Differentiate types of "Activities"

[StevenClontz]

I'd like to make it clear when teams should be creating an artifact of a full solution (e.g. "Choose a z such that v+z=v.") or simply discuss things as a team without necessarily worrying about a rigorous solution (e.g. "How many vectors req. to span R2? (A) 1, (B)2 ...").

[StevenClontz]

I'm digging this idea further. Since often I'm looking to generate discussion rather than a full written solution on a whiteboard for multiple-choice questions, I'd like to call these "Questions" rather than "Activities". An instructor that wants artifacts for these can require that, but in my class I'd specify that I only want records of Activity solutions, not Question solutions.

[siwelwerd]

I think colored letter cards to hold up would help here as well. I handed out the little white boards one day with lots of multiple choice questions, and the transformation from collaboration to one individual writing was immediate, drastic, and noticeable.

[StevenClontz]

Yeah, I'm torn on this, because it's harder to discuss things with the big whiteboards out, but sometimes it's useful for students to jot out a few thoughts. I've tried having discussions without any whiteboards or slates, and students still break out their pencils and paper to work things out individually or write their personal notes.

[siwelwerd]

This is sort of more interesting given our discussion last week of the different types of activities we want them to do (e.g. practice a computation, investigate a theory, etc.)

[StevenClontz]

Yeah, I think it's worthwhile to label them appropriately. Perhaps Discussion (multiple-choice), Exploration (full solutions not intended to model assessment questions), and Practice (full exercises intended to model assessment questions)?

[StevenClontz]

See https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/basics-ch-project.html -- what's the right way to express this in PreTeXt?

Maybe <discussion/> (which I think doesn't exist yet, but maybe I can get it added), <exploration/>, and <exercise/>.

[StevenClontz]

Per that discussion on <discussion/>, what we need to do is decide on another project-like element to rename (e.g. configure <investigation/> to display as Discussion 1.1).

Or if we think TBIL materials cannot be supported by vanilla PreTeXt anyway, then we can add in whatever elements we want. But I want to hold back on that particular plunge for a while.