 would first like to define low stakes and high stakes, just to be clear about what those terms mean. By low stakes, I mean assignments that don't offer students a lot of points, but at the same time, they don't have to put a lot of effort into them. They should be able to take care of them in a timely manner, not spend a lot of time on them. And they do get points, but they also don't have to spend a lot of time worrying about grammar and punctuation. They can just write. And I'm looking for a certain amount of bulk to just see that they've been using writing to get their ideas out, writing as a way of thinking. So that's low stakes. High stakes, this is where a kind of assignment like a research paper assignment where they are expected to be putting a lot of time into it. They're expected to be using the conventions of the English language in a manner appropriate to college students, a professional manner, where there are a lot of points involved, sometimes as much as 35% of the grade. So this is a high stakes assignment. So for low stakes assignment, I'd like to use those as staging grounds for the high stakes assignments. And also as places for students to work out their ideas about readings, about ideas that are coming up in class. So an example of a low stakes assignment in the lower division classes would be participating in an online discussion in which they're expected to put forth their ideas about the reading, synthesize ideas from reading and lecture, and come up with ways of interpreting certain objects that they've seen in class based on the readings. And these online discussions in turn prepare them for the exams. In the upper division, the low stakes assignments are frequently blogs in which students complete the reading and then they'll go ahead and submit a blog online. And that initial blog is submitted blind. In other words, they can't see the other students' blogs. But after everyone's had a chance to post, they open it up, having alerted them beforehand that this is gonna happen. I open it up before they come into class so they have a chance to read everyone else's posts before they come into class. This I have found really enhances discussion because they're writing to think, they're getting their ideas out and writing before they have to come in and discuss things in class. Now for some students going into class and launching into a discussion without having written a word is easy, it's no problem. But I find for the majority of students, this is very difficult, especially when they're working with a tricky text. So having a chance to write their ideas out and getting points for it, they're being rewarded for that time that they're putting in thinking about the assignment. Whereas if they didn't have that blog, they didn't have an assignment, they'd be spending hours doing the reading and trying to think it through without really being rewarded in any way. Now the high stakes assignments, especially in the upper division classes, give students an opportunity to polish their writing because this is the time to do it. Once they get out into the professional world, if they wanna represent themselves professionally, they're gonna need this skill. And at this point they might see writing as a chore that they just have to finish up, get through so that they can get to the next assignment or go to work or whatever they need to do. But I try to instill in them confidence in their writing and the idea that this is a practical skill that you can use in the world and it's a way of representing yourself.