Guided notes covering lectures have been shown to improve note quality and increase scores on quizzes covering lecture material. We sought to determine whether guided notes would also be beneficial in helping students prepare for quizzes covering assigned readings. We evaluated the efficacy of guided notes for reading assignments on…

Many students, particularly underprepared students, struggle to identify the essential information in empirical articles. We describe a set of assignments for instructing general psychology students to dissect the structure of such articles. Students in General Psychology I read empirical articles and answered a set of general, factual questions…

This paper proposes and discusses how to use an assignment based on "Freakonomics" as a way to foster critical thinking and statistical literacy skills within the classroom.

A common source of frustration for college instructors is getting their students to read. Since the 1970s, studies have shown that no more than 30 percent of students complete a reading assignment on any given day. But what can be done? What strategies can instructors use to make certain that their students read? Do pop or announced quizzes work…

College science teachers know that students get the most out of class if they have completed the assigned reading. To reinforce this expectation, we ask our introductory physics students to submit a question they had about the reading. In this paper we describe the rationale and logistics of this assignment. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

The author has been teaching Introduction to Sociology for several years, and each semester new students bring their own perspectives to the study of sociology, making the content fresh and new. In order to help students understand sociological concepts in more experiential ways and to give them a glimpse into a culture that may be different from…