Ideas Which Require Moderate Out-of-Class Time

• Grading methods: minus/check/plus grades.

• Students can improve their online communication skills and save some paper by sending you a weekly thought letter by email. The topic of the letters can be prescribed (David Franklin asks students to write about films they have watched, for example) or open to student choice.

• Give student groups a disciplinary problem framed as an open-ended question to which students must propose and justify an answer. Ask groups to write a one-sentence "thesis statement" which they can write on the board or on an overhead transparency (or a majority and a minority thesis). Examples: "We have examined four alternative approaches to the design of a digital data-recording device for Company X's portable heart defibrillator. Which solution should be chosen and why?" "In what way, if any, is Jackson Pollack's Autumn Rhythm different from the results of a monkey throwing paint at a canvas?"

• Give student groups the task of developing questions about the material of the class. Example: "Carefully observe this [poem, graph, statistical table, painting, advertisement]. What aspects of it puzzle you or intrigue you? As a group, pose three good questions that emerge from your observation of the item."

• Want to help students master some difficult concepts? Have them select one (from a list you prepare) and write an explanation which would be comprehensible to a lay person. Be sure to suggest an appropriate structure for the piece (perhaps one-sentence statement, explanation, examples, explanation of the examples).

  To test the writing, students can bring their drafts to the UWC to have them read by genuine lay people.

  An alternative would be to create the lay audience (e.g., a parent, grandparent, child, customer). For example, "Explain to your mother why water stays in a pail when swung in a vertical circle around your head" [physics], or "Using layperson's language, explain to a new diabetic what is meant by the glycemic index of foods and why knowing about the glycemic index will help the diabetic maintain good blood sugar levels" [nursing].

• If you'd like your students to connect your course to current events, ask them to collect newspaper clippings (not from the library, unless they're photocopied!) relevant to what they're studying. Each clipping should be mounted on a piece of paper and attached to a short response or commentary on the connections the student perceives. (Variation: Students should respond to the clippings with a letter to the editor.)

• Ask students or student groups to write imaginary "meeting of the mind" dialogues between people with opposing views (e.g. Copernicus and Ptolemy on the retrogression of the planets).

• If you're thinking about advisement, chances are your students are thinking about course options, career choices, majors. You might take advantage of this moment to invite students to draft a letter to high school students, parents, or spouses explaining why they have chosen (or not chosen) your discipline as a major or career.

  Remind them to focus on their audience's interests. Obviously, this idea will work best in a class consisting of students of the same major. Giving them the opportunity to articulate their commitment to the field will help them connect their learning in your course to their lives.