assignments.
Different Types of Assignments
When planning our assignments we have a great many different types to choose between. In case we want to decide about the assignments completely ourselves, we can first distinguish between subjective and objective type tasks.
By subjective, or open, tasks we mean tasks which require that the students construct the answers themselves, in their own words, numbers, etc. A major form of subjective tasks is the easy question, where the student has to demonstrate knowledge and insights by means of fairly extensive writing, from one to several pages. An especially interesting variation of the essay question is tasks which require the student to make an own investigation, an experiment or some practical work and to report the plan and the procedure as well as the results to the tutor.
Other forms of subjective tasks are the short-answer question and the short-answer question and the problem-solving task of the type which is very often used in mathematics and the natural sciences.
By objective tasks is meant questions which require the student to choose, in one way or another, between suggestions given. One major and most useful form is the multiple-choice question, where the designer provides a number of possible answers between which the student has to choose.
We may for instance describe a case which indicates certain neurotic symptoms in a person's behaviour. Then we ask what kind of neurosis the patient is suffering from, and provide a number of possible answers, like this:
-
a. phobia
b. compulsion neurosis
c. hypochondria
d. general anguish neurosis
e. conversion hysteria.
With the same case as starting point, we could also provide multiple-choice questions on the possible cause of the neurosis, possible ways of treatment, and so on.
Other forms of objective tasks are matching questions, sequencing tasks and true-false questions. In a matching question we give the students two series of items, for instance a number of terms or concepts in one of the series, and a number of explanations or definitions in the other series. Then we ask the students quite simply to connect each item in one of the series with an item in the other series.
In a sequencing task the student is given a number of events in a randomised order, for instance a series of technical manipulations which must be performed in a correct order to attain a certain effect—or to avoid, let us say, an explosion. The student's task is of course to reorder the events.
The true-false question consists, as a rule, of a statement, and the student's task is to indicate whether the statement is true or false.
It is, however, not necessary that we decide about the assignments completely ourselves. At least if we have subjective tasks we could very well allow the students to choose between alternative tasks. Sometimes the students could even design their own tasks. It may also be wise always to include what I call 'reverse tasks', that is giving the students an opportunity to ask their tutor questions not only about possible problems and learning difficulties, but also about matters which they are particularly interested in. As an extreme, a complete assignment for a whole study unit could perhaps consists of nothing more than 'reverse' questions of this kind.
Now, which type or types of assignment tasks should we choose? There is no straightforward answer to that question. Firstly, we have to consider for what purposes we want to use the assignments, and what learning goals and objectives we have in each specific course. Secondly—and certainly not of least importance—we must realise that, to a most considerable extent, the usefulness of an assignment task does not depend so much on what type we choose, but rather on how well designed the task is. Maybe with one exception: true-false questions. I am rather sceptical of that kind of task. True-false questions are hardly very stimulating in themselves, and they do not provide any particularly good opportunities for establishing contact with another human being. In addition, it is hardly possible to test higher-level objectives (application, analysis, etc.) by means of true-false questions.
With this single exception, however, I think that we may use assignment tasks of all kinds to fulfil various purposes and to test objectives at most learning levels. What I am trying to say is that, for instance, a small number of carefully designed multiple-choice questions can be of much greater use than an extensive but badly designed essay task.
Fairly often, I think, we allocate much too sparse resources for the planning and designing of assignment tasks. It is certainly no easy job to make good assignments. This work should therefore be allowed to require substantial time and money. After all, assignments constitute a really essential element in most of our courses.
What Amount of Assignment Tasks Should We Provide?
Well, let us now imagine that we have designed assignments which fulfil all reasonable purposes and are quite relevant to the learning goals and objectives of the course. They are also technically well designed: they are unambiguous, they do not offer unintended clues, etc. If so, they could obviously support our students substantially in their learning process.
Please notice that I said could. As a matter of fact, they might instead be an obstacle to our students and a disadvantage to ourselves, because there is at least one more factor which we have to take into consideration: the amount of assignment work which we require of the students. Too many assignment tasks and—above all—assignment tasks which take too much time, might be a severe obstacle and even cause dropout, no matter how relevant and well designed the assignments are.
We must realise that it is often impossible to provide assignments which cover all learning objectives, or at least all aspects of the learning objectives. We have to make a selection. Regarding those objectives—for which we cannot offer any assignment tasks, we could perhaps instead provide questions and exercises within the study material, with answers or comments there. Such simulated two-way communication is often a most valuable supplement to the real two-way communication at a distance between student and tutor which is made possible by means of the assignments.
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