Some ways of assigning a learning activity make students motivated, other make them stuck. Let's understand why and how can we apply that in teaching.
Imagine an assignment: Write a script for resizing pictures!
If you say this to a class of students, they would be confused, not because of lack of ability but because of too much ambiguity. Some could argue that ambiguity supports creativity... Not in this case.
Imagine a different assignment: Write a Python script that resizes all pictures in the folder PHOTOS to width 150 pixels (while keeping the aspect ratio). After you successfully test the program on your computer, email the script to me by the end of our session. Start by reading the documentation for the ‘resize’ method in the Pillow module. Begin now.
This assignment would result in action. Students would start by looking up the documentation. Those less skilled would then perhaps view the contents of the folder, others would immediately try to find a way to automatically repeat the process for every file in the folder.
The second assignment works because it makes the following points very clear:
- Starting point
- First step
- Process
- Final product
- What to do with the final product
Additionally, you can specify also the following:
- Milestone product
- Purpose
- Test