Week Four Friday

I suppose the interesting thing that occurred was related to the length of the in class writing assignment. I told the students in my first section that their answer should be "approximately one page double spaced." 

there were two problems with this. In the first place, the Blackboard system that I have them write their responses on doesn't do double spacing and also doesn't do "pages." In the second place, I realized, after I said this, that the assignment didn't really warrant a one page answer. Not that it was impossible mind you. Well, I told them to do their best.

For my second section, I tried something a little different. I told them that there was not length requirement. I said. "there is no length requirement. If you think you have said all there is to say on the subject, you're done. But, if you think that any of your ideas can be unpacked a little more, I urge you to take the time to do it." 

well, the result is fairly inconclusive. Both classes wrote about the same amount of actual text. It would take me some time to decide if one class was more thoughtful than the other, but I don't really think this is very likely.