This presentation defines signature assignments and presents three contexts for using them: professional education; disciplinary education; and assessment. The presentation was part of a workshop presented by Matt Bejune, Charlotte Haller, both of Worcester State University and Gaelan Benway, Quinsigamond Community College. Please direct correspondence to Matt Bejune.

1. Collaborating in Context:
Crafting Signature Assignments
for Teaching and Learning
Gaelan Benway, Professor of Sociology, QCC, Matt
Bejune, Information Literacy Librarian, and Charlotte
Haller, Associate Professor of History, WSU

2. assignments
Signature Assignment?
signature
common
shared
anchor
benchmark
key

3. from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/signature?s=t

4. Google image search results with search word “signature.”

5. Context 1: The Professions
Shulman, Lee S. "Signature
Pedagogies in the Professions."
Daedalus 134.3 (2005): 52-59.

6. Signature Pedagogies
“are types of teaching that organize the
fundamental ways in which future
practitioners are educated for their new
professions. In these signature pedagogies,
the novices are instructed in critical aspects
of the three fundamental dimensions of
professional work -- to think, to perform, and
to act with integrity” (52).

7. Signature Pedagogy Dimensions
1. surface structure - concrete, operational actions of
teaching and learning, of showing and demonstrating, of
questioning and answering, of interacting and
withholding, of approaching and withdrawing
2. deep structure - a set of assumptions about how best
to impart a certain body of knowledge and know-how
3. implicit structure - a moral dimension that comprises a
set of beliefs about professional attitudes, values, and
dispositions (Shulman 54-55)

8. Context 2: The Disciplines
Gurung, Regan A. R., Nancy L. Chick, and Aeron Haynie.
Exploring Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching
Disciplinary Habits of Mind. Sterling, VA: Stylus Pub., 2009.
Print.
Chick, Nancy L., Aeron Haynie, and Regan A. R. Gurung.
Exploring More Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to
Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind. Sterling, VA: Stylus
Pub., 2012. Print.

9. Gurung, Chick, and Haynie (2009) recognized that academic
disciplines also have distinctive habits of mind that characterize
disciplinary pedagogies (i.e., signature pedagogies are not unique to
certain professions). These “signature pedagogies” reflect the deep
structures of the discipline or profession and attempt to answer
questions such as: “What does our pedagogy reveal, intentionally or
otherwise, about the habits of head, hand, and heart as we purport to
foster through our disciplines?” “Is there, or should there be, a
consistent connection between a way a discipline creates or discovers
new knowledge and the way it apprentices new learners? (Ciccone,
2009, p. xii). Building upon the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
(SoTL), Gurung, Chick, and Haynie (2009) and Chick, Haynie, and
Gurung (2012) explore how 29 distinct and interdisciplinary fields foster
deep learning and help students think like disciplinary experts.
Mary Ann Danielson, Associate Vice President for Academic Excellence and Assessment, Creighton University
http://www.creighton.edu/sites/www.creighton.edu/files/TL-Signature%20Pedagogies.pdf

11. Context 3: Assessment
from http://www.callutheran.edu/assessment/student_learning_outcomes/SignatureAssignments.php

12. Information Literacy Assessment
“New technologies of teaching via the Internet;
Web-based information seeking; computer-
mediated dialogues; collaborations and critiques
in the design studio; powerful representations of
complex and often unavailable examples of
professional reasoning, judgement, and action --
all create an opportunity for reexamining the
fundamental signatures we have so long taken
for granted” (Shulman 59).

13. Information Literacy is:
a set of abilities requiring individuals to
"recognize when information is needed and
have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use
effectively the needed information."
American Library Association. Presidential Committee on
Information Literacy. Final Report.(Chicago: American Library
Association, 1989.)

14. WSU and QCC Learning Outcomes

15. Breakout Questions
1. Do you have experience with SA?
2. How might you use a SA?
3. Are there problems (course, department,
discipline, college, profession, etc.) that
might be addressed with SA?
4. Are there any other contexts for SA?

16. Assignment Workshop