| PURPOSE: To support students’ growth by providing concise, valuable assessment of their learning and experiences in the classroom. |
| DESCRIPTION: Students answer a prompt in concise sentences that describe their learning during the lecture or activity. Answering the prompt is meant to provide instructors with quick, reliable feedback regarding their students’ experiences and reactions. |
| UNDERLYING EDUCATIONAL THEORIES: reflection, assessment |
PEDAGOGICAL BENEFITS
- Prompting students to complete a minute paper can support them in practicing self-reflection and developing personal assessment skills.
- Minute papers provide reliable, real-time feedback to instructors regarding their classroom experience, which can help them identify gaps in their students’ learning.
- Minute papers prompt students to synthesize their learning in a concise manner.
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STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION
- After developing a lesson plan, draft a few prompts that ask students to assess the lecture or activity (e.g., In 1-2 sentences, describe your most important takeaway from the lecture. Is there anything you did not understand?).
- Keep prompts brief and concise and limit students’ answers to a few sentences so that the “minute” aspect of the paper is maintained.
- Consider the type of assessment in which you want to engage the students. Do you want to focus more on classroom content, experience, etc.?
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| REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Sample Minute Paper
T.A. Angelo and K. P. Cross, 1993. Classroom Assessment Techniques, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p.148-53 |