Lecturing: Writing Assignments in the Lecture

Adapted from material by T. Rishel, Cornell University and Copyright the Mathematical Association of America. All rights reserved.

Here are a variety of small writing assignments for the STEM classroom:

  1. Have a supply of 3x5 index cards in the back of the lecture hall for students to use to write questions about the lecture. Answer the best or most frequently asked questions at the start of the next class.
  2. Ask an occasional quiz question in class: "What's so fundamental about the fundamental theorem of calculus?" "Describe one application of today's topic."
  3. At the end of the solution of an exercise, ask the students to describe the real-world implications of the answer they just got.
  4. Have the students write out a description of the topics covered since the last exam, as well as why those topics might be important or useful.

None of the above assignments takes a long time to construct, nor is it difficult to grade. Yet each enhances the students' awareness of the usability of the classroom material. Further, each asks the students to think a bit more holistically and carefully about the deeper meanings of the materials they are studying. Of course, the above are only a small sampling of the possibilities of writing assignments.

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