How Will You Be Evaluated?

As you look at the syllabus for the Discrete Mathematics Project you will note that the Evaluation section is not complete. More specifically, the weighting of the course requirements (assignments) has not been delineated at this time. In planning the course, we thought that we would come to a group consensus regarding the evaluation. Hence, as a class, we need to determine the importance of each requirement and weight it accordingly.

The first step in determining these weights will be to vote on the rank-order of the assignments. In order to do this, each person will need to list their preference of this rank-order. In particular, you need to rank order the five course requirements (activity development, participation, journals, lesson plans, and reading/home activities) from highest (1) to lowest (5). For example, someone might decide on the following preference:

  1. activity development
  2. participation
  3. journals
  4. lesson plans
  5. reading/home activities
This person's ordering indicates that he/she feels that "activity development" is the most significant requirement and should carry the most weight in the evaluation of participant achievement for the class. Likewise, this person feels that the reading/home activities should carry the least weight in the evaluation of participant performance.

Please list your preference for the rank-ordering of the DMP class requirements below:

(__________) activity development

(__________) participation

(__________) journals

(__________) lesson plans

(__________) reading/home activities

When everyone has completed their preference, please go to the board and write your individual ranking (since everyone has listed the requirements in the same order--given above--this should require listing only the digits from each persons' preference). List all of the preferences on a sheet of paper.

Your small-group (three or four people) task is to determine a first-, second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-ranked requirement for the ENTIRE class. You may use any method that is agreed upon by all of the members of your group. After all of the groups have finished, a spokesperson for each group will write the group's ranking on the board, present the group's decision to the rest of the class, and explain the method (and reasoning) used to reach the decision--it may be helpful to write a description for each step of your method.

The Discrete Mathematics Project