I’ve been working on syllabus prep for my Fall 19 classes this week. It’s always a good time to take stock of what I have planned, and why I decided to include certain assignments in certain classes. Right now I’m updating my Food Systems and Health class (PBH445/EOH645) and updating an assignment I tried for the first time last fall.

This assignment is designed to ensure that students read the textbook and get credit for doing so. Last year I called it “QQC” for Question, Quotation, Comment which I got from another source… (I’ll update this with the source if I can track it down.) This semester I’m calling it Reading Responses (RRs), but the essence is the same. I set up a Google Doc for each student in the class (about 35-40) that’s shared between the student and me. For each assigned chapter from the textbook, the student is expected to write a paragraph long summary and ask a question. I include some prompts for developing a question in the assignment.

The RRs are due before class begins, but points are not assigned on a daily basis to save me some work and time. Instead, I review the documents for points twice a semester to make sure they’ve been completed. In the meantime, to incent on time completion, I review the questions students have developed. If I choose their question for the day’s class session, the student receives 2 extra credit points, and they don’t have many other opportunities to earn that! To be eligible to earn those points, I ask that the RRs are submitted before 6 am on the day of class.

I think this assignment is a really good fit for this class for several reasons. First, it’s a 400 level course. Most of the students are juniors and seniors in our BSPH program, and they should be ready for the type of self-directed learning that I’m asking them to complete. Also, this class taps into my network really well, so I’m able to schedule quite a few guest speakers from our community. Since this assignment ensures that students are completing the reading, I’m able to dedicate a class period to each of this wonderful individuals without trying to squeeze in an abbreviated lecture. I also ask the students to do some independent work, and again I can give them a class period to complete it without trying to lecture even faster than I already do!

A couple of housekeeping details – the midterm and final reviews of the RR documents are each worth 20 points, out of about 250, so the points are meaningful. I also ask students to keep the most recent content at the top of the Google Doc – this makes it faster and easier to find the newest response in each document. I keep all these docs in the same folder, and before I review it on the day of class, I sort it in date/time order so it’s easy to see which students have new content to review. When I do pull a question to use for in-class discussion groups, I ask students to make notes and hand them in, and also for specific deliverables – 3 ways to approach the problem, 2 strong arguments that support an approach, etc. Also, I use a 0 point assignment in Canvas, our LMS, to make sure that the assignment shows up in the Syllabus view, and perhaps most importantly, the Assignments list, since I know that’s how many students primarily navigate the course.

Have a great weekend, and feel free to comment below with similar approaches, assignment ideas, or questions!