Goldilocks and the Three... Hundred and Seventy-Two Assignments

Question for you - what was the assignment structure and weighting distribution like in your courses when you were in undergrad?

Back in the olden days of yore... aka from 2003-2007 when I was doing my undergrad.... it was pretty common to have few assignments with high grade weightings. Many of my courses looked like the following:

1. Midterm at 25% and a Final Exam at 75%

2. Midterm at 50% and a Final Exam at 50%

3. Two Midterms at 25% each and a Final Exam at 50%

4. Two Midterms at 30% each and a Final Exam at 40%

5. Four Midterms at 25% each

For my courses with laboratory components, usually each of the 5 lab reports was 5% each (for a total of 25% of your course mark) interspersed with one or two midterms and a final exam. Other than the lab reports, I rarely had small, low stakes assignments in my courses.

Fast forward to 2025 and it seems like every course has a plethora of deliverables throughout the term. This shift in pedagogical approach didn't happen overnight. Slowly, having few, higher stakes assessments was starting to have negative effects on student mental health. And, yeah, it is scary to have a single assessment worth 75% of your final grade in a course! So, we (instructors) began moving towards including a few smaller, low stakes assignments to provide students a chance to learn, show what they know, and decrease the weighting (or stakes) of the other assessments. In short, we scaffolded assignments. Awesome.

Enter the Covid-19 pandemic. It was a stressful time - for the entire world - and we did what we thought would help. We (instructors, departments, and/or institutions) removed the traditional midterms and final exams, and went to weekly assessments within our courses, and in some cases, multiple deliverables per week within the same course. Great! I've done a good job at relieving student stress in my course by having multiple, low stakes assignments. Problem is - we all did the same thing, and what's more so, many of us have kept the same assessment structure as we did in the pandemic. This means that students have an abundance of tasks due each and every week for all of their courses. Instead of having periods of low, moderate, and high stress based on deliverables in a course, they just have high stress all the time. My personal opinion - the pendulum has swung too far the other way - from few, high stakes assignments to a multitude of low stakes assignments - meaning we haven't really mitigated student stress, we've just changed it. Worse, we maybe even increased it.

I made a graph to visualize this point. In the graph below we have the week within the term on the x-axis (from weeks 1-13 to include reading week) and student stress on the y-axis (from low to high). When we have few deliverables (the green line) we see that our students move through periods of low and high stress. Usually weeks 4-6 (just prior to reading week), sometime around week 9 (approximately 2/3 of the way through the term) and weeks 11-13 (just prior to final exams) are the most stressful as this is when most courses have assessments due for grading. But, at least in this case students are afforded the opportunity to 'ride the sine wave' (as I like to say) of periods of high and low stress. When we have a moderate number of deliverables (blue line) we still see some peaks and valleys around the same weeks, but the valleys aren't as sharp. And when we have a high number of deliverables (purple line) student stress increases rapidly (once they get all their syllabi and realize how much work they have this term) and stays high for the entirety of the semester. I have had all three categories peak right around the end of the term as many courses have a final, major assessment due here, regardless of their course having a final exam or not.

Figure 1: Student stress over the course of the semester as a function of the number of deliverables (low, moderate, and high).

What is the Goldilocks number of deliverables to have in a course? Obviously, there is no one specific answer here, only "it depends." It does require that we, as instructors, really examine the assessments we have so carefully designed and curated and ask ourselves if they are still relevant. Are there components that can be redeployed in a different manner? Are there components that can (or should) be removed? That discussion board that you love so much and believe is so important - take a good look at it. Are students really engaging with it the way you imagined or intended? Or are they just doing it for the sake of doing it because it is part of their grade? That written assignment (or maybe a few specific questions within an assignment) that you believe to be useful and think is so important - is it? What components of our assessments are truly necessary? What are the 'need to haves' and 'nice to haves'? Or maybe a different way to think about it is the 'truly need to have to achieve the learning objectives of the course' vs. 'need to have because I spent so much time on this and I think it is important/helpful'? I also say this like it is easy and it is not. It is so, incredibly, hard. This is something I do all the time. I'm constantly updating and tinkering with assessment ideas. And I always have to ask myself something to the effect of "Is this really necessary? Or is this your own idea of necessary?" Often times, it is the latter. It is also really helpful to ask other members of your instructional team - your teaching assistants (TAs). They put a lot of time and effort into reading and assessing student work - ask them what they are noticing, what thoughts they have, or what they might suggest doing differently. Trust me, they have a lot of thoughts - great thoughts in fact - but you have to be willing to put your own ego aside and ask. Lastly, what do your course evaluations have to say? Often there are questions about workload within the course - what trends have you noticed? Are students commenting at all about workload within your course?

Personally, I believe that reviewing course evaluations, having open discussions with your TAs, and some serious self-reflection are good places to start when examining the assessment structure of your course. This way we can help Goldilocks on her way from 'too few' to the 'too many' to finding that 'just right.'