• Create a blend of assignments that make it clear that students who earn an A (for example)

will be able to perform well in the graded interviews and understand the ideas and concepts

that will allow them to transfer learning easily from one situation to another. In other words,

the assignments of the course should reflect the fact that competence in interviewing involves

skill, knowledge, and the ethical sensitivity to decide if what can be done should be done.

• Discuss your assignment sequence openly with students early in the term. Many instructors

find that the graded assignments in an interviewing course will be somewhat backloaded; that

is, most major recorded grades or points are earned in the second half of the course. This can

be justified because it’s at least somewhat unfair to grade students heavily on performance

behaviors before they’ve developed the skills and background that will enable them to do

well — and many interviewing classes have far too many students and too little class time for

teachers to be able to grade individual and incremental performance work early in the term

(as in a public speaking course, for example). If your course is backloaded in this way, you

should remind students early and forcefully about the assignment sequence, so they can plan

their assignment workloads accordingly. (See the sample syllabus in this guide for an

example of a somewhat backloaded schedule of assignments.) In our experience, most

students do well with this organization, but some experience anxiety about how they’re doing

when the first major grade comes just before midterm. Instructors who are concerned about

this structure and who would rather plug in more graded assignments early can do so easily:

Substitute several shorter quizzes for a midterm exam, insert a minor out-of-class

performance expectation or two in the first several weeks, or do both.