How to do prep assignments

What is prep anyway and why should I do it?

Prep are assignments that are designed to help you prepare for face-to-face class meetings. For example, when a class has a textbook and the textbook has review questions at the end of each section (or most sections), we can use the basic Distributed Textbook Study group format. When a class has a textbook, but the textbook doesn't have review questions at the end of each section, you can use the Distributed Textbook Study group variations.

The prep assignments are designed to:

1. help you really integrate the material you are studying right now
2. and improve a variety of your cognitive and meta-cognitive skills

Distributed Textbook Study Group

Answer two of the questions listed at the end of the assigned reading, however, you cannot simply answer a question that has already been answered. You must either

• answer a question not yet answered,
• invent a new, relevant question and answer that,
• or make a substantive contribution to an existing discussion concerning a question that has already been answered.

Here's one very good way to do this (and get the most out of your study time):

1. Skim through the material once, looking at the headlines, figures, tables, keywords, equations, and any other materials of that nature.
2. Look over the questions in the book.
3. Check in with the class prep wiki page and take a quick look at what others' have done. You may think you will learn better if you do this on your own, but that's an illusion. Learning is a social activity.
4. Read through the questions, looking for questions that
   1. interest you, and/or
   2. totally confuse/scare/intimidate you
5. Create a wiki page in the MutualDiscovery activity web to keep notes. Be sure to link your notes page in to the class prep page (all you have to do is add the name of your page to the class prep page, the linking is automatic.)
   • It's a good idea to keep notes on all the questions that interested you and/or seemed hard. You don't have to answer all of them for the prep assignment, but keeping notes on them will help you get more out of your reading.
     • If you add a list of the questions you are keeping notes on under your link in the class prep page, it will encourage other students to check your notes.
   • When you then read other students' answers to those questions, you'll learn even more.
   • Cathy Marshall's research shows that public annotations take a lot more work than private annotations, so don't worry about whether your notes make sense to anyone else right now.
6. Reread the material, taking notes as you go (don't forget to hit 'save and continue' often if using our wiki.)
   • Don't forget to check in with the rest of the class from time to time.
   • At some point, start working on your answers. For some of you, that won't happen until you are done with the reading, while others will choose to start while still reading and taking notes. That's a learning style difference; neither way is intrinsically better.
7. Write (or finish writing) your answers, and you are done.

Distributed Textbook Study Group, Variations

What if your textbook doesn't have reflective questions at the end of the sections?

• Most textbooks have review questions at the end of the chapter. These questions may serve as a starting point, but you'll have to write far more of the questions yourselves.
• Some textbooks don't have review questions at all, in which case you'll have to write all the questions yourselves.
• We've used other kinds of prep in the past - some textbooks have activities, which students can do like prep, which worked very well.

The past MutualDiscovery classes have quite a few prep assignments you can look at to learn how to write questions that help in this process.

Here's the basic procedure:

1. Start by finding some idea or piece of information that you think is important. Take that idea/information and convert it into a question.
2. You may have to start by converting only a sentence or two into a question, but as you practice, you'll find that you can tackle larger sections.
3. At this point you'll find you start asking deeper questions that aren't answered in the textbook itself, as well as questions that are related to the textbook materials.
4. Note that a big part of why the trick works is that you are doing it with other students. So you answer your own question, or answer part of it, but they get interested and ask more questions, or give more of an answer.

See also

• DeepProcessing