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Student Hacks: How to Prioritize Assignments and Projects Based on Importance and Deadline

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As a student, you are bombarded with assignments and projects from various courses. These tasks can add up quickly, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. That's where prioritization comes in - by sorting your assignments and projects based on their importance and deadline, you can manage your time more efficiently and reduce stress. In this article, we'll explore the importance of prioritization in academic success, how to identify key factors in prioritizing tasks, effective strategies for prioritizing, and tips for staying organized and managing deadlines.

Understanding the Importance of Prioritization in Academic Success

Prioritization is a critical skill that every student needs to master to achieve academic success. It is a process of identifying and organizing tasks based on their importance and deadline, which enables you to manage your time more efficiently and reduce stress levels. Effective prioritization can help you stay on top of your workload, complete tasks on time, and produce high-quality work.

One of the biggest challenges that students face is managing their time effectively. With so many demands on their time, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and lose focus. Time management is, therefore, crucial to academic success. It involves planning, scheduling, and organizing your time effectively to get the most out of your day. By managing your time effectively, you can reduce procrastination, improve focus and concentration, and ensure that you meet all deadlines for assignments and projects.

The Role of Time Management in Student Life

Time management is not only essential for academic success but also for personal growth and development. It enables you to balance your academic and personal responsibilities effectively. By managing your time effectively, you can create more time for leisure activities, hobbies, and socializing with friends and family.

Effective time management involves setting goals, prioritizing tasks, and creating a schedule that works for you. It's essential to identify your most productive times of the day and schedule your most important tasks during those times. This will help you maximize your productivity and achieve your goals more efficiently.

Balancing Academic and Personal Responsibilities

Student life involves juggling academic and personal responsibilities. It can be challenging to find the right balance between the two, especially when trying to prioritize your tasks. To manage this effectively, it's crucial to set realistic goals for yourself, break down your tasks into smaller, more manageable steps, and revisit your priorities regularly to ensure that you are on track.

It's also essential to create a support system that can help you manage your responsibilities effectively. This can include family members, friends, or academic advisors who can offer guidance and support when you need it. Additionally, taking care of your physical and mental health is crucial to managing your responsibilities effectively. Make sure to get enough sleep, exercise regularly, and eat a healthy diet to maintain your energy levels and reduce stress.

In conclusion, prioritization and time management are critical skills that every student needs to master to achieve academic success. By managing your time effectively, you can balance your academic and personal responsibilities, reduce stress levels, and achieve your goals more efficiently.

Identifying the Key Factors in Prioritizing Assignments and Projects

Effective prioritization involves identifying and organizing your tasks based on their importance and deadline. Here are three key factors to consider when prioritizing your assignments and projects:

Assessing the Importance of Each Task

Firstly, assess the importance of each task by considering how they contribute to your academic goals, and the impact they will have on your overall performance. This requires a critical evaluation of how each assignment or project fits into the context of your course and the overall objectives you aim to achieve.

Estimating the Time Required for Completion

Secondly, estimate the time required for completion of each task. This involves breaking down your assignments and projects into smaller, manageable steps and allocating the necessary time to each step. You can use tools such as productivity apps and timers to assist you in estimating the time required for each task.

Considering the Consequences of Not Completing Tasks on Time

Thirdly, consider the consequences of not completing your tasks on time. This includes the penalties for late submission, the negative impact on your grades, and the additional workload that may arise as a result. By assessing the consequences of not completing each task on time, you can better prioritize your workload and ensure that you meet all deadlines.

Strategies for Prioritizing Assignments and Projects

The eisenhower matrix method.

The Eisenhower Matrix method is a popular productivity tool that involves categorizing your tasks based on their importance and urgency. Here's how you can use it to prioritize your assignments and projects:

Important and Urgent: These are tasks that require immediate attention and should be completed as soon as possible. Examples include assignments due within the next few days, exams, and urgent projects.

Important but not Urgent: These are tasks that have a high priority but do not require immediate attention. Examples include long-term projects and assignments due in a few weeks or months' time.

Urgent but not Important: These are tasks that require immediate attention, but their actual importance is relatively low. Examples include responding to non-urgent emails and phone calls, and minor administrative tasks.

Not Important or Urgent: These are tasks that are low-priority and do not contribute significantly to your academic goals. Examples include social media, leisure activities, and non-academic tasks.

By categorizing your tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix, you can focus on completing those tasks that are most important and urgent while reserving time for those that are important but not urgent.

The ABCDE Method

The ABCDE method is another strategy for prioritizing tasks. Here's how it works:

A: Assign a "A" priority to tasks that are important and require immediate attention, such as assignments due within a few days.

B: Assign a "B" priority to tasks that are important but not urgent, such as long-term projects and assignments due in a few weeks or months' time.

C: Assign a "C" priority to tasks that are nice to do but not crucial to your academic goals, such as non-academic tasks and leisure activities.

D: Delegate tasks that can be done by someone else or outsourced, such as research and data entry.

E: Eliminate tasks that are not necessary or do not contribute significantly to your academic goals, such as social media and other distractions.

By following this method, you can prioritize your tasks effectively and ensure that you are working on those that have the most significant impact on your academic success.

The Ivy Lee Method

The Ivy Lee Method is a simple and effective strategy for prioritizing your tasks. Here's how you can use it:

Identify the six most important tasks for the following day.

Rank each task in order of priority.

Begin working on the first task in the morning and continue until it is completed.

Move on to the next task on the list and repeat the process until all six tasks are completed.

By following this method, you can ensure that you are working on your most critical tasks and completing them in an organized and effective manner.

The Pomodoro Technique for Time Management

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that involves breaking your work into 25-minute intervals separated by short breaks. Here's how you can use it to prioritize your tasks:

Choose a task to complete.

Set a timer for 25 minutes and work on the task until the timer rings.

Take a five-minute break.

Repeat the process until the task is completed.

By using this technique, you can remain focused and motivated while working on important tasks, which ensures that you meet all deadlines for your assignments and projects.

Tips for Staying Organized and Managing Deadlines

Creating a master calendar for assignments and projects.

The first step to staying organized and managing deadlines is creating a master calendar. This involves compiling all your assignments and projects into one centralized place, which makes it easier to track your progress and ensure that you meet all deadlines. You can use tools such as Google Calendar or a physical planner to create your master calendar.

Breaking Down Tasks into Smaller, Manageable Steps

Breaking down your tasks into smaller, manageable steps is an effective way to avoid feeling overwhelmed and ensure that you stay on track to meet all deadlines. You can use tools such as mind maps or to-do lists to visualize your tasks and break them down into smaller steps.

Using Productivity Apps and Tools to Stay on Track

There are several productivity apps and tools available that can help you stay on track and manage your time more efficiently. Examples include Trello, Evernote, and Forest - an app that incentivizes you to complete your tasks by planting trees in a virtual forest.

Prioritization is essential for academic success. By sorting your assignments and projects based on their importance and deadline, you can manage your time more efficiently and reduce stress levels. In this article, we explored the importance of prioritization in academic success, how to identify key factors in prioritizing tasks, effective strategies for prioritizing, and tips for staying organized and managing deadlines. By following these guidelines, you can maximize your productivity and achieve your academic goals.

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Difference Between Assignment and Project

It’s important to know the difference between these two terms.

Unlike the days of reading from a textbook in a classroom and doing classwork, education has now taken a more solid approach.

Academics have now set sail to project-based work in schools worldwide. Students can now learn in a fun and exciting way.

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Main Differences Between Assignment and Project

Assignments are textbook focused while project encourages hands-on learning.

One could relate a project to simply designing a model to explain a scientific phenomenon, or watching a movie to ascertain its relevance. The freedom it brings, and the lessons learned from its processes are thrilling. Imagine the feeling a student gets from building a science model of real-life outcomes. Assignment, on the other hand, is all cut and dry.

As such, it is not a good judge of a student’s capabilities. Unlike a project, an assignment is also a significant pointer to a student’s weakness and a guide in correcting it.

How to Give Assignments to Team Members

Table of Contents

The project has been divided into milestones, goals and objectives broken into tasks, and now it’s time to assign them. But as you open the project management platform, you’re faced with the unflattering process of wording the tasks, and choosing whom to assign them to.

Well, in this article, we offer advice on how to make that jumbled first moment a little clearer. There are actionable tips, learning the difference between allocating and delegating tasks, and suggested criteria on how to choose the best person for the job.

For a more precise overview, here’s a table of contents:

How do you assign employees tasks?

We normally think that assigning tasks is a time-consuming process that focuses on clearing out task lists to keep the project going. However, task assignment should actually be a more employee-oriented process that requires additional dedication and effort, which yields incredible results. But what do we mean by that?

Properly assigned tasks push your employees, projects, and the overall company forward. Here’s how.

• They strengthen accountability and trust between managers and employees;
• They help teach new skills and perfect old ones;
• They allow employees to get familiar with other teams and avenues of work;
• It becomes easier to make project estimates;
• Makes for great bases for performance reviews, etc.

The list could go on, but we’ll stop there for now.

Of course, such long-term benefits don’t come without some proverbial blood and sweat in the planning stage. Let’s take a look at the general ideas on assigning employee tasks, and specific steps you can take.

Motivation comes from knowing the bigger picture

When we talk about the bigger picture in project management, we talk about each team member’s task affecting their peer’s down the line. Since all tasks are usually small pieces of the puzzle, it helps to remind employees how their work contributes. For example:

• A high-quality draft can make a great foundation for the final version, and it can be completed more quickly.
• A well-prepared presentation can shave time off unnecessary questions and additional email inquiries.

It comes as no surprise that people work better and are more productive, when they know that their work has an impact on the company level.

And so, when you assign tasks, try to emphasize how they fit in the bigger picture. Simply saying: “ You doing X will help with Y and Z ” and how it reflects on the project as a whole will let an employee know that the task they were assigned is important.

Get your employees excited to commit

Telling people about the bigger picture and showing them what’s possible can only get them so far. It’s enough to ignite the initial spark, but for them to fully commit to the task, you need to define what that task entails.

They should be able to picture how to go about the work, what skills to use, and how to reach the desired result. The clearer the instructions, the more motivated they will be to work.

Simply put, give directions on how the task should be done, and make sure they understand. You can’t read each other’s minds, so it’s important everyone is on the same page.

Ask for task transparency

One of the best practices a company can employ is transparency among coworkers.

This is achieved by having everyone input their tasks for the day in a timesheet. The purpose of timesheets is to get an accurate idea of what everyone is working on at any given time.

When people know who works on what tasks, it’s easier for them to know if a person is available or busy, how far along they are with a task, etc.

So, when you give assignments to employees, label them with deadlines. Alternatively, you can ask for employees’ assessments on how long the work would take them, and use those timeframes.

Source: Clockify team timesheet

Timesheets are a great way to keep an eye on tasks and the people doing them. You get to:

• see who struggles with what (helps assess people’s skill sets);
• who burns through their workload and is available for additional tasks;
• whether your time estimates need correction;
• identify any wasted time.

💡 If your employees are insecure about keeping public records of their tasks, here are a few resources that can help:

• How to create order in your daily work tasks
• How to be more efficient with your tasks

Keep a crystal clear timeframe

While we’re discussing timesheets and deadline transparency, it’s important to mention that the times you set for task completions need to be clear-cut.

As we’ve mentioned, the safest way to assign deadlines is to consult the employees. They are better at assessing how long it will take them due to the tasks’ difficulty, overall deadlines, the standards that need to be met, and the skill required to complete it.

When they get a say in how long they should be doing an assignment, people tend to feel more accountable for the whole process. They will do their best to finish in time, since they actively participated in setting the deadline.

Set very clear expectations

Assigning a task should always include your (the supervisor’s) expectations pointed out. For example:

• Does a logo pitch need as many drafts as possible, or just a few finished pieces?

If you ask a designer to make some drafts for a logo pitch, you must specify the kind of quality you’re looking for. Explain whether you are looking for some sketches and drafts for a brainstorming meeting, or if you want clean, presentable pieces to show.

Additionally:

• How many pieces should the designer do?
• Is there a specific color palette they need to follow?
• How important is the task? Is this the day they finally decide on a logo, or is it still in the brainstorming stage? (decides on the quality of the work itself)

Assigning the task using the above questions, you help the designer understand how much effort precisely they need to invest. They become more motivated with clear instructions, as they know what is expected of them. There’s no fear of having their work criticized for something that wasn’t communicated in the beginning. And on your end, it prevents breached deadlines or subpar results.

Avoid creating dependency by being less involved

It’s not unusual for employees to ask their supervisors for their opinion on a certain task, or their performance.

The problem arises when a supervisor makes themselves too involved with the process. When they feel like the project might fall apart if they don’t have their eyes on every moving part all of the time. And when you have, say, 20 people waiting for that person’s approval, advice, or consultation, the workflow runs into a gridlock.

And wait time is wasted time.

Plus, people lose motivation, patience, and grow frustrated, as they could be doing other things.

So, learn not to jump in every time people call for your aid. Assign reliable people who can address smaller issues, while you handle the big picture. Learn how to expend your own energy where it is needed more.

For example – making a pitch presentation for potential investors keeps getting put off because one person needs you to check a client email they want to send, another wants your signature on a form, and the third wants to ask something about employee feedback that’s coming up.

In order to not be stretched thin, and have your time wasted on menial tasks, here’s where you can start:

How to mitigate the risk of being over-involved when assigning

• Remember that you match tasks to people

Which means that, by matching the right people with the right tasks, your involvement will be minimal. Take time to carefully choose who gets to do what. What is the point of assigning tasks if they can’t be done without you?

• Have a 10-point scale to judge the importance of items

How important are certain aspects of your leadership role? Are you absolutely necessary in every meeting, or during every call? Which tasks need your approval, and which ones can be approved by someone under you?

Rank these items on a scale of 0 to 10, based on their importance to you and the project. Top priority tasks should get your undivided attention. And what can be delegated, should be.

• Analyze your schedule

Your energy and time are needed on a much broader scale. The best way to spot if you’re wasting time being too involved is to look at your schedule. Identify how much time you’ve spent on low-priority items, and assess which issues could’ve been solved without you.

• Take into account priorities and deadlines

Step in only when absolutely necessary. You are in charge of things getting done on time, by people most qualified for assigned tasks. Determine what your priorities are for each project, and concern yourself only with those issues, unless there is a risk of breaching a deadline.

• Formulate a list of dependable people

If you know your employees (or team members) well enough, then you should be able to single out those who are more dependable and ready to take on a little more responsibilities. Write out the reasons how they could help by getting involved on low-priority items instead of you. When the time comes, rally them and present them with the idea, keeping in mind that this solution helps push the project forward. When authority is delegated to several people, there’s fewer chances of a hold-up in the workflow.

This also falls into the realm of task delegation , which we’ll get into later.

How do you decide what tasks to assign to which employees?

1. assign based on priority.

Naturally, some tasks will be more important than others. When you break down a project into tasks , spend some time assessing their priority level.

High-priority tasks should be the first on your list to allocate. Whether it’s because they’re time-sensitive, or require more effort and dedication.

Low priority tasks can be allocated as fillers to the first available person.

2. Assign based on employee availability

Another factor to consider when assigning tasks is who is available at the moment.

As the project moves along, new tasks will be added. You will have to allocate new work, but odds are you won’t always be able to pick who you want. Especially if a deadline is approaching, the person with the smallest workload should be your first choice.

Overloading an already busy individual just because they’re more skilled or you have faith in them the most puts an unnecessary strain on them. It’s cause for frustration, poorer results, and decreased productivity.

And as we’ve mentioned, if you have a timesheet with an overview of all the tasks and employees working on them, it’ll be much easier to spot who is free and who isn’t.

3. Assign based on employee skill level

High-priority tasks should go to employees with more experience in a given field or skill. However, you should occasionally give such tasks to other employees as well, to help them grow and become just as dependable. Giving people challenging tasks that can boost their experience is essential to productivity and morale.

Not to mention you get to have multiple high-skilled employees.

Low-priority tasks can be assigned to anyone, despite their experience level. They’re a good opportunity to practice, pick up new skills, or get smaller tasks out of the way to make room for more important ones.

4. Assign based on preference

Last, but not the least, preference can also play a big part in how you assign tasks.

It’s a given that some employees will prefer certain tasks over others. So it could be good to assign tasks at a meeting with the team. As you discuss priorities, deadlines, and availability, ask them which tasks they would like to work on.

If someone shows interest in a specific type of work, they should (with some consideration), be allowed to take it. After all, people are more productive when they’re assigned to something they find new or exciting.

Note: Apply this rule with caution. Letting people do only the tasks they want can stunt their career growth. Getting out of our comfort zones and occasionally doing tasks that we don’t like is how we develop and learn. So, don’t forget to document assignments as you hand them out, to spot these potential issues early on.

Allocating vs delegating tasks

While semantically similar words, delegation and allocation in terms of tasks are two different things.

When you allocate tasks , you are assigning tasks without giving the employees much authority, challenge, or room to grow. It includes you keeping all of the responsibility – writing out the tasks, making deadlines, providing resources, tools, etc. These are usually recurring tasks that can become repetitive.

When you delegate tasks , you allow for some of that responsibility to fizzle out from your fingers. All you think about are the objectives, while letting the employees figure out the details and means to get there.

However, that doesn’t mean delegation is right and the allocation is wrong.

Task allocation has its own place. It is just as important, as a lot of tasks come down to repeated processes that are still vital to the project progress. Task delegation is just a good opportunity for employees to learn, challenge themselves, and assess their skills and performance.

When should you allocate tasks?

Management and BizDev consultant Artem Albul shared his concept on task assignment, which he dubbed an “algorithm”. He emphasized how these criteria are useful only and only when you wish that employees perform the tasks based on your guidelines and instructions (aka allocation).

Here is how Albul broke down the algorithm:

Source: Artem Albul, TWA Consulting

As we can see, task allocation, while the more “controlling” of the two, also gives in-depth instructions and asks for confirmation on task clarity. A lot of it comes down to everyone being on the same page, leaving little to no room for misinterpretation (but also creative freedom).

How should you allocate tasks?

With all that we’ve mentioned in the previous section, here’s how your task allotment could look like, step by step.

• Break down your project

Detail out the goals, objectives, and some individual tasks (not all, be careful not to start micromanaging). Place the most important deadlines.

• Prioritize tasks and sort them

It’s important to know what tasks need to be done faster/better, to properly allocate your resources and manpower from the start.

• Make a list of teams and team members

Assign team leaders (if you don’t have them), and alternatively, ask for their input on individual employees skills, for a more informed decision on who gets what.

• Schedule a meeting

Make a meeting with the team leads and go through the points above. Assign tasks according to each team’s availability, interest, and skill required to successfully push the project forward.

• As team leads – assign tasks further down the pipeline
• Track task completion and make necessary changes along the way

Whether it’s pushing deadlines, reassigning tasks, or shifting around resources. This is perfectly fine and expected, so long as it doesn’t happen on every task you’ve assigned. Then, it is an indicator of poor pre-planning.

• Offer feedback and write performances

Don’t forget to track the progress and make notes of important details that might help the next task allocation/delegation process. It’s also a useful piece of information for the employees on what they need to improve on.

Allocating tasks is somewhat more complicated than we want it to be. But, this kind of thorough research and preparation will make projects run more smoothly. Employees will also be more satisfied with their work, and there will be less hurdles as deadlines approach.

When should you delegate tasks?

Delegation is a great practice in trust for both the employer/supervisor and the employee. The employer learns how to give away some of their control over the process, while the employee learns how to take more accountability for their work.

This lets you focus on big-picture aspects of your job, since you deal less with assignments that are low-priority for you. You save time and energy, while helping others move up in their careers.

How do you effectively delegate tasks as a leader?

As we’ve mentioned, delegating includes more employee independence. There are some additional components which make this type of task assignment more appealing than allocation, with great opportunities for growth.

Focus on delegating objectives instead of actual tasks

When you delegate, you focus on the objective that needs to be done. You shouldn’t give employees a “color by numbers” instruction on how to complete a task.

Communicate clearly what the end result should be and what expectations you (or the higher-ups) have. Leave the means for reaching that end goal to the employees themselves. Because how you solve a task may be completely different to how they will. And that is perfectly fine, so long as the result is the one you are looking for.

Keep the objectives challenging

When the objectives you’re delegating are too easy, chances are the person will either procrastinate, or feel like you don’t trust them enough. And if they’re too difficult, they get frustrated, anxious, and begin to panic.

It’s a good idea to be aware of an employee’s skill level, so you can gauge how much challenge and responsibility they can take on. For them to be the most productive and achieve great results, they need to enter “the state of Flow”.

Source: Optimal Experience , M. Csikszentmihalyi

💡 We’ve discussed the state of Flow in more detail in an article on time organization.

Encourage discussion and feedback

Let employees voice their opinions on the topic.

They should ask anything about the task, the goals, or the overall impact their work will have on the later stages or others’ workflow. It means they are interested in the task, and getting involved.

And if they aren’t asking questions themselves, you can always nudge them into proactivity.

• Is there something you’d like me to clarify?
• Do you already have any ideas on how to go about the task?
• Is the time we agreed upon enough for you?
• Will you need other resources, tools, or support?
• Do you see any problems or risks?

Questions like these help them feel valued, their efforts acknowledged, and let them know you care about the task and how well they perform. Just be careful not to overdo it, or you’ll start to look like a micromanager.

Give employees free rein, but offer support

Speaking of micromanaging, delegation means you let people problem-solve their way out on their own. There should be no reason for a manager to step in and control or supervise any step of the process, unless absolutely necessary.

However, what you should do is let them know you’re available for any advice should they feel stuck. Just because employees get authority on a certain task, and are left to their own devices, doesn’t mean the project has to suffer until they pull themselves up.

From time to time, ask them if they need anything from you, and make sure they know you’re there for any kind of support, consultation, or mediation. ANother good practice is to also give them additional learning opportunities – such as training, conferences, courses, etc.

Delegate objectives that move people forward

Choose assignments that boost the skills and employ all of their experiences, instead of something that simply needs to be done. For example:

• Tasks that require they brush up on their team communication skills;
• Learning how to allocate smaller tasks;
• Supervising others’ work and doing quality control;
• Learning to work with a new tool;
• Holding a meeting (or more), etc.

Find out which skills your employees may want or need to develop, and then plan your delegations accordingly. You want them to complete the task while having learned something new at the same time.

How to choose who to delegate to

Paul Beesley, senior director and consultant at Beyond Theory proposed a nifty checklist for when you’re choosing an employee to delegate to. It’s meant to simplify and speed up the process.

To successfully complete the delegated task, your chosen employee needs:

S – the skill to perform and complete a task

T – the time to complete the task, and if needed, learn the required skill

A – the authority to handle everything concerning the task

R – the necessary level of responsibility

R – the recognition for successfully completing the task

This list is a set of important criteria that should be covered when you consider who to assign to a specific task. However, depending on your niche, type of service, company size and the project at hand, the criteria are likely to change. And it should accommodate your needs, not the other way around.

Common task delegation mistakes to avoid

With all being said, there are some common mistakes managers and employers make, sometimes without even realizing it.

• Being too vague concerning deadlines (using: as soon as possible, when you get to it, I need it by yesterday). It creates unnecessary pressure.
• Being unavailable for questions and concerns. While you shouldn’t micromanage, you should still be present for support if an employee feels stuck. Ignoring them or handing them over to someone else could cause distrust. However, if you are usually swamped with work, set consultation hours each day or week.
• Having unclear directions. Specifying the allotted time for task completion and expectations should be the bare minimum when delegating tasks.
• Not providing feedback. No feedback is worse than bad feedback. Employees need to be aware when they’re doing good work, as well. In one company I worked for, the mantra was: “If no one is complaining about your work, that means you’re doing good”. And while it sounds like sound logic, it actually caused a lot of frustration. We were left directionless, and simply “floating” from task to task, never knowing if any of them had a positive impact on our performance.
• Not listening to employees. Take into account how they feel about a task or the objective. Let them give you feedback and if there are potential problems from the get-go.
• Assigning other people to the same task. If you notice a person struggling, the first instinct should be to ask them how they’re faring, and if they need any help. Some managers tend to assign other employees to help them without consultation, which leaves a sore taste. The employee will feel even more incompetent and will be less likely to take on a similar task in the future.
• Assuming people will know what you mean. This is one of the biggest problems. When you’re formulating a task, be as clear as possible about the goals and expectations. Oftentimes managers think that these things are implied, but the truth is – no one is a mind reader. To avoid having information misconstrued or misunderstood, communicate clearly and directly.

There could be more mistakes, especially for every different field and industry. If at all possible, identify the most common ones, made either by you or your peers. Note down all the instances where certain tasks weren’t up to par, and see what you could have changed in your assignment process to fix it. Maybe there wasn’t enough time or resources, you were unclear, or the employee wasn’t ready for such responsibility. Use the same procedure in all future task delegations. It’s the only way to learn and make the process quicker.

Use Clockify to assign tasks with ease

Now you’re a master of task delegation — congrats!

But there’s more to it than meets the eye.

In fact, what if you used a digital tool like Clockify to increase the likelihood that each job would be completed on time and on point?

In Clockify, you can easily create highly descriptive assignments that contain information like:

• Start time,
• Billability status,
• Name of the employee,
• Period for getting the assignment done,
• Hours per day to spend on the assignment, and more.

That way, you can plan who works on what, how long, and when.

Similarly, Clockify allows you to create project milestones to achieve results faster.

With the Milestones option, you can select dates for deadlines, allowing you to pin down important events in your projects.

For example, if your client expects you to keep them in the loop about developments, you can inform them promptly on whether your team has reached the agreed-upon milestones.

Refocus on your company’s big picture with a project and time tracking tool.

Marijana Stojanovic is a writer and researcher who specializes in the topics of productivity and time management.

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Types of Assignments

Cristy Bartlett and Kate Derrington

Introduction

As discussed in the previous chapter, assignments are a common method of assessment at university. You may encounter many assignments over your years of study, yet some will look quite different from others. By recognising different types of assignments and understanding the purpose of the task, you can direct your writing skills effectively to meet task requirements. This chapter draws on the skills from the previous chapter, and extends the discussion, showing you where to aim with different types of assignments.

The chapter begins by exploring the popular essay assignment, with its two common categories, analytical and argumentative essays. It then examines assignments requiring case study responses , as often encountered in fields such as health or business. This is followed by a discussion of assignments seeking a report (such as a scientific report) and reflective writing assignments, common in nursing, education and human services. The chapter concludes with an examination of annotated bibliographies and literature reviews. The chapter also has a selection of templates and examples throughout to enhance your understanding and improve the efficacy of  your assignment writing skills.

Different Types of Written Assignments

At university, an essay is a common form of assessment. In the previous chapter Writing Assignments we discussed what was meant by showing academic writing in your assignments. It is important that you consider these aspects of structure, tone and language when writing an essay.

Components of an essay

Essays should use formal but reader friendly language and have a clear and logical structure. They must include research from credible academic sources such as peer reviewed journal articles and textbooks. This research should be referenced throughout your essay to support your ideas (See the chapter Working with Information ).

If you have never written an essay before, you may feel unsure about how to start.  Breaking your essay into sections and allocating words accordingly will make this process more manageable and will make planning the overall essay structure much easier.

• An essay requires an introduction, body paragraphs and a conclusion.
• Generally, an introduction and conclusion are approximately 10% each of the total word count.
• The remaining words can then be divided into sections and a paragraph allowed for each area of content you need to cover.
• Use your task and criteria sheet to decide what content needs to be in your plan

An effective essay introduction needs to inform your reader by doing four basic things:

Table 20.1 An effective essay

An effective essay body paragraph needs to:

An effective essay conclusion needs to:

Common types of essays

You may be required to write different types of essays, depending on your study area and topic. Two of the most commonly used essays are analytical and argumentative .  The task analysis process discussed in the previous chapter Writing Assignments will help you determine the type of essay required. For example, if your assignment question uses task words such as analyse, examine, discuss, determine or explore, you would be writing an analytical essay . If your assignment question has task words such as argue, evaluate, justify or assess, you would be writing an argumentative essay . Despite the type of essay, your ability to analyse and think critically is important and common across genres.  

Analytical essays

These essays usually provide some background description of the relevant theory, situation, problem, case, image, etcetera that is your topic. Being analytical requires you to look carefully at various components or sections of your topic in a methodical and logical way to create understanding.

The purpose of the analytical essay is to demonstrate your ability to examine the topic thoroughly. This requires you to go deeper than description by considering different sides of the situation, comparing and contrasting a variety of theories and the positives and negatives of the topic. Although in an analytical essay your position on the topic may be clear, it is not necessarily a requirement that you explicitly identify this with a thesis statement, as is the case with an argumentative essay. If you are unsure whether you are required to take a position, and provide a thesis statement, it is best to check with your tutor.

Argumentative essays

These essays require you to take a position on the assignment topic. This is expressed through your thesis statement in your introduction. You must then present and develop your arguments throughout the body of your assignment using logically structured paragraphs. Each of these paragraphs needs a topic sentence that relates to the thesis statement. In an argumentative essay, you must reach a conclusion based on the evidence you have presented.

Case Study Responses

Case studies are a common form of assignment in many study areas and students can underperform in this genre for a number of key reasons.

Students typically lose marks for not:

• Relating their answer sufficiently to the case details
• Applying critical thinking
• Writing with clear structure
• Using appropriate or sufficient sources
• Using accurate referencing

When structuring your response to a case study, remember to refer to the case. Structure your paragraphs similarly to an essay paragraph structure but include examples and data from the case as additional evidence to support your points (see Figure 20.5 ). The colours in the sample paragraph below show the function of each component.

The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) Code of Conduct and Nursing Standards (2018) play a crucial role in determining the scope of practice for nurses and midwives. A key component discussed in the code is the provision of person-centred care and the formation of therapeutic relationships between nurses and patients (NMBA, 2018). This ensures patient safety and promotes health and wellbeing (NMBA, 2018). The standards also discuss the importance of partnership and shared decision-making in the delivery of care (NMBA, 2018, 4). Boyd and Dare (2014) argue that good communication skills are vital for building therapeutic relationships and trust between patients and care givers. This will help ensure the patient is treated with dignity and respect and improve their overall hospital experience. In the case, the therapeutic relationship with the client has been compromised in several ways. Firstly, the nurse did not conform adequately to the guidelines for seeking informed consent before performing the examination as outlined in principle 2.3 (NMBA, 2018). Although she explained the procedure, she failed to give the patient appropriate choices regarding her health care. 

Topic sentence | Explanations using paraphrased evidence including in-text references | Critical thinking (asks the so what? question to demonstrate your student voice). | Relating the theory back to the specifics of the case. The case becomes a source of examples as extra evidence to support the points you are making.

Reports are a common form of assessment at university and are also used widely in many professions. It is a common form of writing in business, government, scientific, and technical occupations.

Reports can take many different structures. A report is normally written to present information in a structured manner, which may include explaining laboratory experiments, technical information, or a business case.  Reports may be written for different audiences including clients, your manager, technical staff, or senior leadership within an organisation. The structure of reports can vary, and it is important to consider what format is required. The choice of structure will depend upon professional requirements and the ultimate aims of the report. Consider some of the options in the table below (see Table 20.2 ).

Table 20.2 Explanations of different types of reports

Reflective writing

Reflective writing is a popular method of assessment at university. It is used to help you explore feelings, experiences, opinions, events or new information to gain a clearer and deeper understanding of your learning. A reflective writing task requires more than a description or summary.  It requires you to analyse a situation, problem or experience, consider what you may have learnt and evaluate how this may impact your thinking and actions in the future. This requires critical thinking, analysis, and usually the application of good quality research, to demonstrate your understanding or learning from a situation. Essentially, reflective practice is the process of looking back on past experiences and engaging with them in a thoughtful way and drawing conclusions to inform future experiences. The reflection skills you develop at university will be vital in the workplace to assist you to use feedback for growth and continuous improvement. There are numerous models of reflective writing and you should refer to your subject guidelines for your expected format. If there is no specific framework, a simple model to help frame your thinking is What? So what? Now what?   (Rolfe et al., 2001).

Table 20.3 What? So What? Now What? Explained.

The Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle

The Gibbs’ Cycle of reflection encourages you to consider your feelings as part of the reflective process. There are six specific steps to work through. Following this model carefully and being clear of the requirements of each stage, will help you focus your thinking and reflect more deeply. This model is popular in Health.

The 4 R’s of reflective thinking

This model (Ryan and Ryan, 2013) was designed specifically for university students engaged in experiential learning.  Experiential learning includes any ‘real-world’ activities including practice led activities, placements and internships.  Experiential learning, and the use of reflective practice to heighten this learning, is common in Creative Arts, Health and Education.

Annotated Bibliography

What is it.

An annotated bibliography is an alphabetical list of appropriate sources (books, journals or websites) on a topic, accompanied by a brief summary, evaluation and sometimes an explanation or reflection on their usefulness or relevance to your topic. Its purpose is to teach you to research carefully, evaluate sources and systematically organise your notes. An annotated bibliography may be one part of a larger assessment item or a stand-alone assessment piece. Check your task guidelines for the number of sources you are required to annotate and the word limit for each entry.

How do I know what to include?

When choosing sources for your annotated bibliography it is important to determine:

• The topic you are investigating and if there is a specific question to answer
• The type of sources on which you need to focus
• Whether they are reputable and of high quality

What do I say?

Important considerations include:

• Is the work current?
• Is the work relevant to your topic?
• Is the author credible/reliable?
• Is there any author bias?
• The strength and limitations (this may include an evaluation of research methodology).

Literature Reviews

It is easy to get confused by the terminology used for literature reviews. Some tasks may be described as a systematic literature review when actually the requirement is simpler; to review the literature on the topic but do it in a systematic way. There is a distinct difference (see Table 20.4 ). As a commencing undergraduate student, it is unlikely you would be expected to complete a systematic literature review as this is a complex and more advanced research task. It is important to check with your lecturer or tutor if you are unsure of the requirements.

Table 20.4 Comparison of Literature Reviews

Generally, you are required to establish the main ideas that have been written on your chosen topic. You may also be expected to identify gaps in the research. A literature review does not summarise and evaluate each resource you find (this is what you would do in an annotated bibliography). You are expected to analyse and synthesise or organise common ideas from multiple texts into key themes which are relevant to your topic (see Figure 20.10 ). Use a table or a spreadsheet, if you know how, to organise the information you find. Record the full reference details of the sources as this will save you time later when compiling your reference list (see Table 20.5 ).

Overall, this chapter has provided an introduction to the types of assignments you can expect to complete at university, as well as outlined some tips and strategies with examples and templates for completing them. First, the chapter investigated essay assignments, including analytical and argumentative essays. It then examined case study assignments, followed by a discussion of the report format. Reflective writing , popular in nursing, education and human services, was also considered. Finally, the chapter briefly addressed annotated bibliographies and literature reviews. The chapter also has a selection of templates and examples throughout to enhance your understanding and improve the efficacy of your assignment writing skills.

• Not all assignments at university are the same. Understanding the requirements of different types of assignments will assist in meeting the criteria more effectively.
• There are many different types of assignments. Most will require an introduction, body paragraphs and a conclusion.
• An essay should have a clear and logical structure and use formal but reader friendly language.
• Breaking your assignment into manageable chunks makes it easier to approach.
• Effective body paragraphs contain a topic sentence.
• A case study structure is similar to an essay, but you must remember to provide examples from the case or scenario to demonstrate your points.
• The type of report you may be required to write will depend on its purpose and audience. A report requires structured writing and uses headings.
• Reflective writing is popular in many disciplines and is used to explore feelings, experiences, opinions or events to discover what learning or understanding has occurred. Reflective writing requires more than description. You need to be analytical, consider what has been learnt and evaluate the impact of this on future actions.
• Annotated bibliographies teach you to research and evaluate sources and systematically organise your notes. They may be part of a larger assignment.
• Literature reviews require you to look across the literature and analyse and synthesise the information you find into themes.

Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford.

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ryan, M. & Ryan, M. (2013). Theorising a model for teaching and assessing reflective learning in higher education.  Higher Education Research & Development , 32(2), 244-257. doi: 10.1080/07294360.2012.661704

Academic Success Copyright © 2021 by Cristy Bartlett and Kate Derrington is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Finish a Huge Assignment or Project Overnight

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The great American writer Mark Twain once said,

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done the day after tomorrow just as well.”

When we live by that advice, though, we sometimes find ourselves chugging concentrated coffee at 2 a.m. in a valiant effort to stay awake and finish a huge project that’s due in 6 hours.

As productive as I’d like to think I am… I’ve been there.

If you’ve been there as well – or maybe if you’re there right now – this week’s video is for you. I’m not going to waste time lecturing you about the importance of planning, there are other videos for that – let’s just look at the best plan of attack when you find yourself in a time crunch.

Now, we’re going to look at some specific concepts related to planning and willpower in a minute – The Impact Effort Matrix, Ego Depletion – but let’s start with the foundation: location selection .

I think your location is vital when you’re working under pressure, and personally I like to pick my study locations based on their “vibe” – that is, what’s going on around me. I tend to favor coffee shops and libraries – I still go to my university library at times even though I’ve graduated – because I work well when I’m surrounded by other people who are also working. Also, close proximity to caffeine is helpful.

The most important part of location selection, though, is avoiding the “call of the pillow”. When you’re studying in a time crunch, it’s likely you’ll be doing it late into the night. That’s why you want to get as far away from your bed as possible.

The later it gets, the more you’ll start rationalizing how good a nap might be and the more you’ll start deciding that certain parts of your project don’t matter. So pick a place where going to bed would be more effort than finishing the next part of your project.

That piece of business taken care of, it’s now time to plan your efforts . Before you start working, take some time to break down your workload into individual parts. Then, it’s time to figure out which ones should get the bulk of your attention.

Dwight Eisenhower often remarked that,

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , Steven Covey popularized the “Eisenhower Decision Matrix”, which is based on this principle. In the matrix, tasks are categorized based on their importance and urgency.

When you’re in a time crunch, though, everything can seem urgent – so importance is the factor you should focus on in this case. To that end, let’s use a similar but more fitting tool – the Impact/Effort matrix .

Here, tasks in a project are given scores based on their impact to the overall success of the project and the effort it will take to implement them. To illustrate how this works, here’s an example from my life.

When I was a senior in college, one of my final projects was building a web app. My idea was called AMPanic, and it was an app that would require you to log in and tell if you’re awake before a certain time – otherwise it would send an embarrassing email to someone. This was actually the precursor to the early wake-up system I use now, which I detailed in this video .

With this project, though, I found myself in a time crunch trying to finish it. So I broke my project down into different parts that I’d have to code and prioritized them using this Impact/Effort matrix.

The core functionality – the code that would let you set an alarm and an email message, the code that would schedule and send the email on time, and the function to cancel the email if the user checked in on time in the morning – those required a lot of effort to build, but they also had the highest impact on the project.

On the other hand, some parts of the site – like the About, FAQ, and Contact pages – didn’t have as high of an impact, but they were low-effort tasks. Since they didn’t take much time to create, I made sure to include them to make the site look more complete.

The main element of the site that I chose NOT to focus on was the user registration and login system. A proper one needs functions for resetting passwords, but I decided that the core alarm setting functionality would be more important to my grade since that was the point of the whole project. So I used a login system I had written for an old project and didn’t bother creating a way to reset passwords.

In the end, it was a worthwhile decision; the alarm system was more advanced than most of the other projects in the class, so I ended up getting an A.

To assign Impact/Effort scores to each component of your project – or each assignment if you’re juggling multiple – consider the following factors:

• What the core deliverables are
• The grading criteria for the project, what which components count for the most points
• What percentage of your grade each assignment counts for
• How much each component will contribute to the knowledge you need to have for tests, which usually impact your grade the most

Once you’e assigned scores to each component, I think it’s a good idea to tackle the ones with the highest impact and highest effort first. This is due to Ego Depletion – a phenomenon explained in Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow . Citing research from the psychologist Roy Baumeister, he reveals that:

“…an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around.”

Use the bulk of your willpower to complete the harder tasks first; that way, you’ll only have to deal with low-effort, high-impact tasks when you’re feeling drained.

That’s where we’re going to close for this week. If you select your location well, plan based on impact and effort, and tackle your tasks in a way that utilizes your willpower effectively, you’ll make if through your time crunch in one piece.

Need help finishing a personal project you’ve been procrastinating on? Read this next .

If you’re unable to see the video above, you can view it on YouTube .

Looking for More Study Tips?

You’ll find more tips on planning, study environments, and maintaining willpower in my free 100+ page book called 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less) .

The book covers topics like:

• Defeating procrastination
• Getting more out of your classes
• Taking great notes
• Reading your textbooks more efficiently

…and several more. It also has a lot of recommendations for tools and other resources that can make your studying easier.

If you’d like a free copy of the book, let me know where I should send it:

I’ll also keep you updated about new posts and videos that come out on this blog (they’ll be just as good as this one or better) 🙂

Video Notes

• Eisenhower Decision Matrix
• Impact/Effort Matrix
• Ego Depletion

What other topics related to working under tight deadlines would you like to see covered in the future?

Do you have any additional tips? Share them below 🙂

If you liked this video, subscribe on YouTube to stay updated and get notified when new ones are out!

Images: Eisenhower , Twain , Twain living room , James Cameron , ocean trench , Everest , wall of books , Big Ben , coffee shop

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Spring 2024)
• Workshop Registration

Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper

Single-Point Rubric

More examples:

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

What Is Project Management? Definitions, Examples & More

Updated: May 29, 2024, 3:58pm

The goal of project management is to help a team achieve a goal or solve a problem with a set deadline. The project manager owns responsibility for the team hitting its deadline and meeting the goal. But what is project management exactly, and how does it work? Here’s a primer on everything you need to know to get your projects on track.

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Related: Best Project Management Software

What Is Project Management?

Project management uses processes, skills, tools and knowledge to complete a planned project and achieve its goals. It differs from general management because of the limited scope of a project, concrete deadlines and specific deliverables.

A project exists temporarily and must balance the involved team members’ time and usually the organization’s limited financial resources—a daunting task but one that can be accomplished in a few deliberate steps that utilize special methods and tools.

Steps of Project Management

Project management begins when a manager or team initiates a project. The five phases of project management include:

• The initiation phase. The project manager will assign—or ask for team members to volunteer—to complete specific tasks.
• The planning phase. The team agrees on a schedule with the client or among themselves for the project. The team may also create a communication schedule with key stakeholders, determine the project’s standards and set a budget during this phase.
• The execution phase. This phase is where the work gets done. Employees may work independently or as a team on tasks that were determined during the previous phases.
• The monitoring phase. The project manager monitors each person or team’s progress along the way to ensure the project is on track to meet the overall deadline and achieve its goals. This phase often happens simultaneous to the execution phase.
• The closing phase. Finally, the project manager ensures the team completed the project to the agreed-upon standards and communicates that the team completed the project.

Project Management Tools and Techniques

Even though every project has its own goals and challenges, team members can utilize similar project management tools and techniques to complete their various deliverables.

For example, a deliberate communication plan can serve as one of the most valuable tools in a project manager’s toolkit. A strong project manager communicates with all stakeholders and facilitates strong communication among team members working on the project.

And during the monitoring and execution phase, well-organized project managers may also rely on software to keep themselves and their team on track.

One software program won’t meet all your needs for every project but programs like Trello , Asana or Airtable will help your team members track their and each other’s progress. The software also makes it clear who owns responsibility for which task.

In addition, project managers may use traditional tools such as the Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Gantt charts to guide their teams’ work. PERT helps define the project’s scope and helps monitor the tasks that the team needs to complete. Gantt charts show the timeline and calendar view of when assignments are due. Many project management software applications now do this digitally.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the different types of project management methods, and which one is right for me.

There are dozens of project management types , and they all have different benefits and limitations that make them good for some environments, and bad for others.

What are the best project management tools and software?

To determine the best project management software , we ranked several tools based on ease of use, cost to your organization, each company’s customer support, as well as special features.

Wrike was our top choice. It earned the top spot because it works for companies and teams of all sizes. Airbnb, Google and Dell all trust Wrike to aid their project managers. Wrike also allows teams to create custom workflows, set timelines with interactive charts and reporting and build a visual representation that shows the progress of every project in real-time.

Other highly ranked project management tools include Asana, Monday and HighGear.

Who are project managers, and what do they do?

For the best chance at success, every project needs an owner who is responsible for its completion and success. Project managers exist to fill this need, keep a team on task and ensure the project meets the needs of all stakeholders. This designation could be a subset of responsibilities—or an official job title.

A diverse range of industries requires the skills of a talented project manager. You can be a project manager in construction, publishing, finance, professional services, utilities and many other industries. Despite the final result of the projects looking very different across these industries, the steps and skills to keep a team organized fluently translate across the business world.

Why is project management important?

Project management is important in business because it helps you complete projects successfully and hit goals for yourself and your clients.

Coordinating a multifaceted project for which several people owe deliverables, keeping everyone organized and ensuring the output meets expectations—all this while under the stress of a deadline—presents a challenge for even the most experienced project manager.

These challenges become more feasible through project management best practices.

• Best Project Management Software
• Best Construction Project Management Software
• Best Project Portfolio Management Software
• Best Gantt Chart Software
• Best Task Management Software
• Best Free Project Management Software
• Best Enterprise Project Management Software
• Best Kanban Software
• Best Scrum Software
• Asana Review
• Trello Review
• monday.com Review
• Smartsheet Review
• Wrike Review
• Todoist Review
• Basecamp Review
• Confluence Review
• Airtable Review
• ClickUp Review
• Monday vs. Asana
• Clickup vs. Asana
• Asana vs. Trello
• Asana vs. Jira
• Trello vs. Jira
• Monday vs. Trello
• Clickup vs. Trello
• Asana vs. Wrike
• Project Management Methodologies
• 10 Essential Project Management Skills
• SMART Goals: Ultimate Guide
• What is a Gantt Chart?
• What is a Kanban Board?
• What is a RACI Chart?
• What is Gap Analysis?
• Work Breakdown Structure Guide
• Agile vs. Waterfall Methodology
• What is a Stakeholder Analysis
• What Is An OKR?

What Is SNMP? Simple Network Management Protocol Explained

What Is A Single-Member LLC? Definition, Pros And Cons

What Is Penetration Testing? Definition & Best Practices

What Is Network Access Control (NAC)?

What Is Network Segmentation?

How To Start A Business In Louisiana (2024 Guide)

Meredith Galante is a full-time freelance writer living in New York City. She's been covering small businesses, the wine and spirits industry, and more for the last 10 years. Meredith graduated from the SI Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with a degree in magazine journalism and political science.

Adam Hardy is a former assistant editor at Forbes Advisor, where he covered small business and tech. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder, specializing in the gig economy and entrepreneurship. His work has appeared in the Asia Times, Business Insider, Creative Loafing, the Tampa Bay Times, Yahoo! Finance and other publications.

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Designing Assignments for Learning

The rapid shift to remote teaching and learning meant that many instructors reimagined their assessment practices. Whether adapting existing assignments or creatively designing new opportunities for their students to learn, instructors focused on helping students make meaning and demonstrate their learning outside of the traditional, face-to-face classroom setting. This resource distills the elements of assignment design that are important to carry forward as we continue to seek better ways of assessing learning and build on our innovative assignment designs.

On this page:

Rethinking traditional tests, quizzes, and exams.

• Examples from the Columbia University Classroom
• Tips for Designing Assignments for Learning

Reflect On Your Assignment Design

Connect with the ctl.

• Resources and References

Cite this resource: Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2021). Designing Assignments for Learning. Columbia University. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/teaching-with-technology/teaching-online/designing-assignments/

Traditional assessments tend to reveal whether students can recognize, recall, or replicate what was learned out of context, and tend to focus on students providing correct responses (Wiggins, 1990). In contrast, authentic assignments, which are course assessments, engage students in higher order thinking, as they grapple with real or simulated challenges that help them prepare for their professional lives, and draw on the course knowledge learned and the skills acquired to create justifiable answers, performances or products (Wiggins, 1990). An authentic assessment provides opportunities for students to practice, consult resources, learn from feedback, and refine their performances and products accordingly (Wiggins 1990, 1998, 2014). 

Authentic assignments ask students to “do” the subject with an audience in mind and apply their learning in a new situation. Examples of authentic assignments include asking students to: 

• Write for a real audience (e.g., a memo, a policy brief, letter to the editor, a grant proposal, reports, building a website) and/or publication;
• Solve problem sets that have real world application; 
• Design projects that address a real world problem; 
• Engage in a community-partnered research project;
• Create an exhibit, performance, or conference presentation ;
• Compile and reflect on their work through a portfolio/e-portfolio.

Noteworthy elements of authentic designs are that instructors scaffold the assignment, and play an active role in preparing students for the tasks assigned, while students are intentionally asked to reflect on the process and product of their work thus building their metacognitive skills (Herrington and Oliver, 2000; Ashford-Rowe, Herrington and Brown, 2013; Frey, Schmitt, and Allen, 2012). 

It’s worth noting here that authentic assessments can initially be time consuming to design, implement, and grade. They are critiqued for being challenging to use across course contexts and for grading reliability issues (Maclellan, 2004). Despite these challenges, authentic assessments are recognized as beneficial to student learning (Svinicki, 2004) as they are learner-centered (Weimer, 2013), promote academic integrity (McLaughlin, L. and Ricevuto, 2021; Sotiriadou et al., 2019; Schroeder, 2021) and motivate students to learn (Ambrose et al., 2010). The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning is always available to consult with faculty who are considering authentic assessment designs and to discuss challenges and affordances.   

Examples from the Columbia University Classroom 

Columbia instructors have experimented with alternative ways of assessing student learning from oral exams to technology-enhanced assignments. Below are a few examples of authentic assignments in various teaching contexts across Columbia University. 

• E-portfolios: Statia Cook shares her experiences with an ePorfolio assignment in her co-taught Frontiers of Science course (a submission to the Voices of Hybrid and Online Teaching and Learning initiative); CUIMC use of ePortfolios ;
• Case studies: Columbia instructors have engaged their students in authentic ways through case studies drawing on the Case Consortium at Columbia University. Read and watch a faculty spotlight to learn how Professor Mary Ann Price uses the case method to place pre-med students in real-life scenarios;
• Simulations: students at CUIMC engage in simulations to develop their professional skills in The Mary & Michael Jaharis Simulation Center in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Helene Fuld Health Trust Simulation Center in the Columbia School of Nursing; 
• Experiential learning: instructors have drawn on New York City as a learning laboratory such as Barnard’s NYC as Lab webpage which highlights courses that engage students in NYC;
• Design projects that address real world problems: Yevgeniy Yesilevskiy on the Engineering design projects completed using lab kits during remote learning. Watch Dr. Yesilevskiy talk about his teaching and read the Columbia News article . 
• Writing assignments: Lia Marshall and her teaching associate Aparna Balasundaram reflect on their “non-disposable or renewable assignments” to prepare social work students for their professional lives as they write for a real audience; and Hannah Weaver spoke about a sandbox assignment used in her Core Literature Humanities course at the 2021 Celebration of Teaching and Learning Symposium . Watch Dr. Weaver share her experiences.  

​Tips for Designing Assignments for Learning

While designing an effective authentic assignment may seem like a daunting task, the following tips can be used as a starting point. See the Resources section for frameworks and tools that may be useful in this effort.  

Align the assignment with your course learning objectives 

Identify the kind of thinking that is important in your course, the knowledge students will apply, and the skills they will practice using through the assignment. What kind of thinking will students be asked to do for the assignment? What will students learn by completing this assignment? How will the assignment help students achieve the desired course learning outcomes? For more information on course learning objectives, see the CTL’s Course Design Essentials self-paced course and watch the video on Articulating Learning Objectives .  

Identify an authentic meaning-making task

For meaning-making to occur, students need to understand the relevance of the assignment to the course and beyond (Ambrose et al., 2010). To Bean (2011) a “meaning-making” or “meaning-constructing” task has two dimensions: 1) it presents students with an authentic disciplinary problem or asks students to formulate their own problems, both of which engage them in active critical thinking, and 2) the problem is placed in “a context that gives students a role or purpose, a targeted audience, and a genre.” (Bean, 2011: 97-98). 

An authentic task gives students a realistic challenge to grapple with, a role to take on that allows them to “rehearse for the complex ambiguities” of life, provides resources and supports to draw on, and requires students to justify their work and the process they used to inform their solution (Wiggins, 1990). Note that if students find an assignment interesting or relevant, they will see value in completing it. 

Consider the kind of activities in the real world that use the knowledge and skills that are the focus of your course. How is this knowledge and these skills applied to answer real-world questions to solve real-world problems? (Herrington et al., 2010: 22). What do professionals or academics in your discipline do on a regular basis? What does it mean to think like a biologist, statistician, historian, social scientist? How might your assignment ask students to draw on current events, issues, or problems that relate to the course and are of interest to them? How might your assignment tap into student motivation and engage them in the kinds of thinking they can apply to better understand the world around them? (Ambrose et al., 2010). 

Determine the evaluation criteria and create a rubric

To ensure equitable and consistent grading of assignments across students, make transparent the criteria you will use to evaluate student work. The criteria should focus on the knowledge and skills that are central to the assignment. Build on the criteria identified, create a rubric that makes explicit the expectations of deliverables and share this rubric with your students so they can use it as they work on the assignment. For more information on rubrics, see the CTL’s resource Incorporating Rubrics into Your Grading and Feedback Practices , and explore the Association of American Colleges & Universities VALUE Rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education). 

Build in metacognition

Ask students to reflect on what and how they learned from the assignment. Help students uncover personal relevance of the assignment, find intrinsic value in their work, and deepen their motivation by asking them to reflect on their process and their assignment deliverable. Sample prompts might include: what did you learn from this assignment? How might you draw on the knowledge and skills you used on this assignment in the future? See Ambrose et al., 2010 for more strategies that support motivation and the CTL’s resource on Metacognition ). 

Provide students with opportunities to practice

Design your assignment to be a learning experience and prepare students for success on the assignment. If students can reasonably expect to be successful on an assignment when they put in the required effort ,with the support and guidance of the instructor, they are more likely to engage in the behaviors necessary for learning (Ambrose et al., 2010). Ensure student success by actively teaching the knowledge and skills of the course (e.g., how to problem solve, how to write for a particular audience), modeling the desired thinking, and creating learning activities that build up to a graded assignment. Provide opportunities for students to practice using the knowledge and skills they will need for the assignment, whether through low-stakes in-class activities or homework activities that include opportunities to receive and incorporate formative feedback. For more information on providing feedback, see the CTL resource Feedback for Learning . 

Communicate about the assignment 

Share the purpose, task, audience, expectations, and criteria for the assignment. Students may have expectations about assessments and how they will be graded that is informed by their prior experiences completing high-stakes assessments, so be transparent. Tell your students why you are asking them to do this assignment, what skills they will be using, how it aligns with the course learning outcomes, and why it is relevant to their learning and their professional lives (i.e., how practitioners / professionals use the knowledge and skills in your course in real world contexts and for what purposes). Finally, verify that students understand what they need to do to complete the assignment. This can be done by asking students to respond to poll questions about different parts of the assignment, a “scavenger hunt” of the assignment instructions–giving students questions to answer about the assignment and having them work in small groups to answer the questions, or by having students share back what they think is expected of them.

Plan to iterate and to keep the focus on learning 

Draw on multiple sources of data to help make decisions about what changes are needed to the assignment, the assignment instructions, and/or rubric to ensure that it contributes to student learning. Explore assignment performance data. As Deandra Little reminds us: “a really good assignment, which is a really good assessment, also teaches you something or tells the instructor something. As much as it tells you what students are learning, it’s also telling you what they aren’t learning.” ( Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode 337 ). Assignment bottlenecks–where students get stuck or struggle–can be good indicators that students need further support or opportunities to practice prior to completing an assignment. This awareness can inform teaching decisions. 

Triangulate the performance data by collecting student feedback, and noting your own reflections about what worked well and what did not. Revise the assignment instructions, rubric, and teaching practices accordingly. Consider how you might better align your assignment with your course objectives and/or provide more opportunities for students to practice using the knowledge and skills that they will rely on for the assignment. Additionally, keep in mind societal, disciplinary, and technological changes as you tweak your assignments for future use. 

Now is a great time to reflect on your practices and experiences with assignment design and think critically about your approach. Take a closer look at an existing assignment. Questions to consider include: What is this assignment meant to do? What purpose does it serve? Why do you ask students to do this assignment? How are they prepared to complete the assignment? Does the assignment assess the kind of learning that you really want? What would help students learn from this assignment? 

Using the tips in the previous section: How can the assignment be tweaked to be more authentic and meaningful to students? 

As you plan forward for post-pandemic teaching and reflect on your practices and reimagine your course design, you may find the following CTL resources helpful: Reflecting On Your Experiences with Remote Teaching , Transition to In-Person Teaching , and Course Design Support .

The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is here to help!

For assistance with assignment design, rubric design, or any other teaching and learning need, please request a consultation by emailing [email protected] . 

Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework for assignments. The TILT Examples and Resources page ( https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources ) includes example assignments from across disciplines, as well as a transparent assignment template and a checklist for designing transparent assignments . Each emphasizes the importance of articulating to students the purpose of the assignment or activity, the what and how of the task, and specifying the criteria that will be used to assess students. 

Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) offers VALUE ADD (Assignment Design and Diagnostic) tools ( https://www.aacu.org/value-add-tools ) to help with the creation of clear and effective assignments that align with the desired learning outcomes and associated VALUE rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education). VALUE ADD encourages instructors to explicitly state assignment information such as the purpose of the assignment, what skills students will be using, how it aligns with course learning outcomes, the assignment type, the audience and context for the assignment, clear evaluation criteria, desired formatting, and expectations for completion whether individual or in a group.

Villarroel et al. (2017) propose a blueprint for building authentic assessments which includes four steps: 1) consider the workplace context, 2) design the authentic assessment; 3) learn and apply standards for judgement; and 4) give feedback. 

References 

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., & DiPietro, M. (2010). Chapter 3: What Factors Motivate Students to Learn? In How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching . Jossey-Bass. 

Ashford-Rowe, K., Herrington, J., and Brown, C. (2013). Establishing the critical elements that determine authentic assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 39(2), 205-222, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2013.819566 .  

Bean, J.C. (2011). Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom . Second Edition. Jossey-Bass. 

Frey, B. B, Schmitt, V. L., and Allen, J. P. (2012). Defining Authentic Classroom Assessment. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. 17(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.7275/sxbs-0829  

Herrington, J., Reeves, T. C., and Oliver, R. (2010). A Guide to Authentic e-Learning . Routledge. 

Herrington, J. and Oliver, R. (2000). An instructional design framework for authentic learning environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(3), 23-48. 

Litchfield, B. C. and Dempsey, J. V. (2015). Authentic Assessment of Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 142 (Summer 2015), 65-80. 

Maclellan, E. (2004). How convincing is alternative assessment for use in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 29(3), June 2004. DOI: 10.1080/0260293042000188267

McLaughlin, L. and Ricevuto, J. (2021). Assessments in a Virtual Environment: You Won’t Need that Lockdown Browser! Faculty Focus. June 2, 2021. 

Mueller, J. (2005). The Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Enhancing Student Learning through Online Faculty Development . MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 1(1). July 2005. Mueller’s Authentic Assessment Toolbox is available online. 

Schroeder, R. (2021). Vaccinate Against Cheating With Authentic Assessment . Inside Higher Ed. (February 26, 2021).  

Sotiriadou, P., Logan, D., Daly, A., and Guest, R. (2019). The role of authentic assessment to preserve academic integrity and promote skills development and employability. Studies in Higher Education. 45(111), 2132-2148. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1582015    

Stachowiak, B. (Host). (November 25, 2020). Authentic Assignments with Deandra Little. (Episode 337). In Teaching in Higher Ed . https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/authentic-assignments/  

Svinicki, M. D. (2004). Authentic Assessment: Testing in Reality. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 100 (Winter 2004): 23-29. 

Villarroel, V., Bloxham, S, Bruna, D., Bruna, C., and Herrera-Seda, C. (2017). Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 43(5), 840-854. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2017.1412396    

Weimer, M. (2013). Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice . Second Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Wiggins, G. (2014). Authenticity in assessment, (re-)defined and explained. Retrieved from https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/authenticity-in-assessment-re-defined-and-explained/

Wiggins, G. (1998). Teaching to the (Authentic) Test. Educational Leadership . April 1989. 41-47. 

Wiggins, Grant (1990). The Case for Authentic Assessment . Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation , 2(2). 

Wondering how AI tools might play a role in your course assignments?

See the CTL’s resource “Considerations for AI Tools in the Classroom.”

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Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, what are the benefits of group work.

“More hands make for lighter work.” “Two heads are better than one.” “The more the merrier.”

These adages speak to the potential groups have to be more productive, creative, and motivated than individuals on their own.

Benefits for students

Group projects can help students develop a host of skills that are increasingly important in the professional world (Caruso & Woolley, 2008; Mannix & Neale, 2005). Positive group experiences, moreover, have been shown to contribute to student learning, retention and overall college success (Astin, 1997; Tinto, 1998; National Survey of Student Engagement, 2006).

Properly structured, group projects can reinforce skills that are relevant to both group and individual work, including the ability to: 

• Break complex tasks into parts and steps
• Plan and manage time
• Refine understanding through discussion and explanation
• Give and receive feedback on performance
• Challenge assumptions
• Develop stronger communication skills.

Group projects can also help students develop skills specific to collaborative efforts, allowing students to...

• Tackle more complex problems than they could on their own.
• Delegate roles and responsibilities.
• Share diverse perspectives.
• Pool knowledge and skills.
• Hold one another (and be held) accountable.
• Receive social support and encouragement to take risks.
• Develop new approaches to resolving differences. 
• Establish a shared identity with other group members.
• Find effective peers to emulate.
• Develop their own voice and perspectives in relation to peers.

While the potential learning benefits of group work are significant, simply assigning group work is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. In fact, group projects can – and often do – backfire badly when they are not designed , supervised , and assessed in a way that promotes meaningful teamwork and deep collaboration.

Benefits for instructors

Faculty can often assign more complex, authentic problems to groups of students than they could to individuals. Group work also introduces more unpredictability in teaching, since groups may approach tasks and solve problems in novel, interesting ways. This can be refreshing for instructors. Additionally, group assignments can be useful when there are a limited number of viable project topics to distribute among students. And they can reduce the number of final products instructors have to grade.

Whatever the benefits in terms of teaching, instructors should take care only to assign as group work tasks that truly fulfill the learning objectives of the course and lend themselves to collaboration. Instructors should also be aware that group projects can add work for faculty at different points in the semester and introduce its own grading complexities .

Astin, A. (1993). What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Caruso, H.M., & Wooley, A.W. (2008). Harnessing the power of emergent interdependence to promote diverse team collaboration. Diversity and Groups. 11, 245-266.

Mannix, E., & Neale, M.A. (2005). What differences make a difference? The promise and reality of diverse teams in organizations. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 6(2), 31-55.

National Survey of Student Engagement Report. (2006). http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2006_Annual_Report/docs/NSSE_2006_Annual_Report.pdf .

Tinto, V. (1987). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

25 Machine Learning Projects for All Levels

Undertaking machine learning projects can you master some of the skills you'll need to become a professional in this niche. This article is a structured guide designed for individuals at varying levels of expertise, offering a diverse range of projects to enhance practical understanding in this pivotal field of data science.

Machine learning is instrumental in solving real-world problems and unlocking new potentials. The projects highlighted herein are meticulously curated, covering applications from predictive analytics using Random Forests to developing AI-powered chatbots with Transformers, providing insights into the application of theoretical knowledge in real-world scenarios.

These projects are more than just exercises; they blend theory and practice, aimed at providing a deeper understanding of algorithms and enabling the extraction of actionable insights from varied datasets.

AI Upskilling for Beginners

Why start a machine learning project.

These projects, grounded in real-world applications, offer a comprehensive learning experience across diverse domains and technologies, enabling participants to bridge the theoretical-practical divide effectively. The diversity of the projects ensures a broad learning spectrum, allowing individuals to hone pivotal skills, from data processing to model evaluation, and build a robust portfolio showcasing their proficiency in machine learning. 

The benefits of undertaking machine learning projects include: 

• Practical experience . Undertaking such projects offers hands-on experience in applying theoretical knowledge to real-world problems, enhancing essential machine learning skills.
• Portfolio building . Completing projects allows you to create a robust portfolio, showcasing your skills and knowledge and enhancing employability in this competitive field.
• Problem solving . Projects foster innovative problem-solving and critical thinking, enabling a deeper understanding of machine learning functionalities.
• Continuous learning . The diverse nature of projects promotes exploration and continuous learning within various domains of machine learning.

Machine Learning Projects for Beginners 

These beginner machine learning projects consist of dealing with structured, tabular data. You will apply the skills of data cleaning, processing, and visualization for analytical purposes and use the scikit-learn framework to train and validate machine learning models. 

If you want to learn the basic concepts of machine learning first, we have an awesome no-code understanding machine learning course . You can also check out some of our AI projects if you're looking to improve your skills in that area. 

 1. Predict Taxi Fares with Random Forests

In the Predict Taxi Fares project, you will be predicting the location and time to earn the biggest fare using the New York taxi dataset. You use tidyverse for data processing and visualization. To predict location and time, you will experiment with a tree base model such as Decision Tree and Random Forest. 

The Predict Taxi Fare project is a guided project, but you can replicate the result on a different dataset, such as Seoul's Bike Sharing Demand . Working on a completely new dataset will help you with code debugging and improve your problem-solving skills.

2. Classify Song Genres from Audio Data

In the Classify Song Genres machine learning project , you will be using the song dataset to classify songs into two categories: 'Hip-Hop' or 'Rock.' You will check the correlation between features, normalize data using scikit-learn’s StandardScaler, apply PCA (Principal Component Analysis) on scaled data, and visualize the results. 

After that, you will use the scikit-learn Logistic Regression and Decision Tree model to train and validate the results. In this project, you will also learn some of the advanced techniques such as class balancing and cross-validation to reduce model bias and overfitting. 

Classifying Song Genres from Audio Data is a guided project. You can replicate the result on a different dataset, such as the Hotel Booking Demand one. You can use it to predict whether a customer will cancel the booking or not. 

3. Predicting Credit Card Approvals

In the Predicting Credit Card Approvals project, you will build an automatic credit card approval application using hyperparameter optimization and Logistic Regression. 

You will apply the skill of handling missing values, processing categorical features, feature scaling, dealing with unbalanced data, and performing automatic hyperparameter optimization using GridCV. This project will push you out of the comfort zone of handling simple and clean data. 

Image by Author

Predicting Credit Card Approvals is a guided project. You can replicate the result on a different dataset, such as the Loan Data from LendingClub.com. You can use it to build an automatic loan approval predictor. 

4. Store Sales 

Store Sales is a Kaggle getting started competition where participants train various time series models to improve their score on the leaderboard. 

In the project, you will be provided with store sales data, and you will clean the data, perform extensive time series analysis, feature scaling, and train the multivariate times series model. 

To improve your score on the leaderboard, you can use ensembling such as Bagging and Voting Regressors. 

Image from  Kaggle

Store Sales is a Kaggle-based project where you can look at other participants' notebooks. 

To improve your understanding of time series forecasting, try applying your skill to the Stock Exchange dataset and use Facebook Prophet to train a univariate time series forecasting model. 

5. Give Life: Predict Blood Donations

In the Give Life: Predict Blood Donations project, you will predict whether or not a donor will give blood in a given time window. The dataset used in the project is from a mobile blood donation vehicle in Taiwan, and as part of a blood donation drive, the blood transfusion service center drives to various universities to collect the blood. 

In this project, you are processing raw data and feeding it to TPOT Python AutoML(Automated Machine Learning) tool. It will search hundreds of machine learning pipelines to find the best one for our dataset. 

We will then use the information from TPOT to create our model with normalized features and get an even better score. 

Give Life: Predict Blood Donations is a guided project. You can replicate the result on a different dataset, such as the Unicorn Companies . You can use TPOT to predict whether a company reaches a valuation of over 5 billion. 

Learn the machine learning fundamentals to understand more about supervised and unsupervised learning. 

Intermediate Machine Learning Projects 

These intermediate machine learning projects focus on data processing and training models for structured and unstructured datasets. Learn to clean, process, and augment the dataset using various statistical tools. 

6. The Impact of Climate Change on Birds

In the Impact of Climate Change on Birds project, you will train the Logistic Regression model on bird sightings and climate data using caret. You will perform data cleaning and nesting, prepare data for spatial analytics, create pseudo-absences, train glmnet models, and visualize results of four decades on the map. 

The Impact of Climate Change on Birds is a guided intermediate machine learning project. You can replicate the result on a different dataset, such as the Airbnb Listings dataset. You can use caret to predict the price of the listings based on features and locations. 

Become a Machine Learning Scientist with R in 2 months and master various visualization and machine learning R packages. 

7. Find Movie Similarity from Plot Summaries

In the Find Movie Similarity from Plot Summaries project, you will use various NLP (Natural Language Processing) and KMeans to predict the similarity between movies based on the plot from IMDB and Wikipedia. 

You will learn to combine the data, perform Tokenization and stemming on text, transform it using TfidfVectorizer, create clusters using the KMeans algorithm, and finally plot the dendrogram.

Try replicating the result on a different dataset, such as the Netflix Movie dataset.

8. The Hottest Topics in Machine Learning

In the Hottest Topics in Machine Learning project, you will use text processing and LDA(Linear Discriminant Analysis) to discover the latest trend in machine learning from the large collection of NIPS research papers. You will perform text analysis, process the data for word cloud, prepare data for LDA analysis, and analyze trends with LDA.

9. Naïve Bees: Predict Species from Images

In the Naïve Bees: Predict Species from Images project, you will process the image and train the SVM(Support Vector Classifier) model to distinguish between a honey bee and a bumble bee. You will manipulate and process the images, extracting the feature and flattening it into a single row, using StandardScaler and PCA to prepare the data for the model, train the SVM model, and validate the results. 

10. Speech Emotion Recognition with librosa

In the Speech Emotion Recognition with Librosa project, you will process sound files using Librosa, sound file, and sklearn for the MLPClassifier to recognize emotion from sound files. 

You will load and process sound files, perform feature extraction, and train the Multi-Layer Perceptron classifier model. The project will teach you the basics of audio processing so that you can advance into training a deep learning model to achieve better accuracy. 

Image from researchgate.net

Advanced Machine Learning Projects 

These advanced machine learning projects focus on building and training deep learning models and processing unstructured datasets. You will train convolutional neural networks, gated recurrent units, finetune large language models, and reinforcement learning models.

11. Build Rick Sanchez Bot Using Transformers

In the Build Rick Sanchez Bot Using Transformers project, you will use DialoGPT and the Hugging Face Transformer library to build your AI-powered chatbot. 

You will process and transform your data, build and finetune Microsoft’s Large-scale Pretrained Response Generation Model (DialoGPT) on Rick and Morty dialogues dataset. You can also create a simple Gradio app to test your model in real-time: Rick & Morty Block Party . 

12. ASL Recognition with Deep Learning

In the ASL Recognition project, you will use Keras to build a CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) for American Sign Language image classification. 

You will visualize the images and analyze the data, process the data for the modeling phase, compile, train, and CNN on the image dataset, and visualize the wrong predictions. You will use the wrong predictions to improve the model performance. 

Read a Deep Learning tutorial to understand the basics and real-world applications. 

13. Naïve Bees: Deep Learning with Images

In the Naïve Bees project, you will build and train a deep learning model to distinguish between honey bees and bumble bees images. You will start with image and label data processing. 

Then, you will normalize the image and split the dataset into test and evaluation. After that, you will build and compile deep convolutional neural networks using Keras, and finally, you will train and evaluate the results.  

14. Stock Market Analysis And Forecasting Using Deep Learning

In the Stock Market Analysis And Forecasting project, you will use GRUs (Gated Recurrent Unit) to build deep learning forecasting models for predicting stock prices of Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft. 

In the first part, you will dive deep into times series analytics to learn about trends and seasonality of stock price, and then you will use this information to process your data and build a GRU model using PyTorch. For guidance, you can check out the code source on GitHub. 

Image from Soham Nandi

15. Reinforcement Learning for Connect X

The Connect X is a getting started simulation competition by Kaggle. Build an RL (Reinforcement Learning) agent to compete against other Kaggle competition participants. 

You will first learn how the game works and create a dummy functional agent for a baseline. After that, you will start experimenting with various RL algorithms and model architectures. You can try building a model on Deep Q-learning or Proximal Policy Optimization algorithm.

Gif from Connect X | Kaggle

Start your professional machine learning journey by taking Machine Learning Scientist with Python career track. 

Machine Learning Projects for Final Year Students

The final year project requires you to spend a certain amount of time producing a unique solution. You will research multiple model architecture, use various machine learning frameworks to normalize and augment the datasets, understand the math behind the process, and write a thesis based on your results. 

16. Multi-Lingual ASR With Transformers 

In the Multi-Lingual ASR model, you will fine-tune the Wave2Vec XLS-R model using Turkish audio and transcription to build an automatic speech recognition system. 

First, you will understand the audio files and text dataset, then use a text tokenizer, extract features, and process the audio files. After that, you will create a trainer, WER function, load pretrained models, tune hyperparameters, and train and evaluate the model. 

You can use the Hugging Face platform to store the model weights and publish web apps to transcript speech in real-time: Streaming Urdu Asr .

Image from huggingface.co

17. One Shot Face Stylization

In the One Shot Face Stylization project, you can either modify the model to improve the results or finetune JoJoGAN on a new dataset to create your stylization application. 

It will use the original image to generate a new image using GAN inversion and fine-tuning a pre-trained StyleGAN. You will understand various generative adversarial network architects. After that, you will start collecting a paired dataset to create a style of your choice. 

Then, with the help of a sample solution of the previous version of StyleGAN, you will experiment with the new architect to produce realistic art. 

Image was created using JoJoGAN

18. H&M Personalized Fashion Recommendations

In the H&M Personalized Fashion Recommendations project, you will build product recommendations based on previous transactions, customer data, and product metadata. 

The project will test your NLP, CV (Computer Vision), and deep learning skills. In the first few weeks, you will understand the data and how you can use various features to come up with a baseline. 

Then, create a simple model that only takes the text and categorical features to predict recommendations. After that, move on to combining NLP and CV to improve your score on the leaderboard. You can also get better at understanding the problem by reviewing community discussions and code. 

Image from H&M EDA FIRST LOOK

19. Reinforcement Learning Agent for Atari 2600

In the MuZero for Atari 2600 project, you will build, train, and validate the reinforcement learning agent using the MuZero algorithm for Atari 2600 games. Read the tutorial to understand more about the MuZero algorithm.  

The goal is to build a new or modify existing architecture to improve the score on a global leaderboard. It will take more than three months to understand how the algorithm works in reinforcement learning. 

This project is math-heavy and requires you to have Python expertise. You can find proposed solutions, but to achieve top rank in the world, you have to build your solution.

Gif from Author | Hugging Face

20. MLOps End-To-End Machine Learning

The MLOps End-To-End Machine Learning project is necessary for you to get hired by top companies. Nowadays, recruiters are looking for ML engineers who can create end-to-end systems using MLOps tools, data orchestration, and cloud computing. 

In this project, you will build and deploy a location image classifier using TensorFlow, Streamlit, Docker, Kubernetes, cloudbuild, GitHub, and Google Cloud. The main goal is to automate building and deploying machine learning models into production using CI/CD. For guidance, read Machine Learning, Pipelines, Deployment, and MLOps tutorial. 

Image from Senthil E

Machine Learning Projects for Portfolio Building

For building your machine learning portfolio, you need projects that stand out. Show the hiring manager or recruiter that you can write code in multiple languages, understand various machine learning frameworks, solve unique problems using machine learning, and understand the end-to-end machine learning ecosystem. 

21. BERT Text Classifier on Tensor Processing Unit 

In the BERT Text Classifier project, you will use the large language model and fine-tune it on the Arabizi language using TPU (Tensor Processing Unit). You will learn to process text data using TensorFlow, modify the model architecture to get better results, and train it using Google’s TPUs. It will reduce your training time by 10X compared to GPUs. 

Image from Hugging Face

22. Image Classification Using Julia

In the Image Classification Using FastAI.jl project, you will use Julia, which is designed for high-performance machine learning tasks to create simple image classification. You will learn a new language and a machine learning framework called FastAI. 

You will also learn about FastAI API to process and visualize the imagenette2–160 datasets, load the ResNet18 pretrained model and train it using GPU. This project will open a new world for you to explore and develop deep learning solutions using Julia. 

Image from Author

23. Image Caption Generator

In the Image Caption Generator project, you will use Pytorch to build CNN and LSTM models to create image caption generators. You will learn to process text and image data, build a CNN encoder and RNN decoder, and train it on tuned hyperparameters. 

To build the best caption generator, you need to learn about encoder-decoder architecture, NLP, CNN, LSTM, and experience in creating trainer and validation functions using Pytorch. 

Image from Automatic Image Captioning Using Deep Learning

24. Generate Music using Neural Networks

In the Generate Music project, you will use Music21 and Keras to build the LSTM model for generating music. You will learn about MIDI files, Notes, and Chords and train the LSTM model using MIDI files. 

You will also learn to create model architecture, checkpoints, and loss functions and learn to predict notes using random input. The main goal is to use MIDI files to train neural networks, extract output from the model, and convert them into the MP3 music file. 

Image from Sigurður Skúli | Music generated by the LSTM network

25. Deploying Machine Learning Application to the Production

The Deploying Machine Learning Application to the Production project is highly recommended for machine learning professionals looking for better opportunities in the field. 

In this project, you will deploy machine learning applications on the cloud using Plotly, Transformers, MLFlow, Streamlit, DVC, GIT, DagsHub, and Amazon EC2. It is a perfect way to showcase your MLOps skills. 

Image from Zoumana Keita

How to Start a Machine Learning Project?

There are no standard steps in a typical machine learning project. So, it can be just data collection, data preparation, and model training. In this section, we will learn about the steps required to build the production-ready machine learning project. 

Problem definition

You need to understand the business problem and come up with a rough idea of how you are going to use machine learning to solve it. Look for research papers, open source projects, tutorials, and similar applications used by other companies. Make sure your solution is realistic, and data is easily available. 

Data collection

You will be collecting data from various sources, cleaning and labeling it, and creating scripts for data validations. Make sure your data is not biased or contains sensitive information. 

Data preparation 

Fill missing values, clean, and process data for data analysis. Use visualization tools to understand the distribution of data and how you can use features to improve the model performance. Feature scaling and data augmentation are used to transform data for a machine learning model.

Training model 

selecting neural networks or machine learning algorithms that are commonly used for specific problems. Training model using cross-validation and using various hyperparameter optimization techniques to get optimal results. 

Model evaluation 

Evaluating the model on the test dataset. Make sure you are using the correct model evaluation metric for specific problems. Accuracy is not a valid metric for all kinds of problems. Check the F1 or AUC score for classification or RMSE for regression. Visualize model feature importance to drop features that are not important. Evaluate performance metrics such as model training and inference time. 

Make sure the model has surpassed the human baseline. If not, get back to collecting more quality data and start the process again. It is an iterative process where you will keep training with various feature engineering techniques, mode architects, and machine learning frameworks to improve the performance. 

Production 

After achieving state of the art results it is time to deploy your machine learning model to production/cloud using MLOps tools. Monitor the model on real-time data. Most models fail in production, so it is a good idea to deploy them for a small subset of users. 

Retrain 

If the model fails to achieve results, you will go back to the drawing board and come up with a better solution. Even if you achieve great results, the model can degrade with time due to data drift and concept drift. Retraining new data also makes your model adapt to real-time changes.

Earn a Top AI Certification

Supporting your team's growth with datacamp for business.

While individual projects are essential for personal skill development, organizations also need to ensure their teams are well-equipped to handle the complexities of data analytics. DataCamp for Business offers tailored solutions that help companies upskill their employees in data science, analytics, and machine learning. With access to a vast library of interactive courses, custom learning tracks, and real-world projects, teams can advance their skills in data ingestion, cleaning, manipulation, visualization, and predictive analytics—all key areas highlighted in this blog.

Whether you're a small startup or a large enterprise, DataCamp for Business provides the tools to upskill, reskill, and create a data-driven culture to stay competitive in today's market. You can request a demo today to learn more. 

Starting a machine learning project can help you gain practical experience, enhance your portfolio, and develop critical problem-solving skills. The projects we've covered can not only bridge the gap between theory and practice but also open avenues for your continuous learning and innovation.

By engaging with diverse datasets and complex challenges, you can build a solid foundation in machine learning, positioning yourself for success in both academic and professional arenas. Whether you are a beginner or an advanced learner, each project you undertake brings you closer to mastering the art and science of machine learning. Get started on your journey today with our Machine Learning Scientist with Python skill track . 

Machine Learning Project FAQs

What are the 3 key steps in a machine learning project .css-18x2vi3{-webkit-flex-shrink:0;-ms-flex-negative:0;flex-shrink:0;height:18px;padding-top:6px;-webkit-transform:rotate(0.5turn) translate(21%, -10%);-moz-transform:rotate(0.5turn) translate(21%, -10%);-ms-transform:rotate(0.5turn) translate(21%, -10%);transform:rotate(0.5turn) translate(21%, -10%);-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform 0.3s cubic-bezier(0.85, 0, 0.15, 1);transition:transform 0.3s cubic-bezier(0.85, 0, 0.15, 1);width:18px;}.

Data preparation, feature engineering, and model selection/training. The key steps can differ from project to project. In deep learning projects, it is data processing, model selection, and model validation. 

How do you start an AI/ML project? .css-167dpqb{-webkit-flex-shrink:0;-ms-flex-negative:0;flex-shrink:0;height:18px;padding-top:6px;-webkit-transform:none;-moz-transform:none;-ms-transform:none;transform:none;-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform 0.3s cubic-bezier(0.85, 0, 0.15, 1);transition:transform 0.3s cubic-bezier(0.85, 0, 0.15, 1);width:18px;}

• Understand business problems and how machine learning can help solve it.
• Make sure you have the required quality data for training.
• Cleaning and processing the data.
• Understand your data by reviewing a business case study and performing data analytics to understand the distribution.
• Defining model and business performance metrics.
• Model selection and training.
• Model validation and retraining.
• Implementing MLOps (Machine Learning Operations)
• Deploying the model to production.

Is machine learning hard?

Yes. To get hired as a machine learning engineer, you need to master multiple programming languages, understand machine learning and deep learning algorithms, and learn advanced math to improve the model architecture. 

You will also learn about the operation side of things, such as MLOps, cloud computing, active learning, experiment tracking, dashboarding, CI/CD, and testing the models on real data.

Is Python good for machine learning?

Yes, it is popular among machine learning practitioners and researchers. 

• It is easy to learn and read.
• Modern machine learning tools are based on Python
• It has a massive supportive community
• Multiple Integrations with other languages and tools.
• You can perform almost all of the tasks from data analytics to web development. 

Can I learn machine learning without coding?

Yes, but you will be limited in achieving state-of-the-art results. Coding your machine learning model gives you control over data, parameters, model architecture, system performance, and model validation. 

The no-code tools are getting better in providing good results on average data, but if you want to get hired, you need to learn the basics and learn to create the whole ecosystem from scratch.

Is machine learning a good career?

Yes, machine learning is an amazing career that allows you to learn and contribute to the evolution of artificial intelligence. The demand is high among developed countries, and on average, in the USA, you can get $111,139+ per year. Read our guide on how to become a machine learning engineer.

Are there any other projects that might be relevant to me?

We have many projects that are suitable for all kinds of interests and skill levels. Check out our:

• NLP projects
• AI projects
• Python projects
• Generative AI projects
• Data analytics projects

Courses for Machine learning

.css-1531qan{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:inherit;} Understanding Machine Learning

Machine learning for business, machine learning with pyspark, 20 data analytics projects for all levels.

Abid Ali Awan

12 LLM Projects For All Levels

19 computer vision projects from beginner to advanced.

Bex Tuychiev

7 Exciting AI Projects for All Levels in 2024

60+ python projects for all levels of expertise.

Bekhruz Tuychiev

7 NLP Projects for All Levels

Eugenia Anello

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Current Issue

Project 2025 Is Coming After LGBTQ Americans

A close reading of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document reveals potential major setbacks for gender-affirming care, workplace protections, and same-sex marriage.

A Stop Project 2025 sign during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago,.

When Project 2025 was first published by the Heritage Foundation in the spring of 2023, most of the legacy media ignored it. Then last December, The New York Times reported on plans that would “upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law,” if Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Since then, the 920 page document —also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project—has become a household name, and has garnered negative responses from Americans on both sides of the aisle for some of its extreme policies. These include the abolition of the Department of Education; a policy that would give the White House direct control of the Department of Justice, to allow prosecution of the president’s opponents; and a recommendation to fire tens of thousands of federal civil servants so that they could be replaced by Trump loyalists.

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, stating at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan that some of its elements are “seriously extreme.” “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he added in a Truth Social post . “I have no idea who is behind it.” These statements appear to contradict what he had said at a dinner hosted by the Heritage Foundation in 2022 : “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do…to save America.”

So far, 140 former Trump administration officials have contributed to the document , and the project has been endorsed by more than 100 conservative organizations, including the Family Research Council and the Center for Family and Human Rights, both of which are Southern Poverty Law Center–designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

Despite the lack of media attention about how the project could affect queer people, LGBTQ issues are referenced dozens of times in the document, beginning on the very first page, where it falsely states that “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.”

Additionally, on page 4, the authors of the document write, “the next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets…. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation.” “They want to erase the LGBTQ community from federal documents” says Wendy Via, president and cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “It is a systematic dehumanization and abuse of the LGBTQ community.”

The most extreme language in Project 2025—which has been widely denounced by LGBTQ advocacy organizations —is aimed at transgender people. The “propagation of transgender ideology” is called “pornography,” the document says, and that is an essential reason pornography “should be outlawed.” “Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

Via says that while pornography and trans issues may seem unrelated, the connection made by the authors of Project 2025 is intentional because they see the deviance associated with pornography as akin to identifying as LGBTQ: “Their message is that pornography is obscene. Being transgender is obscene. Teaching our kids about affirming their identities or orientations is obscene. And all of this is happening because the left is subversive and deviant and have created this situation.”

While Project 2025 doesn’t call for the illegalization of what it refers to as “transgenderism,” Via says the way it’s connected to pornography in the document is cause for concern. “If you’re going to outlaw pornography and if transgenderism equals pornography, then the through line is once you outlaw the first thing, then everything behind it becomes illegal. And that’s why they say in that same paragraph that librarians should be labeled as sex offenders if they allow [LGBTQ inclusive] material in their libraries.”

In an interview with Uncloseted Media , Rachel Bitecofer, a political scientist and the founder of the liberal Strike Pac, pointed out that the adult entertainment website Porn Hub is already blocking access to everyone in the 11 states that require age verification, as a protest against these restrictions. The Free Speech Coalition, which opposes a ban on pornography, agrees that the text of Project 2025’s provision calling for a ban on porn seeks to create a link between what it calls harmful pornography and the transgender and LGBTQ communities.

The Nation Weekly

Further down in the document, the project calls for renaming the Department of Health and Human Services “the Department of Life.” On page 451, it diminishes LGBTQ families: “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on ‘LGBTQ+ equity’.… These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.” It also states that “the male–female dyad is essential to human nature” and “every child has a right to a mother and father.”

“Project 2025 is driven by a far-right desire to turn America back to the 1920s, or even further back,” says Bitecofe. “It’s quite clear the goal is a religious-based biblical argument of morality,” targeted against trans rights, the LGBTQ community, marriage equality, and the reproductive control of women.

While Project 2025 does not explicitly call for the end of marriage equality, Gillian Branstetter of the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project, says it makes a lot of indirect arguments “for treating same sex marriages as second-class marriages.” For example, the chapter on the US Department of Health and Human Services instructs the next president to protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations and to maintain a biblically based definition of marriage and family. It also states that Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education grants “should be available to faith-based recipients who reaffirm that marriage is between not just any two adults, but one man and one unrelated woman.”

In addition to taking aim at marriage equality, the report targets workplace protections for LGBTQ people. Four years ago, the Supreme Court handed down one of its most surprising decisions in support of LGBTQ rights, when it ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that the 1964 Civil Rights Act , which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, meant that it was illegal to fire anyone because they were LGBTQ.

Meet the Immigrant Workers Taking On America’s Largest Meatpacking Company Meet the Immigrant Workers Taking On America’s Largest Meatpacking Company

Alice Driver

The Perfect Storm Threatening Abortion Access The Perfect Storm Threatening Abortion Access

Susan Rinkunas

The Beltway Media Got Its Harris Interview. Can We Move on Now? The Beltway Media Got Its Harris Interview. Can We Move on Now?

Lessons of a weimar anti-fascist in palestine lessons of a weimar anti-fascist in palestine.

Feature / Barry Yourgrau

Project 2025 says the next president must interpret the Bostock decision in such a way that workplace discrimination against LGBTQ people will still be possible. “The new Administration should restrict Bostock’s application of sex discrimination protections to sexual orientation and transgender status in the context of hiring and firing,” Project 2025 states on page 584. “The President should direct agencies to withdraw unlawful ‘notices’ and ‘guidances’ purporting to apply Bostock’s reasoning broadly outside hiring and firing…. The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc.” Uncloseted Media requested comment from four members of the Heritage Foundation press office regarding this provision but received no response.

The plan’s attempt to roll back so many LGBTQ rights shouldn’t come as a suprise, given the track record of the Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025. Since its inception in 1973, the Heritage Foundation has been a power player in Republican politics. In 1981, it produced its first transition document—known as the “Mandate for Leadership”—on the eve of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. The document was described as “a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy.” By the end of Reagan’s first year in office, almost half of its recommendations had been implemented. In 2016, the foundation saw even greater success, stating that after Trump’s first year in office, his administration “had implemented 64 percent of its policy recommendations.”

Through the years, the Heritage Foundation has advocated against marriage equality, LGBTQ people in the military, LGBTQ Boy Scout leaders, and bans on conversion therapy. But Via says that over the last 10 years, the organization has become even more extreme. “It has always been unfriendly to LGBTQ people, but not abusive. We should not conflate it with classic conservatism anymore when it is actually [the] far right,” she says.

Despite Trump’s attempts to separate himself from Project 2025, the ACLU’s Gillian Branstetter describes his positions on LGBTQ rights and the relevant elements of the project as “kind of inseparable. There really isn’t any daylight between what Trump is saying and what 2025 is saying,” Branstetter says. The strongest confirmation of this comes from Trump’s own words. In a campaign video released in 2023, he said. “The left-wing gender insanity being pushed on our children is an act of child abuse.” And at one of his rallies in 2024 , he said he would get “transgender insanity the hell out of US armed forces,” meaning that he would reimpose his ban on military service by transgender people.

Additionally, Trump has said he would “ask Congress to pass a law stating that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female and they are assigned at birth.” He would celebrate rather than erase “the things that make men and women unique” and revoke “Joe Biden’s school policies on so-called gender-affirming care, a process that includes giving kids puberty blockers, mutating their physical appearance and ultimately performing surgery.”

According to HHS, “for transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, early gender-affirming care is crucial to overall health and well-being as it allows [them] to focus on social transitions and can increase their confidence.” Via says that regardless of who becomes president in November, the ideology baked into Project 2025 will move forward. “Who is president makes a difference. But in terms of Project 2025 and all these organizations behind it, they’re moving no matter what,” she says, adding that they have the ears of many courts and state legislatures across the US.

“These groups, the people behind these groups, have been dedicated to the mission, overturning Roe , eliminating gay marriage and disavowing the LGBTQ community and women. They are not going to stop. They might change tactics, but they will not take their eye off the ball.”

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Word 18 Columns Practice Document

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FACT CHECK: Trump-Vance Ticket Stands Against the PRO Act And For an Anti-Worker Project 2025 Agenda

September 2, 2024.

Given that JD Vance famously runs his own X account, we wanted to provide a few feedback notes for him to make sure his Labor Day post was accurate:

HERE’S THE FACTS: Donald Trump was one of the most anti-worker and anti-union presidents in American history – and his running mate JD Vance stands firmly against the PRO Act, the “holy grail” of the labor movement to protect unions.

Politico : “Vance has consistently opposed the PRO Act, the ‘holy grail of pro-union labor reform’ that organized labor and its allies on the Hill have been fighting for over two years to get passed. … Vance’s skepticism of the PRO Act is part of a more fundamental skepticism that he harbors toward organized labor.”

Fast Company : “Vance also voted in favor of a resolution to strike down the NLRB’s updated joint-employer rule, which would have given workers more leverage when organizing at companies —like Amazon—that rely heavily on third-party contractors, by forcing both employers to participate in labor negotiations.”

Trump : “I know the unions. They’re dues-sucking people. They just want their dues and they couldn’t care less.”

New York Times : “Does [Trump] support unions? He has had ‘great success’ in New York building with unions and also in Florida without unions. ‘If I had my choice,’ he said, ‘I think I’d take it without.’”

Associated Press : “During Trump’s presidency, the National Labor Relations Board reversed several key rulings that made it easier for small unions to organize, strengthened the bargaining rights of franchise workers and provided protection against anti-union measures for employees.

“The Supreme Court’s conservative majority — including three justices that Trump nominated — overturned a decades-old pro-union decision in 2018 involving fees paid by government workers. The justices in 2021 rejected a California regulation giving unions access to farm property so they could organize workers.”

Trump recently celebrated firing striking workers, and Vance shamelessly defended his comments.

Newsweek : “Donald Trump Cheers Elon Musk Over Firing Workers: ‘You’re the Greatest!’”

Politico : “Vice presidential candidate JD Vance defended Donald Trump’s comments about firing striking workers during a rally in Michigan.”

New Republic : “J.D. Vance Makes Huge Mistake Trying to Defend Trump’s Workers Comment”

The Trump-Vance Project 2025 agenda would raise taxes for the middle class while gifting tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and threatening to supercharge inflation.

Center for American Progress : “Project 2025’s Tax Plan Would Raise Taxes on the Middle Class and Cut Taxes for the Wealthy”

“In [Project 2025], far-right extremist plans are outlined that raise taxes on low- and middle-income households to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations. Project 2025’s tax plan includes an ‘intermediate tax reform’ that includes changes to tax brackets and corporate tax cuts that would shift the tax burden toward middle-income households …

“The shift toward a flat consumption tax while eliminating income taxes would lead to an average $5,900 tax increase for the middle 20 percent of households and an average $2 million tax cut for the top 0.1 percent. … Project 2025 does not stop at cutting taxes for wealthy individuals; it also proposes an array of tax cuts for corporations. … This would amount to a $24 billion tax cut for the Fortune 100 , the 100 largest companies in America.”

CBS News : “Millions of low- and middle-class households would likely face significantly higher taxes under the Project 2025’s proposals.”

New York Times : “Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, denied in an interview with NBC News on Sunday that tariffs had caused higher costs for Americans, as economists have documented.”

Vance on Trump’s plan that would raise tariffs and raise costs for hardworking Americans: “This is a fascinating proposal and we could talk for a while about it.”

Project 2025 : “The corporate income tax rate should be reduced to 18 percent.”

Vance : “I’ve reviewed a lot of [Project 2025]. There are some good ideas in there.”

Axios : “Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists are jumping into the presidential campaign with a stark warning: Former President Trump’s plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy if he wins in November.”

Wall Street Journal : “A drumbeat of reports from Wall Street economists have warned that Trump’s plans could substantially slow economic growth while driving up consumer prices.”

The Atlantic : “Trump’s Plan to Supercharge Inflation”

Washington Post : “Trump and his advisers have discussed deeper cuts to both individual and corporate tax rates that would build on his controversial 2017 tax law … Further cutting corporate taxes … would primarily benefit large firms.”

Trump’s failed economic agenda resulted in broken promises, a skyrocketing deficit, and new incentives for companies to ship jobs overseas.

Vance : “The left attacked Donald Trump for those tax cuts said they would make the deficit worse when in reality we took in more revenue because the government got out of the way on the regulatory side and the tax cuts spurred a lot of growth which means more people working, which meant more economic production which meant the entire economy was healthier … I think that we have a pretty common sense regulatory and tax agenda.”

New York Times : “The 2017 corporate tax cuts signed into law by Mr. Trump have not increased government revenue … In fact, they have had the opposite effect.”

Washington Post : “Trump promised this Wisconsin town a manufacturing boom. It never arrived.”

The Guardian : “Donald Trump’s $1.5tn tax cuts have helped billionaires pay a lower rate than the working class for the first time in history.”

CBS News : “Two years after Trump tax cuts, middle-class Americans are falling behind”

Washington Post Analysis : “One of President Donald Trump’s lesser-known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt. The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. … The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration.”

Washington Post : “Trump promised ‘America First’ would keep jobs here. But the tax plan might push them overseas.”

Grid Battery Expands Land Holdings by Adding a Copper Project in Northern Central British Columbia

Thursday, 29 August 2024 07:30 AM

Grid Battery Metals Inc.

COQUITLAM, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 29, 2024 / Grid Battery Metals Inc. (the "Company" or "Grid Battery") (TSXV:CELL)(OTCQB:EVKRF)(FRA:NMK2) is pleased to announce the expansion of our exploration land holdings with the inclusion of a new Copper Property, located in Northern British Columbia.

The Company has entered into a Purchase and Sale Agreement dated August 26, 2024 (the "Agreement"), with AC/DC Battery Metals Inc. ("AC/DC"), to a acquire a 100% interest in 17 mineral claims comprising 27,525.24 hectares located in North Central British Columbia. The region is host to numerous operating mines, good infrastructure including experienced exploration and supporting services (the "Transaction"). The Transaction is a "related party" transaction and is subject to TSX Venture Exchange ("Exchange") approval.

Terms of the Transaction:

The Company will purchase the Property as follows:

making a cash payment to AC/DC in the amount of $48,172.15 for reimbursement of staking costs, upon Exchange Approval; and

issuing to AC/DC 5,000,000 fully paid and non-assessable common shares at a deemed value of $0.05 per share in the capital of the Company upon Exchange approval of the Transaction.

All securities issued in connection with the Transaction are subject to a four month and a day hold period in accordance with Canadian Securities Laws.

Pursuant to TSXV Policy 5.9 and Multilateral Instrument 61-101 -- Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (" MI 61-101 "), the Agreement constitutes a "related party transaction" due to the fact that there are common officers and directors of the Company and AC/DC. The Company relied on Section 5.5(a) of MI 61-101 for an exemption from the formal valuation requirement and Section 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101 for an exemption from the minority shareholder approval requirement of MI 61-101 as the fair market value of the transaction did not exceed 25% of the Company's market capitalization. No new insiders will be created, nor will any change of control occur, as a result of the Transaction.

About the Copper Property "We're excited to acquire approximately 275 km 2 of tenures in such a favourable mining region within BC." commented the Tim Fernback, President and CEO. "This area of the Province has already generated several promising projects, and our land package is strategically situated to exploit the high copper-gold values of the region. NorthWest Copper Corp. ( TSXV:NWST ) on the nearby Kwanika project intercepted 400 metres of 1.01 Copper equivalent (News Release January 16, 2023 Northwest Copper Corp). BC is a mining-friendly jurisdiction with reasonable processes, good infrastructure and potential First Nation partners."

B.C. Minfile assessment report data indicates that most of the area covered by the Copper Property was at one time or another covered by staking during surges of exploration in B.C. dating from the 1940's to present day. Largely the claims appear to have been minimally explored with little follow-up. However, some work was recorded on several claims with results for stream sediment sampling showing anomalous to highly anomalous results for gold in a few areas. These areas were recommended for detailed follow-up, however due to a downturn no further work was recorded

Prominent among early discoveries in the Omineca region were the nearby Lustdust/Stardust property (a property developed by Lorraine Copper that was sold to Sun Metals Corp. which eventually merged with Serengeti Resources to become NorthWest Copper Corp.) covering a large, coherent integrated porphyry-skarn, epithermal system; the Kwanika property (a Serengeti/POSCO Daewoo property also became a NorthWest Copper Corp. property upon the merger with Serengeti Resources) a promising advanced stage copper-gold project; the Lorraine property (originally discovered by Lorraine Copper and now a NorthWest Copper Corp. property)an alkalic copper-gold porphyryr. The tenures are located between the Kemess North project being developed by Centerra Gold Inc. ( TSX:CG)(NYSE:CGAU ) and its operating Mt Milligan mine, which is reported to 1.8 million ounces of gold and 742 million pounds of copper (Technical Report on the Mount Milligan Mine, November 7, 2022, Borntrager. B, et al.)

The Omineca Group claim areas are within the northern Quesnel Trough underlain by Cache Creek Terrane and lies close to the Pinchi Fault. The Quesnel Trough hosts numerous porphyry copper-gold deposits. The Pinchi Fault can be traced for 600 km through north-central B.C and separates Cache Creek rocks from the Jurassic Hogem Batholith and Triassic-Jurassic Takla rocks to the west. Rocks have a north-northwest strike trend typical of the entire Intermontane Belt in which the Cache Creek Terrane lies (Gabrielse and Yorath, 1992). A wide range of Jurassic to Tertiary intrusions cuts the Cache Creek Assemblage and many of these are emplaced along the prominent NW-trending structures and stratigraphic breaks. Numerous mercury occurrences are present along the length of the Pinchi fault (Albino, 1987) and a few gold and base metal occurrences are present near the Pinchi fault including the Lustdust, Lorraine, Indata and Axelgold properties. There are at least two alkalic gold-copper Porphyry systems in the immediate Lustdust (now known as Stardust) area: J49 and Axel Properties (Schiarrizza, 2000).

Readers are cautioned that the information in this press release regarding the adjacent properties are not necessarily indicative of the mineralization on the property of interest.

Qualified Person Jeremy Hanson, P.Geo., an independent qualified person as defined under National Instrument 43-101 has reviewed and approved the technical content in this news release.

About Grid Battery Metals Inc. www.gridbatterymetals.com . Grid Battery Metals Inc. is a Canadian based exploration company whose primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's maintains a focus on exploration for high value battery metals required for the electric vehicle (EV) market.

About Texas Springs Property The Company owns a 100% interest in the Texas Spring Property which consists of mineral lode claims located in Elko County, Nevada. The Property is in the Granite Range southeast of Jackpot, Nevada, about 73 km north-northeast of Wells, Nevada. The target is a lithium clay deposit in volcanic tuff and tuffaceous sediments of the Humbolt Formation. A Phase 1 exploration program at the Texas Springs Property (Fall 2023) yielded average lithium grades of 2010 ppm, applying a 1,000 ppm cut-off, and up to 5,610 ppm Lithium .

The Texas Spring property adjoins the southern border of the Nevada North Lithium Project - owned by Surge Battery Metals Inc. ("Surge") (TSXV:NILI)(OTCQX:NILIF) and comprised of 725 mineral claims. Surge's first round of drilling identified strongly mineralized lithium bearing clays. The average lithium content within all near surface clay zones intersected in the 2022 drilling program, applying a 1000 ppm cut-off, was 3254 ppm. (Press release March 29, 2023 ). More recent results have shown higher grade lithium up to 8070 ppm on this property after initial drilling (Press release September 12, 2023 ). Our exploration results are on-trend with these results.

About Clayton Valley Lithium Project The Company owns a 100% interest in 113 lithium lode and placer claims covering over 640 hectares in Clayton Valley. Clayton Valley is a down-dropped closed basin formed by the Miocene age Great Basin extension and is still active due to movement along the Walker Lane structural zone. As a result, the basin has preserved multiple layers of lithium bearing volcanic ash, resulting from multiple eruptive events over the past 6 million years including eruptions from the 700,000-year-old Long Valley Caldera system and related events. These ash layers are thought to contribute to the lithium brines extracted by Albemarle and are also likely involved in the formation of the exposed lithium rich clay deposits on the east side of Clayton Valley.

Volt Canyon Lithium Property The Company owns a 100% interest in 80 placer claims covering approximately 635 hectares of alluvial sediments and clays located 122 km northeast of Tonopah, Nevada.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

"Tim Fernback" Tim Fernback, President & CEO

Contact Information: Email: [email protected] Phone: 604- 428-5690

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain forward-looking statements which include, but are not limited to, comments that involve future events and conditions, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Except for statements of historical facts, comments that address resource potential, upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt and security of mineral property titles, availability of funds, and others are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may vary materially from those statements. General business conditions are factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from forward-looking statements. It should be noted that results from any adjacent property(s) are not an indication of what may be found on the Company's property(s).

SOURCE: Grid Battery Metals Inc.

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Project Manager: Clinical Practice & Research Partnerships

Job summary.

The Michigan Medicine Quality Department is seeking a skilled individual to provide support for the Michigan Program on Value Enhancement (MPrOVE). The Michigan Program on Value Enhancement (MPrOVE) is a multi-faceted strategic initiative designed to implement and evaluate innovative projects that improve the value of care at Michigan Medicine (MM) and research the implementation of novel ideas around value and right-sizing care. MPrOVE is jointly supported by the MM Quality Department and the Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation (IHPI).

This Project Manager will directly lead multiple MPrOVE projects that build research practice partnerships to improve patient care. These will include collaborative quality improvement and research projects aimed to reduce low-value care and bridge the gap between health services research and clinical operations at Michigan Medicine. This role will coordinate a team of physician researchers, clinicians, statisticians, analysts, and other stakeholders to coordinate the implementation and evaluation of impactful projects across the health system. This work is designed to accelerate the application of innovative research methods to facilitate the identification, assessment, and de-implementation of low-value services at MM and beyond. 

Depending on the skills and interests of the individual who takes this position, there will be flexibility regarding additional opportunities to support value-based project and research activities.

This is a full-time position working approximately 8:30am-5:00pm, Monday through Friday. 

This position will be eligible for a remote first approach to work location, however, there are some required in-person meetings which occur approximately once per week (4 times per month). Flexible work opportunities are determined at the discretion of the hiring department. Flexible work agreements are reviewed annually and are subject to change dependent on the business needs of the team throughout the course of employment.

Mission Statement

Michigan Medicine improves the health of patients, populations and communities through excellence in education, patient care, community service, research and technology development, and through leadership activities in Michigan, nationally and internationally.  Our mission is guided by our Strategic Principles and has three critical components; patient care, education and research that together enhance our contribution to society.

Why Join Michigan Medicine?

Michigan Medicine is one of the largest health care complexes in the world and has been the site of many groundbreaking medical and technological advancements since the opening of the U-M Medical School in 1850. Michigan Medicine is comprised of over 30,000 employees and our vision is to attract, inspire, and develop outstanding people in medicine, sciences, and healthcare to become one of the world’s most distinguished academic health systems.  In some way, great or small, every person here helps to advance this world-class institution. Work at Michigan Medicine and become a victor for the greater good.

What Benefits can you Look Forward to?

• Excellent medical, dental and vision coverage effective on your very first day
• 2:1 Match on retirement savings

Responsibilities*

Project Management (60%)

• Translate leadership priorities and goals into actionable project deliverables for specific MPrOVE projects. This includes tying MPrOVE projects to the health system priorities framework.
• Independently lead projects that connect health system leaders with researchers to achieve impact. This will include conducting technical project work (such as project planning, intervention design, and quality improvement efforts), leading stakeholder coordination (facilitating meetings as well as collaborative decision-making), and developing research dissemination content in partnership with faculty (such as abstracts, presentations, and manuscripts). 
• Independently produce detailed timelines and resource plans, define requirements, create project documentation, report status to team and stakeholders through project summaries and progress tracking, track and solve issues with team members and work with faculty to complete necessary activities that drive progress.
• Draft, edit, and format communications, documents, and reports using Word, Excel and PowerPoint for use in a variety of venues with diverse audiences including senior leaders and external stakeholders.  
• Manage project resources, including budgets, staff time, faculty time, and stakeholder capital, to design, implement, and evaluate impactful value-based quality improvement projects.
• Build and sustain working relationships across different levels of the organization, including connections throughout all levels of the Quality Department, MM, and IHPI, as well as establishing connections within key clinical divisions involved in specific projects. 
• Devise innovative solutions to any problems that may arise during the course of the project, and take appropriate actions to resolve without waiting for direction.

Research Responsibilities (25%)

• Work collaboratively with faculty members, analysts, and data teams to develop evaluation and  research approaches. 
• Cooperate with physician faculty, PhD researchers, analysts, and other partners to plan and execute surveys, qualitative interviews, mixed-methods projects, and/or research projects on value of care at MM.
• Collect or direct other team members to organize and analyze medical chart data (the electronic health record; EPIC/MiChart).. 
• Assist with IRB requirements. 
• Coordinate the development of collaborative academic products and research presentations.  

Coordinate MPrOVE Learner Program (10%)

• In coordination with other MPrOVE staff and leaders, work to develop and coordinate the MPrOVE Learner Program, which will actively engage students and learners from multiple disciplines, particularly those interested in value, de-implementation, and research. 
• Tasks will include coordination of learning/training sessions, actively engaging with students, and at times facilitating open dialogue among learners about projects, emerging research, and additional topics related to value and research.

Additional Activities and Tasks as Needed (5%)

• As needed, provide high-level project management expertise leading to the advancement of the MPrOVE Program.
• Other duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications*

• Bachelor's degree.
• 5+ years of relevant experience such as quality improvement, projects related to health services data/research, or quality of care in adult or pediatric populations. 
• 3+ years of experience working directly with clinical operations team leaders and physician faculty.
• Ability to consistently meet deadlines for multiple projects and stakeholders in a fast-paced environment with competing tasks and priorities.
• Strong skills related to collaboration, active listening, interpersonal communication, meeting facilitation.
• Detail oriented with strong organizational, communication, and advanced problem-solving skills. 
• Experience with research methods such as surveys, qualitative interviews, or analytic approaches.
• Experience with quality improvement, implementation science, healthcare evaluation and health services research.
• Experience with the academic research process including protocol development, data collection and management, and dissemination of academic products.

Desired Qualifications*

• Advanced technical skills and expertise related to quality improvement, implementation science, or health services research.
• Familiarity with value-based care, research practice partnerships, or translational research . 

Modes of Work

Positions that are eligible for hybrid or mobile/remote work mode are at the discretion of the hiring department. Work agreements are reviewed annually at a minimum and are subject to change at any time, and for any reason, throughout the course of employment. Learn more about the work modes .

Background Screening

Michigan Medicine conducts background screening and pre-employment drug testing on job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent job offer and may use a third party administrator to conduct background screenings.  Background screenings are performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Report Act. Pre-employment drug testing applies to all selected candidates, including new or additional faculty and staff appointments, as well as transfers from other U-M campuses.

Application Deadline

Job openings are posted for a minimum of seven calendar days.  The review and selection process may begin as early as the eighth day after posting. This opening may be removed from posting boards and filled anytime after the minimum posting period has ended.

U-M EEO/AA Statement

The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.