Alternatives to Traditional Essays

The "students as producers" approach to assignments design encourages students to tackle open-ended problems, to operate with a high degree of autonomy, and to share their work with wider audiences.

The unessay is an assignment popular in history and related fields that asks students to complete a creative project instead of writing a paper.

Paul Hanstedt argues that courses can and should be designed to present students with “wicked problems” because the skills of dealing with such knotty problems are what will best prepare them for life after college.

It's traditional to ask humanities students to represent their learning through essays, but essays need not be the only tool in our toolboxes. This teaching guide outlines a variety of activities and assignments for making student learning visible in the humanities.

This blog post walks through the details of multiple iterations of a podcast assignment in which students were asked to create 10-12-minute audio stories about codes and ciphers from history.