Initial Publication Date: June 15, 2009

Successful Activities & Assignments

Participants at the 2009 Workshop for Early Career Geoscience Faculty developed this list of what makes activities and assignments successful.


Successful activities and assignments:

  • Are relevant to students
  • Reach students who are at different levels
  • Provide opportunities for feedback and possibly improvement
  • Are fun and memorable
  • Fit within a course sequence: build on prior experiences and lead to future ones (scaffolding)
  • Allow students to develop and test their own ideas
  • Stretch students' thinking, allowing them to construct knowledge that is new for them
  • Allow students to apply what they are learning to solve real-world problems, perhaps quantitatively (transfer of learning)
  • Have clear goals
  • Are time-effective
  • Involve discovery: experiential
  • Allow students to think creatively
  • Have students work in small groups
  • Is well-organized, with clear instructions: students know what they are supposed to do
  • Is set up so that assessment is straightforward
  • Allows students to be successful
  • Supporting resources are accessible