Jk a8 INNOVATION ABSTRACTS no-z4
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JGNIC Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development
a With support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation

 

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WRITING IN THE QUANTITATIVE CLASSROOM

While many of us believe everyone should be quantitatively oriented in habits of mind, the fact is that few
of our students will become quantitative specialists, such as decision scientists, mathematicians, chemists
and physicists. Most will work in jobs requiring only rudimentary mathematical skills.

Nevertheless, because it always takes two to communicate, we need to focus our pedagogical attention on
techniques that will enhance not only the future quantitative specialists’ skills, but also the vast majority who
will use the specialists’ skills. Writing in the classroom can simultaneously increase understanding of

- quantitative modeling and communication ability.

Students learn best when they are not mere passive receivers of information but active makers of
meaning. A mind must work at assimilating what we have to impart. And the simple fact is that writing
requires—and rewards—the paying of a kind of attention that not-writing doesn’t. To write is to create a
structure of meaning.

How can a faculty member incorporate writing as a mode of learning into normal instruction without
slowing down the course and perhaps even omitting necessary material? And how can it be done without
having to process so much student prose as to require retaining a room in the State House for the
Bewildered? Following are some examples of methods that have been successful in helping students learn
through writing without requiring excessive classroom time or evaluation efforts.

1. The teacher stops the lecture 10 minutes before the end of class and gives students five minutes to
write a summary of the class for their personal use. Five or six students are called on to read their
summaries during the last five minutes. These students should know about this beforehand.

2. Weekly writing addressed to the instructor and other audiences are equally effective. Examples of
these weekly exercises are letters home about quantitative techniques and concepts; memos to project
heads; and short status reports to an immediate supervisor. Different audiences invite the student to
choose new ways of explaining classroom topics and to see more of the subject matter by viewing it
from different perspectives.

3. As an alternative to discussion in class, ask each student to write a question and distribute these
questions to class members. Allow five minutes for written responses and return the answers to those
who posed them. Writing a question forces a student to organize thoughts into a coherent expression.
Writing an answer requires the student to review the class presentation, organize it into a logical
pattern, and then impart that information to others.

4. One may also conduct a "silent conversation." At the beginning of class, pose an iciportant question
related to the day’s (or a previous) reading. Each student writes a response anonymously for five
minutes; then students pass their papers around so that everyone reads what each has written. In a
class of 30, this takes about 15 minutes. Students then write again for five minutes, explaining what
they know now that they did not before. The "silent conversation" can also be grafted onto a short
lecture. Although the instructor will have less time to speak, he or she will be working with fertile
ground and can expect more crop per unit of lecture sown.

5. A common complaint among students is, "I don’t know why I didn’t do well on the exam—I studied
for hours." Perhaps all 10 hours took place the night before and represent the total time spent on the
course. Quantitative topics are cumulative, building on foundations established by preceding
discussions. A solution to this problem is weekly writing journals that encourage students to review
classroom activities more frequently than just the night before the exam. A student might address two
topics each week posed by the instructor. For example:

e With what concept did you have most difficulty this week, and what was the nature of this
difficulty? What are you doing to resolve it?

 

 

 

RO) Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712 Q 3