Failure Is Always an Option: Lessons from Creating Authentic, Renewable Assignments

Abstract

The developers of an Open Educational Resource for technical communication courses wrote a grant to expand its contents using student-generated content. The project required developing and deploying authentic, renewable assignments that asked undergraduate students in a 2000-level class to create content appropriate for other students which would then be published in the OER. This paper discusses the project’s rationale; the requirements and process of developing authentic, renewable assignments; the project’s trajectory; and lessons learned from the project’s ultimate failure.