Section 3 Instructor’s Guide to Good Problems
This guide is for the main instructor, meaning the person in charge of organizing the course. It lists those tasks that the instructor must perform to implement this scheme, indicates when they must be performed, and estimates how much time they are expected to take. If there is more than one instructor, then several of these tasks can be shared.
The first time you use this method, there are extra tasks, which we list first.
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Read this packet, learn this material, make modifications, and decide that it is a good thing to do. This should be performed well before the term starts, to allow the ideas to settle. Time required: 3 hours.
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Convince the other people involved with the course to go along with this plan. This task should be completed a month before the term starts. Time required: 1 hour.
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Deal with unanticipated problems. Time required: 2 hours.
Each time the method is used, there are the following tasks.
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Choose the good problems, schedule them, and decide on the time schedule for each new skill. The problems should not be harder than the regular homework problems, but should be substantive enough that there is something to write about. They must also be chosen to be relevant to the new skill learned that week. (If the handout is on graphing, the problem must require a graph.) Since there are only six handouts, there is flexibility in scheduling certain skills for certain sections, or avoiding busy (test) weeks. You might consider making the good problem on the previous week’s material, since a student will not be able to write about new material that they do not yet understand. This task should be performed when the regular homework problems are chosen. Time required: 1 hour.
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Provide initial training for teaching assistants. You must introduce this method, distribute materials and discuss its implementation with the teaching assistants. This should occur one week before the term starts. Time required: 2 hours.
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Explain the method to the students. The concept should be introduced and the student’s guide distributed in the first week of classes. The skills handouts could be distributed all at once at the beginning or as they are used. Time required: 10 minutes of class time.
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Provide feedback on the handouts. Any deficiencies in the method or the handouts should be noted. At the end of the term comments from the instructors, teaching assistants, and students should be collected and the materials corrected. Time required: 1 hour.
Remark: Count the good problem either as a significant portion of the homework or as a quiz. A balance must be struck so the students will put effort into the good problem without neglecting the others. We recommend scoring the good problem 50% for content (solving the problem correctly) and 50% for the writing skills.
