Over the past ten-years, I have been paying more attention to how my assignments and activities are supported by the academic literature on learning. Where assignments do not reflect that research, I have eliminated them. This year, I introduced a new type of assignment to both courses that I teach in an attempt to leverage some of the learning benefits of summarization and self-explanation. Selfishly, I also wanted the new written assignment to be easy to grade as my teaching load will soon be increased by 25%.

The framework of the assignment is simple enough: summarize a recent concept and connect it to your own experience. The exact phrasing of each is below. The assignment for my psychology students – who are primarily 12th graders – includes the added element of peer feedback.

Social-Cognitive Psychology “Lab notes”

Once every two weeks, regardless of what topic we are currently in, students enrolled in the Honors course will need to complete this two-part writing assignment. Collectively, these Lab Notes account for 10% of your course grade.

Students not enrolled in the Honors course can choose to do this assignment. However many you do prior to a Midterm or the Final will count as extra credit on that next Midterm or Final.

Part 1

You will type an approximately 200-word paragraph response to the following two prompts:

• One finding/ concept/ idea from the past two weeks that stands out in particular is…
• I have seen this in my own life in the following way… or
  Now that I know this, my behavior will change in the following way…

You may write about any psychological finding or process that has come up during the preceding two weeks in either the readings or in class discussion (except the “case study of the week”). Your response should be a single, well-written paragraph, converted into PDF and submitted to the proper numbered assignment in Canvas.

Part 2

During the following week, after a Lab Notes assignment is due, you will automatically be assigned one classmates paragraph to read and respond to. Canvas calls these “peer reviews” but you are not editing or correcting their work; instead, you are personally responding to it with just a few sentences. For example, you might reply:

• That same finding reminded me of a conversation in English…
• I had a similar experience last week when…
• I saw a news story online about _ _ _ that is related because…
• The topic of _ _ _ didn’t strike me as so important because in my experience…

We suggest completing this reply as soon as possible because you all live very busy lives. Second, know that this peer review part needs to be done in a browser, not in the iPad app.

This assignment has three footnotes:

• In college, lower-division classes like Psychology often have lecture sections and lab - or discussion - sections. The lecture section is usually in a large lecture hall and it is taught by a full professor; the lab section is usually in a small classroom with many fewer students, and it is led by a grad student/ teaching assistant. This “lab notes” assignment is typical of what you will need to produce for these lab/ discussion sections.
• The first prompt is asking you to review and summarize actual course content; the second prompt is about you making your own learning personally relevant to your life.
• Please don’t begin your paragraph with this phrasing; be a better writer than that.
• “A few” is more than a couple but less than several.

Ethnic Studies “Unit-ending reflection”

Remember the purpose of this class: our goal is making the world less racist. In a single, well-developed paragraph of 250-words, respond to the following prompt:

How has content from this unit served to eliminate racism?

Synthesize your response from the specific articles that you’ve read, videos you’ve seen, class activities completed, conversations had, and lectures received.

Conclusion

Both assignments feel as if they are accomplishing what I hoped; they force students to spend more time and energy on a particular concept (which they get to choose), and the product is simple enough for me to process. For the freshmen in Ethnic Studies, I don’t think I’ll make any changes before the Spring semester, but for the seniors in Psychology, I think I’ll require all of the students to complete the assignment, and they will account for a larger percentage of their semester grade.

References

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Supplement, 14(1), 4–58. http://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266