Student Responses to Homework Wrappers

This Innovative Practice Work-In-Practice paper examines use of homework wrappers in an upper-division problem-solving course. Problem-solving homework assignments can afford students the opportunity to practice applying and integrating newly acquired knowledge, thereby increasing their mastery of the subject they are studying. Often, when solving homework problems, students' goals are to obtain a correct answer. Common student strategies for obtaining a correct answer do not help them learn and understand how to obtain that answer. In the undergraduate chemical reaction engineering course used to this study, the same small set of primary equations is used to solve several different types of problems. While the equations are the same, the way in which they are used is quite different from one problem type to the next. After completing each problem-solving homework assignment, students have been required to submit a brief, reflection on their approach to solving the problem. These reflections, called homework wrappers, aim to help students assess their ability to differentiate different types of problems, their understanding of the approach required for solving each problem type and their proficiency in applying that approach. The conceptual mistakes identified by the students were compared with an expert's assessment of the conceptual mistakes they made. The results show that the rate of recurrence of a mistake that a student correctly self-identified was 4.6% while the rate of recurrence of mistakes that went unidentified was 29.3%. On the basis of these early results, continued study and refinement of the use of homework wrappers as learning tools is suggested.