Learning Before Class Strategies - Quick Update

I am just about finished writing Part 2 of me Learning Before Class Strategies series of posts (Part 1 here), but I thought I would post links to a couple of recent posts on the subject of pre-reading assignments and an article from a recent UBC CWSEI Physics and Astronomy newsletter.

But first, here is a look at the relationship between exam averages and the marks my students earned for completing their smartPhysics Prelecture and Checkpoint assignments (marked for effort only) in my Fall 2011 introductory mechanics course. Not terribly compelling in terms of trying to sell my intro E&M students on the pre-class assignments. Fortunately Peter (see link below) gave me a bunch of good motivational ammo to pass on to them.

Sigh, the person that completed the least pre-class assignments had over an 80% average on exams.

Recent posts/articles of note on pre-reading assignments

• Stephanie Chasteen’s recent post “Do they do the reading? Helping students prepare for lecture”. As usual Stephanie manages to write something that contains tips, resources and research results, yet somehow manages to be concise.
• The article “Pre-Reading Assignments – Why they may be the most important homework for your students”, written by Louis Deslauriers, Cynthia Heiner, and Georg Rieger, in the Dec 2011 UBC CWSEI Physics and Astronomy newsletter. This has some best practices and some data regarding the sophistication level of student questions on weeks with pre-reading assignments vs. weeks without.
• Speaking of CWSEI, Peter Newbury recently had a nice post about motivating pre-reading assingments: “Motivation for pre-reading assignments”

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