Assignment prompts should explain both the task and its purpose, including a brief statement of the value the assignment offers. Rationales should cite transferable intellectual skills such as reading, analytical thinking, and creative problem solving. Skill development requires active practice and struggle rather than passive absorption. Much of the educational value resides in the process of completing assignments rather than solely in the final product. Grading schemes can function as tools that structure student motivation by creating engaging goals. Designing assessments with an eye to the kind of struggle they elicit can guide course design and promote meaningful skill development. Careful calibration of grading criteria can track product quality while encouraging productive striving.
Skill development isn't passive. Despite students' wishes, they cannot absorb intellectual skills via some magical process akin to osmosis. Skill development requires practice and struggle. As such, I explain that the best place to look for value in our assignments is not the end product, such as the paper a student submits. Instead, much of the value is found in the process, such as writing the paper.
Sadovsky's framework is inspired by C. Thi Nguyen's account of striving play in his book Games: Agency as Art. Ordinarily, our motivation has the structure of adopting some means for the sake of achieving an end. However, Nguyen describes striving play as inverting this usual structure. In Nguyen's striving play, we adopt the goal of winning a game not for the sake of winning (or anything that follows from it) but instead for the sake of the struggle created by our trying to win.
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