Teaching Time Savers: Style Points
By Michael E. Orrison
When I began as an assistant professor, I had a pretty good sense of how
much time it would take for me to prepare for each class. After a few
conversations with my new colleagues, I even had a good sense of how much
time I should devote to tasks like office hours and committee work.
Somewhere in the middle of grading my first exam, though, it became
painfully clear that I had underestimated the amount of time I would need to
grade exams!
It was (and still is) important to me that my students felt my exams were
fair, both in how they were written and in how they were graded. I tried to
create exams that gave students ample opportunity to demonstrate their
mastery of the course material, and I genuinely looked forward to reading
their responses. By the end of that first semester, however, I felt certain
that I was spending too much time and energy simply trying to navigate each
exam. For example, I was having a hard time deciding what was or was not
scratch work.
The next semester, as an experiment in my multivariable calculus course, I
reserved five of the 100 points on the first exam for what I called Style
Points. I told the students that I expected almost everyone to receive all
five points. I also told them that if I had to reread a solution several
times to find a train of thought, or if a solution was illegible, ambiguous,
or incoherent, it would affect their Style Points, and that they should
therefore give some thought to how they presented their work.
The result was dramatic. Without much work on my part, most solutions on the
exam seemed to have a beginning, middle, and end. In fact, most solutions
actually seemed to flow (more or less) with direction and purpose. This
helped me give more honest and focused feedback. In addition, the mere
presence of Style Points led to lively and worthwhile discussions about the
importance of good writing, regardless of one s field of study. As a bonus,
I was also saving about two minutes per exam. With sixty or so students in
my two sections of the class, the savings quickly added up.
I now use Style Points for all of my classes, but I occasionally vary the
setup. For example, in my advanced courses, my students can no longer gain
Style Points they can only lose them. I should point out, however, that
it has been several semesters since any of my advanced students has actually
lost any Style Points. This used to surprise me. Then I remembered that,
after sharing the idea of Style Points at a department meeting a few years
ago, many of my colleagues decided to make Style Points a part of their
exams too. Most of my advanced students have therefore already been thinking
about their mathematical writing style for several semesters. This, of
course, gives me even more time to enjoy reading what they write in my
course!
Time spent: about 5 minutes in one class period to explain how Style Points
can be gained (or lost) on your exams.
Time saved: about 2 minutes, on average, for every exam you grade.