Connections & Communities: Designing Meaningful Assignments
Meaningful writing is writing that sticks with students because it helps them learn deeply, develop confidence, and connect personally and professionally to what matters to them.
We believe writing is a way of learning, exploration, and expression across all disciplines, influencing assessment, political decisions, and students' professional and personal identities. In Making Writing Meaningful: A Guide for Higher Education (2025), Eodice, Geller, and Lerner argue that meaningful writing allows students to create and build upon personal connections to their own lives, their relationships, and the subjects they are studying. This shifts the focus from writing as a transactional task done for a grade (or busy work) to a practice that draws on students' experiences and ambitions they bring to the learning process.
Meaningful Writing is About Connection
In our classrooms, we can frame writing as a way to empower students, not just grade them. When students see value in the writing they do, it is often because it mirrors real disciplinary thinking or connects to their future goals. The research from The Meaningful Writing Project reveals that this sense of value is deeply tied to personal connection. Eodice, Geller, and Lerner (2025) found that over a third of the students identified a writing project as meaningful because of these connections:
- Connection with oneself: This includes how students see their own development as a writer, their sense of authorship, and their personal experiences.
- Connection with others: Writing becomes meaningful when it relates to a student's relationship with authentic audiences such as family, community, or peers.
- Connection with the subject matter: Students are engaged when they have a genuine interest in or passion for their topic and recognize its importance.
Designing Meaningful Writing Assignments
Eodice et al.’s study showed that students in a wide range of majors, from finance to mechanical engineering, reported having powerful writing experiences. The key is that the assignment is carefully designed to encourage connection. Rather than being something extra, this kind of writing is central to learning and practicing the ways of thinking in a discipline and reflects the disciplinary values of that field.
Students also frequently mentioned that having the ability to choose their topic or their approach to an assignment was a key factor in why it was meaningful. Nearly half of the students who cited personal connection also noted that the project "allowed" them some measure of freedom or agency.
Beyond choice, it is helpful to position an assignment not as a one-time, bounded task, but as a start in a larger conversation that students may engage with throughout their time in university or even their lives. You can encourage this by asking students questions that connect their academic work to their personal and professional lives.
Learn more about assignment design.
What Meaningful Writing Can Look Like Across Disciplines
Meaningful writing can happen in any discipline and context. Here are examples of meaningful writing assignments:
- A policy brief in a health behavior class can be meaningful, especially if students pick the topic,
- Engineering specs for a project becomes more than an extra technical assignment within students connect to their community or career aspiration,
- A primary source exhibit for history allows students to become authors and researchers on a personal level, and
- A patient educational brochure in a nursing or health sciences course can be deeply meaningful when it allows a student to translate complex information for an audience they care about.
Have an assignment you want to make more meaningful? We are happy to provide feedback and work with you.