I first began to use the word deliverables rather than assignments with my professional writing students, but over time I started using the term with all my writing students and I have three good reasons for this choice.
Deliverables are the product of a development process
Assignments are disposable
I have often argued on this blog that “my job is not to deliver a perfect essay or a perfect student capable of delivering a perfect essay. My job is to help my students become better rhetoricians in order to help them on their journey to become better writers.” This means that I focus on the writer and their process rather than emphasizing the production of a specific piece of writing or assignment that will be discarded and forgotten. Assignments are a task to be done but deliverables are the product of a development process. Using the word deliverable signals that the product is a part of something bigger and more significant. I like to use the word deliverable for the culmination of a project or unit to signify that we are doing something weighty and important that will not look the same for everyone. There may be smaller assignments and activities completed as part of the process that results in a deliverable. Through the years my assessment process has focused more and more on the entire development cycle rather than exclusively on its product. Focusing on the assignment makes it too disposable and far too many assignments are the sort of mutt genre that leads to engfish. However, using the word deliverable rather than assignment helps shift our focus and gives the process a goal while recognizing that the work is part of a process that helps us all grow as writers and thinkers rather than something to be done and forgotten.
Deliverables offer choice
I am a big fan of passion/problem/project based learning, or connected learning, and that type of process cannot be tied down to one specific product. Deliverables is a much better word as it gives students more room to consider the best method to showcase the results of their learning process. I first began using the word deliverable for my professional writing classes because our final project is the result of an individual passion project. There is not one specific deliverable that works for the wide variety of passions my students explore. While not all of the units in my more traditional writing classes offer that range of choice at least half of them do and even if there is more specific guidelines for those other units there is still room for student choice.
Deliverables are more authentic
Authentic purposeful writing is key to student engagement. Students care about writing that matters to them and serves an actual purpose. When I give my students choice the inspirations that I offer them are always real products that respond to the real needs of real people. The process of developing those products requires engagement with and understanding of the audience and the needs of the audience. That is how rhetoric works and that is the process that rhetoricians must engage in to perform that work. My students are not writing assignments that will never see the light of day as the essays move seamlessly from student folder to teacher folder. My students are crafting deliverables that go out into the world to serve an authentic purpose.
Would you rather that your students follow assignments or create deliverables? Do you want your students to focus on a product or a process?
Artwork by Nick YoungsonCC BY-SA 3.0Alpha Stock Images
