I recently graded a writing assignment for one of my courses and I’m wondering if it’s an example of “You can lead students to the education but you can’t make them learn.”
The instructions for the assignment:
You have been given the task of submitting a memo to the National Security Council that answers the following question:
- Will Nigeria remain a single state or divide into separate states?
Download the memo template; use it to format your work. Turn the question above into a declarative sentence and use it as the memo’s executive summary. Write two subsections that support your argument using evidence taken from course readings. Each subsection should be a single paragraph. Reference sources with in-text parenthetical citations.
The information above was repeated by the memo template itself and by the rubric attached to the assignment. From my perspective, the assignment is totally straightforward and the assessment criteria are completely transparent. Yet . . .
Several students wrote memos on the question of “Should?” rather than the actual question of “Will?”
Many students also failed the “Turn the question above into a declarative sentence . . .” part. A few representative examples of what they submitted as an executive summary:
- “In the current course, Nigeria will see a deterioration in multiple states because of the lack of agreement over these issues and the failure of the government to uphold a true democracy. Nigeria is a fledgling state on the verge of an inner collapse due to current trends.”
- “The United States should help Nigeria dissolve into multiple sovereign states, by mediating the separation process. Nigeria is currently facing a slew of ethnic and social conflicts the country is made up of 36 states which legally sew divisions between regional outsiders and regional natives, this has sparked ethnic and religious conflicts.”
- “The best path forward for Nigeria is to remain a single state. Splitting the nation up now would only be detrimental to Nigeria’s ability to control its sphere of influence across the African continent. Splitting Nigeria into multiple states would challenge the work that has gone on for years to make it politically equitable and would not account for the vast cultural differences of the nation.”
And so on.
I’m wondering how I should interpret what happened. Is this simply a case of failing to follow directions? If not, I don’t know how I can make things more obvious.
Not enough information is given. Are your students practicing the format prior to the assignment or do you assume that they know what a “declarative sentence” and an “Executive Summary” are? A Memo template is mentioned here, but have they used it in a prior exercise?
Yes — in-class memo-writing exercise led by Writing Center staff prior to the assignment, in which the memo template was used. Template defines purpose and format of the executive summary, and this was discussed in the exercise. The only word not explicitly defined prior to the assignment was “sentence.” Maybe I made a mistake in assuming that college undergraduates know what a sentence is.