No Lectures, no exams, and no graded homework - but you will learn much more...
Homework:
There will be 6 homework assignments during the term. Students will have one week to do the homework by themselves. These will not be graded, but will be brought to class.
Each student will share their homework solutions with their group and they will have about an hour to produce a much better, collaborative solution. The the answers will be provided and the groups can check their solution and have an opportunity to let us know if they had a better solution than ours.
At the beginning of the homework session we will walk around and ask you to show us your work. While we do not take attendance for the learning catalytic sessions, we do expect everyone to participate in the group homework exercise. We only grade the homework and the reflection for effort and honesty. Hence we need to see that you have put in a sufficient effort into trying the homework before you come to the group homework session. You will lose 50% of the credit if you show up without your work (you may also lose up to that amount if the work you show us is not up to what we expect). If you don’t show up at all, you will not receive any credit for that problem set.
Students will take their original homework solution home and will write a (very short) reflection of their experience, mark up their original homework solution (blue for math and procedural errors, red for understanding errors), and provide an assessment of the other 3 group members. These will be collected at the next class period and graded. It is important to note that even if the homework solution is covered with red marks, the student can still get an A for the assignment if they really worked hard and were honest about their effort. Below are some of the forms we will be using that represent the grading rubric for the reflections and peer assessments (these are adapted from the Mazur Group with permission).
Homework Scoring Sheet* (click the image to get the pdf):
Problem Set Reflection* (click the image to get the pdf):
*Adapted from the Mazur Group with permission
MSE 220 Fall 2014