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Set Personal Goals for Assignments.png

Set Personal Goals
for Assignments

 10 minutes each assignment 

Set Personal Goals for Assignments - learning mindset tool
How to use the tool?

Let students come up with their own personal goals for each assignment.

Student experience

“It’s nice to focus on how to please myself with assignments rather than only my teacher.”

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Letting students set personal goals for their assignments helps them use these assignments as learning opportunities to practice, instead of just to perform for a grade. It also helps teachers give personalized and effective feedback and gain more insight in the class’s learning needs.
What to Do?

Before setting students off to work on their assignment, have them reflect on the following prompts:

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  1. What is your personal learning goal for this assignment?

  2. What feedback are you looking to get, and from where?

Example:

“In my small-scale (20 students) undergraduate Anthropology seminar, I ask students to set one personal goal for each essay. If it is something I can provide feedback on, I ask them to write their goal on top of the document, and also write a few sentences about how they think they did. In my experience, students really like to bring me into their writing process that way. For me it’s great because I can give feedback that really helps students with their goals. In a larger course (>100 students), I ask students to gather feedback from peers rather than from me, as instructor. This also works well for presentation assignments: students can state their learning goal before the presentation, and ask the audience for (written or spoken) feedback afterwards”.

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