Fostering Student Resilience through Syllabus Design

It is important to develop clear learning objectives for each assignment; when students can understand why they are being asked to develop a certain assignment, they will be more effective at linking course concepts and ideas to that assignment. This can help make assignments feel less overwhelming to students, supporting their resilience as they navigate difficult semesters balancing work, home, social, familial, financial and/or educational responsibilities.

Some strategies for increasing assignment clarity are:

• Deploy active and descriptive terms (adjectives and verbs) in your assignment description
  • For instance, instead of writing, “Write 5 pages on x topic,” you might write, “Write a 5-page research paper on the implications of x topic for the field of y,” or “Write an annotated bibliography on x topic in preparation for your final paper,” or “Develop a 10-minute oral presentation on the history of x, as it relates to Unit I of the course,” etc.
• Situate the assignment within the larger scope of your course
  • You might begin an assignment description with a brief contextualization, such as: “In Unit I of this course, we covered Canadian women’s literature of the 1960s and ‘70s, and its themes of intergenerational relationality, the domestic, rural life, and the pressures of motherhood. Your Unit I paper should address these concerns by mounting an argument for the relationship between gender and space in one novel covered in class…”
• Describe the learning objectives of this assignment. What do you hope students will learn/take away from completing this assignment?
• Outline integral components of the assignment
  • For instance:
    • Specify whether a written paper must have a thesis
    • Explain whether an exam can be written in point-form, or must be in complete sentences
    • Clarify which citation style is mandatory, how many source
    •  
  • Develop a rubric explaining your expectations for an A-, B-, C-, and D-level submission, using clear, active, and descriptive language
  • Include sample papers, if possible, at both an A and B level
  • Address the assignment in class
    • Give yourself time at the start or end of a lecture/discussion period to address any questions or concerns students might have about the assignment

For more information on assignment clarity, visit the TATP’s Toolkit Resource, “Writing Assignments,” Queens University’s module, “Making Assessment Criteria Clear to Students,” and Conestoga College’s article on “Creating Clarity in Assignment Descriptions.

Before moving on… Find an assignment description and/or rubric from a course you’ve previously taught, and/or from a course you’ve recently taken. Circle any language that seems vague or unclear to you. Underline language that seems clear and specific. How might you improve this assignment description and/or rubric to make it clearer for students? What are the learning objectives set out here? What questions could you anticipate a student asking about this assignment?

Scaffolding is another key technique for supporting student resilience. Scaffolding assignments entails breaking down learning outcomes and assessment expectations into manageable bits. It can also be referred to as chunking.

For instance, if you’re assigning a Final Research Paper for your course, you might break that down into multiple, smaller assignment submissions, such as: an Annotated Bibliography, Final Paper Proposal, and/or Thesis Statement Exercise. If your final assignment for your course is a Final Exam, you might scaffold that assignment around Weekly Online Quizzes, a Midterm Exam, and/or Reading Responses.

Scaffolding allows you to ensure that students are not falling behind on course materials. It also allows you, as the instructor, to identify and aid students who do seem to be struggling with course materials, before they hand in a heavily weighted final assignment that will greatly affect their final grades.

Scaffolding also incorporates processual feedback into the assignment submission process. For instance, if you assign a Final Paper Proposal ahead of a Final Paper deadline, students will be sure to receive feedback on their initial ideas, arguments, and sources; they can then incorporate that feedback into their Final Paper submission. For this reason, scaffolding can often facilitate greater improvements for students.

For more on scaffolding assignments, see TATP’s Toolkit Resource, “Scaffolding and Student Supports.”

In other words, feedback is crucial to scaffolding assignments. Providing effective feedback over multiple steps of a student’s journey from initial ideas to final draft promotes student resiliency by highlighting process and improvement over mastery.

But how do we promote student resiliency through written feedback? Read on to consider a few ways that written feedback can actually support resiliency in student learning.

As previously mentioned in this resource, the idea of providing written feedback and grades on student assignments seems at odds with resilient pedagogy. However, by reflecting on how and why you give written feedback to students can create feedback styles that support, rather than compromise, resilience.

Pause here, and ask yourself: Why do I give students feedback? What am I hoping they learn from my feedback?

Some common answers might be: to help them improve their grades in the future; to encourage them to continue developing certain skills (critical reasoning, rhetoric, writing with personal voice, analysis, etc.); to highlight areas for improvement; and to motivate students to reflect on their own learning processes.

All these reasons are in support of resilient pedagogy. We provide feedback so that students understand how to improve on certain skills, and so that students understand that everyone has room for improvement. We also provide written feedback to teach students how to receive critiques.

However, it is important to structure the form and style of our feedback, so that students understand that: a) feedback is not a personal attack; b) instructors want to see their students succeed; and c) feedback is not meant to paralyze or halt their progress, but motivate and support it.

To develop these effective feedback structures, you can use the following strategies:

1. Explain clearly and concisely why the student received the grade they did
   1. If a student sees “Good job!” or “This could be better,” in their assignment feedback without much contextualization of explanation, it might leave them unsure of how they can improve. Make sure to explain why the student received a high or low grade.
2. Offer suggestions for revisions
   1. Instead of marking moments that “don’t work” in a student exam or essay, you can highlight strategies for improvement. For instance, instead of writing “this thesis is unsupported,” you might write, “This thesis could use additional quotes or citations from x and y sources to bolster its claims.”
3. Highlight campus resources for assignment help as next steps
   1. Sometimes, course instructors cannot follow a student’s progress as closely as they would like to, given contract limitations. If a student is struggling with course materials, and that struggle is reflected in their grades, you can include resources in your assignment feedback that might help them improve. For instance, if a student is really struggling to structure their essays, you might direct them to a Writing Centre. If a student is having trouble finding appropriate scholarly sources, you might direct them to a University of Toronto Library or the Ask a Librarian chat service.
4. Focus on the work, not the student
   1. When providing written feedback, make sure not to use personal language. For instance, instead of saying, “Your argument feels unsupported at times,” you can write, “This essay’s argument could be better supported.” This helps to separate the student from their work, subtly reminding them that personal feedback is not a personal attack, and that their personal value is not represented by their grades.
5. Think of yourself as a coach
   1. Just as the coach of a sports team uses a mix of constructive criticism and positive reinforcement to hone their players’ skills and confidence, you should think of your written feedback as a way of boosting students’ motivations to improve. Even if a student has not completed an assignment successfully, resulting in a lower grade, try to frame your feedback as coming from someone who is rooting for that student.

Read the following feedback comments and reflect on how they do or do not promote student resilience:

• “Too vague!”
• “This assignment demonstrates a sincere engagement with the text—I really enjoyed reading it! I do think the thesis statement here could be better supported, using 1-2 more sources/more quotations and citations to bolster its claims.”
• “I can tell you wrote this in 15 minutes.”
• “Very nice!”
• “This submission is a huge improvement from the final paper proposal. I’m delighted to see it! It’s clear that my previous feedback was taken seriously and incorporated into this final draft. This essay reads clearly and argumentatively, uses appropriate sources throughout to bolster its claims, and is logically structured to flow from one key idea to the next.”

For more on providing feedback, see TATP’s Toolkit Resource, “Giving Feedback on Written Work” and the University of British Columbia’s presentation, “Providing Effective Feedback on Writing Assignments.”

In resilient syllabus design, you can include an “Assessment Feedback” statement that explains your approach to grading, to set clear expectations for students. An example might be:

This course focuses on written essay assignments. We will be scaffolding from short reading responses up to a final, engaged research essay. In my feedback across the semester, I will be looking for: a) an ability to take and apply my own feedback, demonstrating a desire to improve; b) unique perspectives and arguments; c) a sincere effort to support argumentation with clear, well-researched, appropriate evidence; and d) a personal voice. Please see the detailed rubrics on each Quercus assignment submission portal for more details.

Resilient pedagogy can be practiced by encouraging students to reflect on and develop their own models of (self-)assessment. This can take the form of asking students to reflect on their performance on recent essays, exams, etc. with worksheets called “assignment wrappers.” For more on assignment wrappers, visit Carnegie Mellon University’s “Exam Wrappers” page.

In this resource, we are going to think about how self-assessment can be used to promote participation, a mode of assessment that often requires student resilience. Due to a global pandemic, increasing mental health concerns, and rising costs of living, students in recent years have struggled to attend and participate in class. How might we, as instructors, promote resilience by encouraging and motivating participation?

Here are some strategies for using self-assessment to promote participation:

• Co-Creation of Participation Criteria:
  • At the start of the semester, you can have a roundtable discussion with your students (or send out a survey) about potential issues around attending class. This is not to say that participation in class should not be taken seriously. Rather, this provides an opportunity for the students to come together and mutually decide on fair and equitable expectations around participation. This can also highlight any barriers to access/participation that some students might be experiencing, allowing you to reflect on alternative modes of participation.
  • For instance, you might ask your students the following questions, collect their responses, and then develop a participation rubric based on their time constraints:
    • How many classes per semester do you feel are fair to miss? What is the limit of missed classes without receiving a penalty?
    • How many classes per semester do you feel should be attended to receive an A grade in participation?
    • Are there types of participation assessments you would like to see in this course, aside from in-class verbal contributions? (e.g., written responses on Quercus, office hour visits, small group work in class, etc.)
    • Are there any forms of participation you feel are not accessible to you?
    • If you miss a class, how do you feel is a fair way to make up that participation mark?
  • Self-Assessment Reports
    • At the midpoint of your course, you can send out a survey to all students, asking them to reflect on what they think their current participation mark should be, based on their contributions thus far.
    • Some questions you can consider asking are:
      • I had read all the assigned works carefully before I came. (Yes/No, feel free to expand)
      • Out of all the class seminars so far, I attended _____sessions.
      • Did you contribute to class discussion each class? If so, how many times did you generally contribute?
      • My goal was to contribute effectively to the high quality of the groups discussion and learning rather than just to demonstrate my own excellence. As in team sports, I played for the well-being of the team. (Yes/No, feel free to expand)
      • Source: ANT441 Student Self-Report on Class Participation

The goal here is not to allow students excuses not to participate. Rather, by asking students to self-reflect on their own levels of participation, and ideas of fairness and equity around participation, instructors motivate students to engage in self-directed learning, take seriously questions of academic integrity, and reclaim ownership over their own path through higher education.

Research shows that, often, students are harsher toward themselves than their instructors, demonstrating that self-assessments can provide moments for instructors to discuss pressures of perfectionism placed on students today.

In short, developing participation assessment criteria through student self-assessments and class co-creations of rubrics, guidelines, etc. builds classroom community and generates a sense of responsibility among students for their own success. This can build resilience by showing students that:

1. a) Participation criteria do not have to be opaque;
2. b) Participation grades can be improved even after the midpoint of a semester; and
3. c) Participation in class can be achieved in a variety of ways (verbal contributions, office hour visits, written responses, etc.).

For more on self-assessments, visit Cornell University’s article on “Self-Assessment” techniques.

Our final strategy here for supporting student resilience via assessments is to institute flexibility around late marks.

Over the past few years, professors and CIs have noticed an increasing demand for extensions from students. Some instructors have opted to do away with deadlines altogether, only to find that this led to student opt-out and disengagement.

However, using flexibility within structure to develop late mark policies in your course can be a way to avoid student burnout and mental health issues, while ensuring they stay engaged with and on track to complete the course.

Here are a few strategies for instituting late marks that take on this flexibility within structure concept. You can include any of these policies on your syllabus, to again promote resiliency through pedagogical transparency:  

• Grace Periods: You might consider instituting a grace period of 48-72 hours after an assignment deadline. Students can submit during this period without having to email you for an extension, thereby reducing your own administrative labour, while ensuring students can take a bit more time if necessary.
• Rolling Deadlines: You can have students decide their own deadlines, based on their own schedules. Students can sign up using a collaborative calendar, so that they don’t need to email you directly. You can institute these rolling deadlines within a certain period (e.g., Paper #1 can be due between February 1^st and February 14^th). That way, you can still plan your grading around these self-imposed deadlines.
• Maximum Late Penalties: You can signal to students that their late penalties will not rise above a certain percentage. For instance, you might tell them that you will not take off more than 10% of their grade. This clarifies expectations, and lets students know that their grade will not be hugely affected, incentivizing them to finish the assignment.
• Extension Deadlines: Let students know that if they ask for an extension at least one week before a deadline, you will grant it immediately. This motivates students to reflect on their time management well ahead of a deadline, and consider what extra supports they might need.

It is often more satisfying for an instructor to accept a late, well-written and well-researched paper than an on-time, rushed, and unsuccessful paper. When considering your late mark policies, try to remember that students are navigating a lot of overwhelming, competing demands on their time. Instituting grace periods, rolling deadlines, maximum late penalties, and/or extension deadlines can be a great way to support student resilience while maintaining the integrity of student assessments.

For more on Techniques for Assessments, see the TATP’s Toolkit Resources on “Assessments.”

All these techniques listed above help build relationships and trust with your students, encouraging them to work through adversities and setbacks and motivating them to complete their course successfully. Student resiliency can be promoted through assessment and syllabus design, rather than in spite of it.