Annotating an Example Assignment
Overview
Students review an assignment example that the instructor has annotated to highlight its strengths.
Why Use This?
Giving students an example of a successfully completed assignment provides them with quick feedback they can apply to their own work (in this course, students were asked to write an author’s note to accompany an essay). By annotating an example, instructors can also provide more detailed guidance and emphasize rubrics or other grading criteria.
How Does It Work?
The instructor annotates an example for students to review before beginning the assignment. In this course, the example is based on an author’s note written by a previous student. Note: If you want to reuse student work in a course, you must get permission from the student.
Open accessible text version of previous image
Screenshot of Sample Author’s Note Proposal
This image shows a Word document with instructor comments in the right margin.
Paragraph 1
I started my research process by coming up with a topic that was important to my work. As a nurse, I see a lot of patients who have to deal with end-of-life care issues, and I wanted to find a research question that would be related to that topic. I looked at a few articles online to find a good question and to find articles that would work for the proposal and the next few assessments. Once I found a debatable topic and located the required sources, I wrote a draft of my proposal.
Margin comment [g1]: Here the writer explains their process for developing the proposal.
Paragraph 2
When I sent my draft into the OWL, I got a lot of feedback about my citations and then some questions about my proposal that helped me realize I hadn’t explained my ideas enough for non-nurse readers. I fixed those points, and then after I reviewed the sample student essay, I realized that I had forgotten to include all of the required elements, so I added a list of my key challenges. I edited for grammar and spelling before I got it ready for the submission.
Margin comment [g2]: Remember to explain how you’ve revised and responded to feedback.
Paragraph 3
I do think that my topic has multiple perspectives, and I believe that I’ve explained the arguments of relevant and appropriate sources. I’ve tried to fix all the citation issues, and I hope I did, but I’m still learning some of the formatting ins-and-outs.
Margin comment [g3]: Your self-assessment of your work should include references to the competencies associated with the assessment.
Keep In Mind
- Highlight common mistakes or parts of the assignment that are frequently left out to remind students to complete them.
- Emphasize how the example student work translated the criteria for success.