urgent homework reviews

urgent homework reviews

The Importance of Timely and Effective Homework Reviews in Academic Success

1. Introduction

Students often fail to understand the need for learning and repetition of concepts, nor their deficiencies in understanding a specific concept, until they are tested and receive the associated negative reinforcement, at which time learning takes longer, is more difficult, and is more resource-intensive. Moreover, a short, early “easy-win” to assist students in understanding they do not understand a concept will promote confidence, engagement, and success. Minimally, the first meeting of the same students after the homework has been due to be discussed so the students have the opportunity to receive timely, personal feedback on their work, to be shown correct procedures, to provide and receive assistance with error recognition and recovery, and to have their understanding and concepts explained in many ways is crucial.

Homework represents an important instrument in our educational system for both students and instructors in achieving educational success. It allows students to learn, practice, and understand course materials outside the classroom, while learning from others at different paces. However, for the full educational potential of doing homework to be realized, students should receive feedback, relearn, and reinforce during subsequent class meetings. Despite this, the majority of students who effectively complete homework are not receiving feedback before the materials start to fade from their memory. Adequate, early feedback must improve not only scores but conceptual understanding through iterative homework and review exercises while the ideas are still fresh in the students’ minds. The purpose of this study is to trace student performance and time spent on homework related to student learning psychology for a class in general biology in which both homework completion rate and a behavioral analysis of student questions during review were tracked. The “Integrated Process Model of Homework” of Corwin and O’Farrell (2015) highlights a need to expand research on the current knowledge feedback cycle in knowledge building. In contrast to many studies of how the feedback cycle may be offered to students taking courses, often in active-learning classes, this research is in the context of a mostly lecture-oriented class.

2. Benefits of Timely Homework Reviews

Homework reviews also provide students with practical criteria for grading their work. Seldom do students know the characteristics of good solutions to the problems they have just attempted. They have several criteria, but many of them are invalid. The most common (and most invalid) criterion used by students to judge the quality of their work is the amount of work that has been produced. Sets with long, involved mathematical derivations or pages of computer printings of output are often considered better than shorter textual responses. What constitutes a complete, clear, and correct response to the problem is usually unknown to them. Unlike multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank tests in lower-division courses, mathematical derivations and arguments cannot be easily determined as right or wrong, so there is considerable frustration and confusion when it is time to end the assignment production. Students need to have the issue of quality addressed at regular intervals.

Perhaps the most important benefit of timely homework reviews is that they correct misinformation before it spreads. Review during the class period works very well because the problem is fresh in the students’ minds. If the instructor doesn’t take time to work through the problems slowly and carefully with the students at this point, the assignment slips beneath the surface of the curriculum and will find no make-up day. Afterward, most students will consider it too minor a point to justify well-timed correction. Others will deny their lack of understanding, or they will take the point for granted and assume that the homework is beneath their present level of understanding. Although solving problems at the blackboard in response to student questions during class or writing solutions on the board immediately after class can be effective, students frequently look at a solved problem and falsely believe that they understand the solution, although they don’t.

3. Strategies for Effective Homework Reviews

A straightforward method to detect student unwillingness to change incorrect future beliefs is to discuss students’ incorrect memories more than once throughout the review, if several students fail to reconstruct them during the first review. This activity can preserve the teacher’s time while catching a majority of the students who were reluctant or unable to adjust their incorrect beliefs from the first review. The concept here was that students are unwilling to face their incorrect or incomplete knowledge during the quick review if they did not need to update their own knowledge for the full grade value of a new task to be performed.

According to previous research, the purpose of homework review completed by the teacher in supporting homework success has been threefold: (1) to communicate to students that homework is important for extended practice and additional skill acquisition; (2) to give students more information about which skills will be assessed on scheduled quizzes or examinations to help direct future studying; and (3) to provide support to some students who may not have experienced success in their independent homework work outside of school. To be consistently effective in meeting these goals, homework reviews should not require a lot of class time, and they should include a procedure that holds students accountable for attending to the content and doing their best learning possible.

4. Challenges and Solutions

There are some common challenges in implementing effective homework review at all levels. Often, despite meeting individually with students, it still seems that very few students are actually making any changes based on the feedback you have provided. Rather than being resistant to the message, the message doesn’t seem to be arriving. Students seem attentive and eager to please, nodding as you speak, or even earnestly taking notes. End-of-semester evaluations of homework review time, likewise, reveal that students find the feedback essential and do not want to have it removed to save time. Scores rarely rise in subsequent assignments; the same mistake is made on the next assignment, and despite their apparent attention and employment of learned strategies elsewhere in the course, the homework feedback does not seem to be making its way into assignments.

5. Conclusion

Designating a considerable length of time for reviewing homework permits students to truly practice reviewing skills without feeling rushed, especially for students with disabilities and English Language Learners. Teachers will gain a clearer understanding of the understandings and misunderstandings students are developing, being able to respond appropriately, which will ultimately assist them in serving the students better. Teachers can more readily tailor their lesson content to better suit the abilities of the actual students and the classroom activities used. Reviewing their work may also assist the teacher in the educational process, noting areas of neglect or large areas of student misunderstanding or error. Providing individual attention from teachers is crucial, but it’s also important because the process will grow to develop independent students.

Homework review is crucial as it allows students to receive immediate and thorough feedback on their performance, which can guide them in their process of learning. This will help avoid the accumulation of errors in student skills that can become woven into their knowledge base. They may also reduce students’ focus on labels such as “smart” or “dumb” that can interfere with the development of a growth mindset and identify the unique learning needs of students, particularly in early intervention for students demonstrating early signs of educational difficulties. Including a review of homework also serves as a type of extrinsic motivator for students to do the required assignment. By knowing that it will count as a formative assessment grade, students have a reason to complete the work.