We all do it. The semester is drawing to a close, the students are tired, we’re tired. There’s one more assignment to hand out, that major project that’s supposed to somehow capture from the entirety of students’ learning from the past semester. Back in week 1, we had some glorious ideas for that assignment, but now that it’s week 11? Not so much.
So the next day in class, we hand out what I’ve come to call The Generic Paper. Or The Generic Oral Presentation. Or The Generic Poster Presentation. You get the point. The genre and medium may change, but the prompt always begins the same way: “Choose a topic that interests you.”
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Great article. Thanks, Paul. The issues you raise are multiplied in much of the Majority World, where students are completely lost in vague general choice, and more directive approaches to learning tasks are imperative. Having taught for over 20 years in Syria and Lebanon I came to realise that the following led to much more satisfying results: very detailed and clear instructions in the syllabus, often with a variety of feed-forward samples of what good work might look like; one-on-one discussion with students about potential topics and strategies; time in class for students to discuss with their peers what they were doing; and a clear checklist cum rubric of what I was looking for. Some of these would probably be beneficial in “Western” contexts as well.