Scaffolding assignments - how and why?

Assignment scaffolding is the process of breaking tasks down into smaller steps. It may also involve creating more detailed assessment instructions or rubrics, or splitting a large assignment or exam into smaller assessments.

Why is scaffolding assignments an important part of student learning?

• It helps students master the intended learning outcomes of the assessment by breaking up the cognitive tasks so that they are smaller and more manageable.
• It recognises learning as a process where one skill or achievement is mastered before the next.
• It provides students with greater feedback and intervention opportunities when needed.
• Students can access more frequent feedback as they develop their assessment.
• It may help foster higher levels of critical thinking as students are guided through a series of tasks, starting with more simple tasks that lead to more complex tasks. Without guiding students through these steps, students may not engage with an activity at an anticipated level.

Example scenario: using scaffolding in assignments

Let’s say Tom delivers a subject that asks students to write a 4,000 word final report worth 70% of the final grade. Although students are engaged throughout the subject and appear to understand the content, they seem to struggle when they get to their final report.

What can Tom do?

Tom could scaffold this assignment in several ways.

1. Provide formative activities that further support student learning

Although summative assessments (assessment-of-learning) measure how much students have learned, formative assessments (assessment-for-learning) go beyond this to allow students to learn during the assessment.

Tom’s 4,000 word report could include a number of components. For example, an executive summary, literature review, a critical analysis, a list of references and so on. Formative activities could help students develop the right skills needed for each of these components. Here are a few examples of formative activities that Tom could employ:

Formative activities

• A mind-mapping activity that has students work in pairs during a collaborative session to map out the structure of an argument or report,
• A break-out room activity that has students complete challenges in teams that involve the application of critical thinking skills, such as developing a hypothesis, or critically analysing a position,
• An asynchronous discussion that takes place in an LMS discussion, where students are given a simpler challenge that requires posting and replying to their peers.

2. Break 'high-stakes' summative assessments into several 'low-stakes' assessments

Alternatively, Tom could break his larger assignment into smaller assessments and deliver these across the semester. For example, a 70% report could become a 40% task. This would mean Tom then needs to lower his word count, but this would then be incorporated into the other assessment tasks. The remaining 30% could then be assessed through an alternative assessment that has the dual function of assessing how much students have learnt (e.g. via other formative activities), and prepare them or for the larger assessment.

Let’s take as an example an assignment that asks students to choose their own topic. The first assignment could include a topic selection and justification activity, where the students introduce their chosen topic to their peers, justify it as a suitable topic, and discuss how they will tackle it. To enhance feedback opportunities even further, Tom could include a peer-feedback step, where students read, watch or listen to the submissions made by their peers, and provide feedback as their own submissions are reviewed by their peers.

By replacing a fraction of a high-stakes assessment with a lower-stake assessment, or better yet, several lower-stake assessments, one opens to the door to greater feedback opportunities. This feedback allows students to identify knowledge gaps or skills shortages, as well as promoting meta-cognitive and life-long learning where students can further reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and act upon these for further improvement. Sure, you can achieve this through formative non-graded assessments as well, but by including low-stakes graded assessments in the mix, students may be even more motivated to complete the tasks and reflect upon and renew their approaches as a result of that feedback.

3. Scaffold the task through the instructions

Although a great deal of scaffolding can take place in formative and low-stakes summative assessments, scaffolding can also take place in an assessment brief.  Here, clear and sufficiently detailed instruction should be presented, along with details about how the assessment will be graded, typically by way of a marking rubric. All ambiguity should be cleared, and steps should be logically sequenced and signposted.

Steps to consider when designing an assignment brief:

• Always have the end product in mind and be upfront about what this is so students don’t need to read exhaustive amounts to understand what they need to do.
• Break up the steps using bullet points and sub-headings
• Make sure the title is descriptive and that it matches what you have in your subject handbook
• Be clear about the length required, eg: Word limits, etc.
• Make sure to include a description for every task that is clear and concise regarding what the students have to do
• Ensure the marking rubric is clear about how each task will be assessed, and that this can be easily read alongside the assessment instructions
• Provide a place where students can ask further questions about the assignment. (But remember, if students are needing to ask a lot of questions about what they have to do, then perhaps it is time to revisit the assessment description, and to improve any part of it based on the above.)

4. Provide supporting materials

If it is clear through the assessment brief what the students need to do, but students face other kinds of difficulties, such as applying research skills, or structuring their thoughts and writing their ideas or other similar academic skills, you may need to provide more supporting materials. You can lead students to these resources by adding further links on an LMS assessment page, or have a series of pages and links in a subject information or orientation module.

To see examples of how you can share supporting materials to your students through a well-designed LMS subject, you may like to further explore LMS subject design which includes examples of how best to structure your LMS assignments, and provides an example of a student support module.

Have you considered using Cadmus?

There are several tools available in the LMS to help you design scaffolded assignments, including Cadmus. Cadmus is an assessment tool that is integrated with the LMS and allows you to use templates to deliver learning-centred assessment instructions that can be sequenced and chunked in a student-friendly way.

For further information on scaffolding assignments, please contact Learning Environments and chat to one of our learning designers.