Student assignment choice can be a powerful tool for increasing learner agency, encouraging divergent thinking, and cultivating resilience. With these traits becoming increasingly salient for students entering the workforce, one way to support students in this development is through the projects and assignments given in a course. In this article, we will discuss learner agency, as well as some practical ways to implement student choice in your course.
Albert Bandura, whose seminal works on social cognitive theory and self-efficacy, said that “agency embodies the endowments, belief systems, self-regulatory capabilities and distributed structures and functions” through the four modes of intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness. This can manifest in our courses as students taking control of their learning, going beyond the minimum requirements of a given task, or with eager participation in groups. Students that have a higher amount of agency have better learning outcomes and exhibit higher levels of critical thinking skills than their peers (Stenalt & Lassesen).
One of the ways we can empower this student agency is by providing options to students in assignment and project selection. By giving students the choice of topics, modalities, or mediums of their assignments, this changes the learning process from instructor control to student focus. This choice empowers students to actively own their learning journey by engaging with topics or modalities that interest or excite them. Granting students the opportunity to explore alternative methods of arriving at a given learning outcome allows them to express their culture or identity, develop an authorial voice, and discover novel ways of expressing ideas.
These choices need not to come at the expense of rigor. As with any assignment or project, well-defined learning objectives can narrow the possibilities for student choice to a handful of modalities or topics. Rubric design can also play a large role in determining where students can exercise their choices. Rubrics can be created in Canvas and distributed to students before they make choices about their work. Defining what constitutes a fulfilled objective with language that is agnostic towards modality will give students a framework to work under. For example, an objective such as “construct a piece that reflects on the impact of hegemony on marginalized communities” with rubric criteria that values how well the project engages with the objective would work for a paper, video essay, or photo essay. Students completing that assignment would be charged with finding a way to fulfill the objectives while also engaging with the material in a way they choose. For a further examination of how this can work in practice, we would encourage you to watch our faculty spotlight on Dr. Fabian Pfeffer in Sociology.
Providing support to students during these projects is crucial, and LSA Technology Services can help. Scaffolding assignments can help keep students from straying too far from the learning objectives. Regular check-ins, topic proposals or outlines, and in-class working sessions can be a way to aid students with the process while maintaining a student-centered approach. Students who may need audio-visual equipment to create their assignments can utilize LSA Technology Services’ multiple equipment loan centers and media rooms for collaborative editing. Our BlueCorps service provides walk-in technical and computer support for students as well as tutoring for media creation tools. For assistance with course design, scaffolding assignments, or with building rubrics in Canvas, schedule a consultation with the LSA Learning and Teaching Consultants. We are always happy to help!
References:
Hartnett, Maggie, et al. “Enhanced or diminished attitudes: University Students’ Agency.” Computers & Education, vol. 198, June 2023, p. 104773, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2023.104773.
Fei Victor Lim & Thi Thu Ha Nguyen (2023) ‘If you have the freedom, you don’t need to even think hard’ – considerations in designing for student agency through digital multimodal composing in the language classroom, Language and Education, 37:4, 409-427, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2022.2107875.
MacNaul, Hannah, et al. “Effect of assignment choice on student academic performance in an online class.” Behavior Analysis in Practice, vol. 14, no. 4, 26 Feb. 2021, pp. 1074–1078, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-021-00566-8.
Maria Hvid Stenalt & Berit Lassesen (2022) Does student agency benefit student learning? A systematic review of higher education research, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 47:5, 653-669, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2021.1967874.
