[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOSIAH OSGOOD: So when you're thinking
about what will make an effective assignment,
of course, you want to think carefully
about what it is you're hoping the students will get out
of the assignment and what skills will the students get
out of it and to share that as briefly
and elegantly as possible as you can
with the students in the information you
give them about the assignment.
I think it's important to think about things that went wrong
in previous versions of the assignment and to try--
again, as much as possible-- in the introduction
that you give to the assignment to signal likely problems
or fairly easily avoidable mistakes.
Let's suppose you're going to give a assignment where
students write a paper.
I think it's very important to think carefully
about the questions that you give students.
I teach mostly in the field of history.
And it's very important to try to create questions, especially
for students in more introductory classes
of history, that will allow them to offer analysis rather
than simply just to give a narrative.
So I find, for example, comparative questions
can be very fruitful, to ask students
to compare and contrast two different wars, for example,
and then to explain why events transpire differently
in these wars.
That active comparison forces them, by its very nature,
to be more analytic.