We’ve already covered the fact that I write long course policy documents. The Spring 2010 Applied Combinatorics (MATH 3012) Course Policies and Expectations are seven pages long. Last time I taught this course, they were four. However, last time I wasn’t doing as many different types of assessments and wasn’t using much active learning in class. This time, I had a lot of explaining to do up front. Inspired by Maria Anderson’s post over at Teaching College Math, I decided to get my students to actually read at least part of the course policies by crowdsourcing them.

Today’s class started out by me handing out clickers and introducing myself, but 12 minutes in, I was dividing my students up into groups. Seven groups, 10 students each, and each group got 10 copies of a single page of my course policy document. I gave them about seven minutes to read over that page, select a spokesperson, and identify the main points they wanted to share with the class. I then called on each group in turn and asked them what was important on their page. I was really impressed with how well they identified what I wanted them to share with the class. They were also really attentive, since there are naturally a number of places where not knowing what’s on another page makes it hard to make total sense out of the page that you have in your hand. We also broke out the clickers to let the students choose the day of the week homework will be due. (Friday won out by one measly vote once hand votes for those who didn’t get to class in time to get a clicker were added.)

What’s the point of all this? First, crowdsourcing got students to actually pay attention when reading the course policies. The groups that got what some students might call “fluff” (teaching philosophy, course goals, why this class) knew they had to have something to report, so they read that material. Low and behold, they were happy with what they found out about the class! They also paid attention to what their peers had, perhaps fearing I’d hidden some insidious requirement on a different page (not really). Second, it got my students working in groups on the first day. They did something meaningful and then shared that with their classmates. This is what I want to have happen in every class, so it set the tone right. Now I just have to hope that the more traditional lectures my subs will give this week while I’m at the Joint Mathematics Meetings don’t destroy things.

(Aside: Yes, I intend to review my fall precalculus course. No, it’s not going to happen in the next two weeks. I’m speaking at the 2010 Lilly South conference at UNC-Greensboro in early February, and I figure I’ll blog about precalc as I prepare for that conference.)