Assignment Purpose

It is important to think about the assignment in the context of the course. Your instructor often has particular goals and/or purposes in mind when constructing the tasks for an assignment and part of your job is to figure out what those goals and/or purposes are.

Put yourself in the role of your instructor and consider:

• “How does this assignment relate to the course objectives?”  
• “Why am I being asked to do this assignment or to think about this topic/question in this way?”

By giving you this assignment, your instructor may be asking you to:

• express ideas or concepts in your own words to demonstrate understanding
• apply relevant concepts to a situation or phenomenon
• analyze ideas and concepts and consider relationships among them
• evaluate a decision, perspective or a particular way of doing something
• create new ideas or perspectives given a particular topic or issue