Student Guide Corner

Rachel Levy , Contributing Editor, Harvey Mudd College Contemplation and reflective writing can be powerful tools for teaching and learning. Students benefit from considering the way that they learn and do mathematics (in addition to thinking directly about the subject matter). This intellectual activity is often called metacognition . Written reflections can also help professors get to know their students, both personally and mathematically. Three ways I engage my students in reflective writing: Have students write periodically in a physical journal. Assignments could be very general, such as �How�s it going in this class?� to more structured prompts, such as �Describe your process for solving one of the homework problems you found challenging� or �Name three strategies you employ when you get stuck on a problem.� When the journal is a physical book, I collect and return the posts with a smiley face, sticker or small comment so students know I looked. I used to use the old fashioned b...

Francis Su , Guest Blogger,  Harvey Mudd College Want to read more blogs like this? Subscribe to our email list in the right sidebar. �To doubt everything, or, to believe everything, are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.� -Henri Poincare, Science and Hypothesis   Do your exams accurately represent what you value in your course? Only after many years of teaching did I begin to ask that question. For instance, one of the goals for my upper division courses is for students to be able to articulate what mathematicians do. Another goal I have is for students to learn to generate their own questions for further investigation. Even though I might have seen a student exhibit such skills in the occasional conversation, the tools that I greatly valued were not showing up regularly in how I evaluated student progress. Why Use Reflective Exam Questions  To give students opportunities to demonstrate these reflective skills, I began to as...