Pay It Forward Assignments

Today we have a guest post from Loleen Berdahl, Professor and Head of Political Studies, University of Saskatchewan. She can be reached at Loleen [dot] berdahl [at] usask [dot] ca.

I am very excited to road test a new ‘Pay It Forward Assignment’ (PIFA) in my classes this fall. The PIFA requires students to create something that will help a student in the same class in subsequent years. It is inspired by David Wiley’s argument in favour of non-disposable assignments. My hope is that this assignment will inspire students to approach the material with creativity, and draw upon their own interests and personal strengths while they engage with class material. Ideally, the assignment will create a library of resources for future classes that can grow over time.

Here are the assignment’s instructions for students:

Have you ever mastered a topic and wanted to share what you have learned with other students? Have you ever wanted to demonstrate your mastery of a topic in a creative manner, rather than the usual format? Have you ever spent a tremendous amount of time on a class assignment and been disappointed to know that the only person who would read it was your professor? If so, the Pay It Forward Assignment (PIFA) is going to be fun and interesting activity for you.

The PIFA is an assignment that a student creates to share with future students. A great way to select the topic for your PIFA is to find something that you initially found difficult in the course. Once you have a good grasp of the topic, create a resource of some sort to help others. Some possibilities for your PIFA:

• Graphic novella: create a graphic short story that explains a key idea.
• Mind-map: construct a mind-map for a specific topic or a core idea.
• Power-point slide deck: create a short series of lecture slides that teach a major point of a lesson.
• News story video: present a key idea from a lesson as if it were a breaking story for a television news program.
• Audio: create a short podcast that provides a tutorial on a key idea in a lesson, or that connects a key idea to a current issue in public debate.
• Photo essay: use a photo or series of photos to illustrate a key idea in a lesson, and then use short amounts of text to explain how the photos illustrate the idea.
• Checklist: create a critical reading checklist for students to use when assessing a research study, news story, etc., for trustworthiness. Go through an actual article and apply the checklist to demonstrate how it works.
• Learning activity: outline a new learning activity for a lesson.
• Lesson table summary: construct a summary table of the lesson’s key points and terms.
• Linking our class material to another class: using text, audio, or video, explain how something from this class relates to something you learned in another class.
• Relating lessons summary: using text, audio, or video, explain how the material in a particular lesson relates to the lesson that came immediately before it.
• Social media activity: create a tweet-thread explaining a core concept covered in a lesson.