The Non-Disposable
Assignment: Enhancing
Personalized Learning
Michael Paskevicius & Liesel Knaack
Centre for Innovation and Excellence in
Learning

Agenda
Welcome and orientation (5 minutes)
Brainstorm and discussion: What makes an assignment memorable, meaningful, and important (10
minutes)
Overview of the disposable assignment and student centred learning (15 minutes)
Activity: Examining the models for non-disposable assignments (10 minutes)
What tools are available? (5 minutes)
Examples from the wild and faculty reflections (10 minutes)
Introducing our live reflection space (5 minutes)
Activity (think pair share) and discussion: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to this
approach? (10 minutes)
Next steps, deliverables, and questions (15 minutes)

Think back to an
assignment you did
while in school (at any
level) that you still
remember as significant
and positive?
Write down two
keywords which describe
that assignment

The Disposable
Assignment
What if we changed these “disposable assignments” into activities which actually
added value to the world? Then students and faculty might feel different about the
time and effort they invested in them. I have seen time and again that they do feel
different about the efforts they make under these circumstances.
These are assignments that students complain about doing and faculty complain
about grading. They’re assignments that add no value to the world – after a student
spends three hours creating it, a teacher spends 30 minutes grading it, and then the
student throws it away.
(Wiley, 2013)

Jhangiani, J. (2015) Douglas College PD Event: The Desirable and Inevitable Shift Towards Open Pedagogy and Open Science. Retrieved from
http://www.slideshare.net/rajivjhangiani1/the-future-is-open-the-desirable-and-inevitable-shift-towards-open-pedagogy-and-open-science

Which of these visual
models is most useful in
guiding us towards
designing non-
disposable assignments?
The non-disposable assignment is impossible without
the permissions granted by open licenses allowing:

Accessing and
remixing legally
reusable text,
multimedia from the
web to form creative
projects and
representations of
learning
Building reflective,
connected, peer
reviewed, and
creative open
projects
Challenging students
to engage real world
audiences by
participating in
knowledge
communities and
social networks
Challenging students to
become an active
producer of knowledge
in the open

What tools are available locally?
#MakeSlidesFunAgain

What tools do students have in their pockets?

Web-based tools to support personalization (heaps)
Bower’s (2016) typology of Web 2.0
collaborative technologies
http://bit.ly/WebToolsPersonalisation

Case studies
Peer review and collaborative writing
“raises the bar for them. If they’re
writing just for me, and I don’t take
this personally, they don’t put in
sometimes quite as much effort as if
their peers are going to read what
they wrote. So it raises for some of
them their level of engagement and
motivation.
I created a non-disposable visual
portfolio for students to document and
follow their progress as well as observe
and contribute feedback to their peers.
The goal was also to complete the
course with a set of assignments that
showcases their learning and
outcomes in an accessible and visually
appealing manner.
Surprisingly user engagement
was quite active with parents,
friends, and people from other
countries commenting on posts
and starting interesting
discussions. I think the students
found that really rewarding that
it went beyond the needs of
meeting a course requirement.

Throughout our workshops you
will be invited to reflect openly
on our workshop website. Feel
free to share thoughts on the
non-disposable assignment,
design considerations, useful
resources, apprehensions, or
ideas.
https://wordpress.viu.ca/enhancingpersonalizedlearning/
#nondisposableviu

What strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats come with this approach?

References
Bower, M. (2016). Deriving a Typology of Web 2.0 Learning Technologies. British Journal of Educational Technology,
47(4), 763–777. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12344
Bass, R., & Elmendorf, H. (2009). Social Pedagogies - Teagle Foundation White Paper. Retrieved 9 May 2017, from
https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/bassr/social-pedagogies/
Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of Open Pedagogy: A Model for Using Open Educational Resources. EDUCATIONAL
TECHNOLOGY, 4.
Hendricks, C. (2015). Non-Disposable Assignments in Intro To Philosophy. You're The Teacher: Teaching & Learning,
and SoTL, in Philosophy, August 18, 2015. http://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2015/08/18/non-disposable-assignments-
intro-philosophy /
Hendricks, C., Fields, E., Engle, W., Underhill, C., & Wright, L. (2017). Engaging Students in Open Scholarly Practice.
Open Education Week 2017 Event. University of British Columbia (UBC).
http://wiki.ubc.ca/Documentation:Open_UBC/Open_for_Learning/Presentations#The_Failure_of_Access:_Rethinking_
Open_Education
Wiley, D. (2013). What is Open Pedagogy? Iterating Toward Openness Blog, October 21, 2013.
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2975

Next steps
• Write a reflective post about what stood out
most from our session
• Start thinking about an assignment you
would like to redesign or create fueled by the
principles of the non-disposable assignment
https://wordpress.viu.ca/enhancingpersonalizedlearning

Photos sourced from Unsplash.com
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Prepared by: Michael Paskevicius
Learning Technologies Application Developer
Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning
michael.paskevicus@viu.ca
Follow me: http://twitter.com/mpaskevi
Portfolio: http://michaelpaskevicius.com/
Presentations: http://www.slideshare.net/mpaskevi
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0