Student designed projects, in my opinion, are the most effective and engaging summer projects for students. They make it possible to keep students intersted and engaged in the class during the summer, and give students more creative freedom as they work.

I find it to be the case with almost every student I know that they are caught in the situation that on the first day of school when a teacher goes over what they learned last year they struggle to remember even the basics the material. One of the biggest problems with students today is that they lose intrest in the subject matter over the summer, and as a result don't retain a lot of the imformation that they had learned throughout the previous school year. a student designed project can help aleviate some of these problems by allowing students to work on a subject matter that potentially intrests them more than one chosen for them. Personally when I am allowed to choose my subject matter for a project I need to work on I find myself much more motivated to complete it than with teacher designed projects.

Some may say that a teacher designed project is better because it is a more structured assignment that has a more predictable end result, but I believe that a more structured assignment is not necesarily a good thing. While a structured assignment does have its benefits a more open ended project allows students to work more creatively within the peramiters provided, and ensures that the end result better reflects the time and effort put forth by the student. Another important benefit provided by open ended projects is that it makes it harder to cheat or plagarize from other students. If every student is given the task of completing the exact same project it makes it very easy to take the work of another student and slightly edit it for thier own project. This problem is largely elliminated with student designed projects because no two students will be doing the same exact project, and everyones projects will be unique to them.

I personally have a lot of trouble actively involving myself in projects and activities, in school, when I don't have the freedom to choose what I'm working on and how I am allowed work on it, and I know that many students have the same problems I do. When a student is allowed to decide what they work on it improves the end product because a student will naturally work harder on something they enjoy or are interested in. Unfortunately an open ended project will allow some students to take the easiest possible route and create an underwhelming product, But a techer designed project with a more rigid structure wouldn't change that. Students who have no intrest in the class or project will look for the easiest solution that requires the least ammount of effort no matter what kind of project they are given. Teacher designed projects only get rid of any chance of engaging students that would otherwise be disintrested.

When students are allowed to design their summer projects themselves it makes it possible to achieve a enthusiasm and intrest for the subject matter that would be hard to produce otherwise. The ability to choose a topic that a student may find interesting helps to solve the issue of lack of mativation that many students, like myself, have problems with. Schools and teachers should work to integrate more of these types of projects into there classes in order to better engage thier students.