Response papers can be designed to address several different purposes, and precise nature of your assignment can be tailored to the skills you want your students to use and/or the concepts you want them to engage with:
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Do you want to students to summarize a reading assignment in light of concepts you have taught in class? For example,
- Have you just taught your students about a scientific concept, and you want them to read and interpret a paper that describes how that scientific concept was discovered?
- Have you just taught your students about a scientific concept, and you want them to read about how that scientific concept has been proposed to design a new technology?
- Have you just taught about a scientific phenomenon that we do not fully understand—perhaps one that could be explained by several possible models—and you want students to read a paper that provides evidence supporting one model and refuting another? The students could then be asked to explain how the experiments and data of a paper can be used to support one model and rationalize why the experiments were set up in the way that they were by the authors.
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Do you want students to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various tools and methods?
- For example, do you want students to analyze two arguments that are in disagreement, and choose one that they agree with more with, explaining why they do so?
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Do you want students to learn about a type of methodology?
- For example, do you want your students to read an article or paper that introduces a type of experimental methodology that is novel to the students, and ask students to apply that methodology to study a set of concepts you have been studying in class?