Credit

The idea for the warm-up exercises came from the book Just-in-Time Teaching, by Gregor M. Novak, Evelyn T. Patterson, Andrew D. Gavrin, and Wolfgang Christian (1999), Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Warm-ups are short Web-based essay questions.

Goals:

Familiarize students with a new topic.

Encourage students to read text before class.

Encourage students to rephrase physics ideas in their own words.

Give timely feedback to me.

Details:

Since the warm-up may be a student's first introduction to a topic, I do not grade students on whether or not their answers are correct, but only on whether they represent a reasonable and coherent attempt.

Warm-ups are due 1 hour before class.

I review answers and use anonymous selections from them to launch discussion of the topic in class.

Use the students' own words to present confusing topics from a variety of perspectives.