Artifact #3: Treasure hunt worksheet

Description:

I created this type of worksheet to bring some fun into solving problems and reward students for completing all the problems. The worksheet starts with an interesting question that students would like to know the answer for. For instance: which of the following facts is false about Hungary? Which of the following strange foods doesn't exist? Which of the following facts about U.S. elections is false? There are five candidate answers numbered from 1 to 5.

The rest of the worksheet consists of multiple choice questions. Students need to start with the first question. When they solve it, they need to move on to the question with the same number as the number of their answer. And so on, until they get to the question that remains in the end. The number of the answer to this final question tells students the correct answer for the interesting question at the beginning.

An example worksheet is linked at the bottom of the page. The correct answer for the first question is 3 (at least it was the correct one in 2012).

Reflection:

These worksheets can be a fun addition to a math class if used appropriately. The first time I used them was in a 300-level differential equation class, where students were very advanced compared to the material. (The class was easier then a 200-level calculus class.) There was one weekly discussion section for each group, so there wasn't time for any in-depth discussion, and also there was no need for it, since students learned most of the material on their own at home. So these worksheets turned out to be a fun weekly experience for students, and they also served as student-centered reviews for that week's material.

The second time I used these worksheets for a special calculus discussion section that met for 1 hour 45 minutes three times a week, where these worksheets served as the weekly cool-down exercise on each Friday.

Preparing these worksheets takes some time, however; even when one already has fun topics from a previous class. So it would probably be overwhelming to prepare more than one per week.

Delta pillars:

• learning communities: when students are assigned into small groups to work on these worksheets, it can be a fun and still productive social experience for the group members. Bringing one fun fact each week also helped fostering the student-instructor relationship and good learning community for the class.

• learning-through-diversity: the small groups were rotated throughout the semester, so every student had the opportunity to work with most other students in the class at some point.

• teaching-as-research: I have not collected any data this time, but next time it would be interesting to investigate how the fact that the worksheet is presented in this treasure hunt style influences students' learning outcome or motivation.