Writing Assignments
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Chemistry 101 Course Portfolio by Wendy Keeney-Kennicutt
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| Relationships between Learning Styles and Classroom Work |

As of September 2002, Dr. Larry Peck and I were responsible for bringing "writing to learn" by way of Calibrated Peer Review (CPR©) to Texas A&M University and into all the First Year Chemistry classes (2000+ students). I am now the Master Administrator of Calibrated Peer Review for the entire TAMU campus. The webpage for CPR at Texas A&M University is HERE. If you wish to read more about its nuts and bolts, take the tour and read the FAQs on the home page. I strongly believe that our students need as much practice in writing and critiquing other people’s writing as we can provide. CPR is web-based software designed to increase the amount of writing done across the curriculum. CPR involves much more than simply writing about an academic topic; the students also practices how to evaluate other students' work by a calibration process, grade their peers' work, and finally self-evaluate their own essays - totally on-line. By writing and critiquing, our students are compelled to use higher-level thinking. My position as CPR administrator involves writing handouts, uploading rosters into the system, giving workshops to both faculty and students, and advising faculty and students on a day-to-day basis, as well as writing and administering CPR assignments in my own class.

Since 2002, I have used CPR in my classes. In Fall, 2004 I made my chemistry classes "writing intensive" with a total of 25% of the grade directly attributable to writing assignments in both lecture and lab, almost half of these points comes from the best 3 of 4 CPR assignments given during the semester.

I have recently paired these writing assignments including the abstracts for labs with Turnitin.com, the website that checks for plagiarism. Look HERE for more info for TAMU students and faculty. My Turnitin settings allow students to check their work before submitting to CPR or their TAs. Afterwards, I and the TAs can go to the site and verify that the students have submitted their work. If they have not, I change their grade to 0 until they have submitted, then I change their grade back to the original score. This practice puts the onus and responsibility on the students' shoulders to avoid plagiarism, and I am not seen as part of the "plagiarism police." The bottom line is that using Turnitin.com is seen as "good practice" to avoid trouble down the line.

Here are the four writing assignments with samples of student writing. I have not included the calibration essays or the grading rubric for fear of this information leaking to my students. If you want to know more, email me at k-keeney@tamu.edu.

Assignment 1: Plagiarism in TAMU Lab Reports - Spring 2005
Assignment 2: Measurement and Significant Figures - Spring 2005
Assignment 3: Critique of a Limiting Reactant Simulation
Assignment 4: Interpreting Single Substance Phase Diagrams

The Assessment of Learning Gains tool provided student assessment of CPR.

STUDENT ASSESSMENT OF CPR

 

 

1             Strongly Agree

2             Agree

3     Neutral

4            Disagree

5             Strongly Disagree

total

Average (stdev)

1. I enjoyed doing the CPR assignments

4% (9)

15% (36)

24% (58)

26% (62)

32% (78)

243

3.67     (1.17)

2.  The CPR assignments helped me learn some chemistry

7% (17)

39% (93)

21% (50)

16% (39)

17% (42)

241

2.98    (1.24)

3.  The CPR assignments helped me improve my writing skills

10% (24)

31% (76)

24% (58)

20% (48)

15% (37)

243

2.99     (1.23)

4.  The CPR assignments helped me learn to critique my own writing and that of others

16% (38)

48% (116)

11% (27)

14% (33)

12% (29)

243

2.58   (1.24)

 

YES

NO

total

 

 

 

 

5.  The amount of time allowed for CPR assignments was adequate.

95% (228)

5% (13)

241

 

 

 

 

6.  Do you think that future classes should do CPR?

59% (144)

41% (99)

243

 

 

 

 

 

COMMENTS ON CPR:

Although i didn'tlikeit, it helped me to better understandand teach myself

although it is time consuming it helps your grade and it really isn't that bad and most of the assignments help you apply what you should have been learning in class. It's like a test to see if you really know it

Although the CPR did help some in technical writing skills, I do not think that it was fair to make students write extensively about chemistry. This is because not all students are on the same writing level. Students who are not good writers are disadvantaged when it comes to completing CPR assignments. Simply answering questions stated in the prompt was the majority of points for CPR assignments, this helped even the playing field, but bad writers were still disadvantaged.

Althought they can be time coonsuming and somewhat annoying, your grasp of the information definitely becomes better.

As much as I didn't like doing the CPR assignments I actually did learn and apply things in doing them.

As much as I didnt like it, it did help.

As much as I didn't really want to work on CPR sometimes, it really did help with my understanding.

because I believe it frustrates people more than it actually helps them, I think its an added stress with little to no actually learning comming from it.

Because I care about my fellow man.

Because it helps with your grade in the class.

because it makes you learn a subject more in depth

Because there was so much outside work, I did not put my all into CPR, and it definitley was annoying at times.

Calibrated Peer Reviews forces the student to look into the topic way more closer than what he or she would do out of a textbook. I know the CPR has tremendously helped me understand each topic better although I didn't exactly enjoy it so much.

Chemistry is a very hard subject and CPR gives people a good chance to work hard to get a good grade, even if they study hard on the tests with tutors and still don't do so well...

Chemistry students learn scientific writing in the labs and they do plenty of it every week. Therefore, we do not need experience in writing for our lecture grade.

CPR allowes the student to research scientific topics that would normally not be done, this allows one to understand it more and at the same time learn how to critique their peers writing as well as their own.

CPR assignment are great for increasing student's grades

CPR can help your grade if you take the time to do it

CPR helped me understand the subjects presented more. Also, I had to research the subjects and it was an easy grade booster if you did well.

CPR helped my grades more than anything. I can not stand classes where the only grades are tests. I am simply not a good test taker. CPR allowed me to have a decent grade in the class even though my test scores were sub-par.

CPR honestly was a waste of time. I didnt learn anything from the CPR. however, the csb was something the helped learn. but CPR, was just ridiculous.

CPR is not the funnest thing to do in the world but it is good for people like me who don't do so well on tests because it helps our grade.

CPR overall helped me understand subjects dealing with chemistry much better.

CPR ROCKS

cpr should not be as significant. The program seems to be designed to prevent anyone from doing well. I have a better chance of being within the proper deviation if i give an excellent paper a 9 instead of a 10 because someone else may have given an 8 or a 9 or a 10 thinking it was excellent as well. In other words, though i know the paper deserves an excellent grade, i would give it a slightly worse grade to try and give myself a better chance at getting a good grade. I dont like the way that works.

CPR takes up a lot of time, however if students take it seriously, they will gain a lot of knowledge about the course. It is a good idea.

CPR takes up too much time for its results. A student could learn just as much from reading abt. a subject and writing an essay or answering short answer questions. Reading others work did not help me learn to write better or understand chemistry concepts.

CPR was a pain in the butt. They really didn't help to my understanding of Chemistry, sometimes they even confused me more. Plus, basing your overall grade on how you review someone and how someone else reviews you is unfair. One of my papers, you added a couple of points because you said my review of my own paper was closer to yours, but yet, I still got nowhere near what I had predicted.

CPR was a waste of my time! It did not help me understand Chemistry. It was extremely frustrating and a lengthy process.

CPR was very beneficial in understanding the material. If there was anyway to make the assignment less overwhelming in size it would be a great help to students.

CPR was very helpful in improving my writing skills. While it was time consuming and stressful at times I feel that I gained alot of knowledge about important chemistry topics and I am now able to write knowledgably about these subjects.

CPRs are annoying to start doing, but they really do help you to understand each topic better, and they help your grade out.

doesnt seem very important compared to the lectures

Even if the CPR's don't teach a student a new topic, it will re-enforce what the student previously knows.

Even if the students breeze through the CPR and do not learn the concept of the paper, they will atleast get something out of the grading process.

Even though I did not enjoy CPR, the benefits outway the negatives in the long run.

even though i didnt like it, it help in many ways.

Even though I didn't really like them, I believed it did help me overall.

Even though I don't like doing it, it does help strengthen chemistry and writing skills.

Even though it seems like a pain at the time, when looking back I did learn and it helos your grade a great deal.

Even though it was a hassle to do the CPR, they did help in understanding the concept of what we were being taught. I didn't really like how it affected the grade when it asks questions after reading an essay and you believe that the writer handled/covered the subject or vise versa and if you didn't agree with what was right, it was completely wrong. It seems more of personal preference to some extent.

Even though it was time consuming I felt it gave me a better understanding on issues dealing with chemistry.

Even though the grading wassometimes not fair, Dr. K would go back and fiz the grading, that was the only thing I did not like, the calibrations.

hate to say it, but i gained nothing from the cpr. it was basically i waste of my time. it did not help me learn chemistry, nor affect my writing in any ways

helped my grade...but a pain because i could write the assignment and do fine but the calibrations messed me up and lowered my grade.

Helps a student a great deal by giving an aspect on how to write a papaer about a topic and comparing it to another students and critique your own paper

helps improve student's writing skills

I am not really for or against it.

I basically just slapped down some text that was long enough to fill in all of the space required, without reading anything. I got high B's and A's on all of them without hardly any effort, and frankly just do not see the point of doing these things at all, besides taking away from my..... umm,... study time.

I believe that it is a help to those who want to succeed in Chemistry

I believe that the actual assignment did not do much for me, i did not learn much from the assignment, but i would like to see it continued for the fact that it was fairly simple and boosted my grade quite a bit.

I did not like CPR even though it helped out my grade. The essay topics were very basic. In class, we were working with complex topics.

i didnt feel that cpr always pertained to what we were learning

I didn't like how the grading system worked because of the unfair grades that were given. However, CPR did help in my writing skills because most of the science courses do not expect a lot of writing for grades.

I do not feel that the writing assignments were relevant to the material covered in class. This was not a writing class, it was a chemistry class, I feel that if someone wanted to take a writing class, they could take Tech. Writing.

I don't believe that CPR helped me understand chemistry subject matters. To write the assignments you had to understand the material already, so writing them did not increase knowledge on a subject matter.

I don't feel that it helped me learn chemistry, it is something that would be good for an English class though.

I don't think that chemistry should involve writing. English classes serve that purpose.

I don't think that it is a necessary for the course

I don't think that many students use CPR seriously and therefore do not benefit from the exercises.

I explained above

I feel as though it is just busy work that has nothing to do with anything other than taking up time that I could working on all of my other homework which has something to do with the profession in which I will be working.

I feel grading other peoples CPR has nothing to do with chemistry

I feel that although I did not really enjoy doing them, that they helped learn some basics as well they helped our grades out somewhat. I feel I was pretty good at writing already, so they didn't aid in that area, but perhaps for others they did.

I feel the CPRs didnot help me learn the material that would be on the test at all. It just like felt like point less work for a chemistry class.

I found these to do nothing but bring down my grade. I don't see why we have to write a knowledgeable paper about a topic we havn't discussed prior to the paper. The topics should be covered and then the paper should be due!!!

I guess it's good to do because it helps reinforce some key concepts, but it's kind of a pain to do. Some of them take a LONG time!

I hate CPR and think it is a waste of time - to me, it was always about a topic that I understood. I didn't learn anything by writing a trivial essay about it.

I hate to admit that I think they should, at least in intro courses. The way they teach you to write in highschool is completely different from the way they expect you to write in college.

I helps student on their grade

I just dont think chemistry students should have to write essays. They do help your grade, but they kind of get in the way.

i personally didn't get a lot out of the cpr and didn't see the connection between a few of the topics and chemistry

I personally think that the writings that we had to do in lab are enough. I think that CPR was tedious and not very helpful with learning chemistry.

I really did not enjoy CPR. The writing part was not bad, but the grading part sometimes was difficult. If your answer did not agree with the computers, then you got a bad grade, and if the other students did not like your paper, then you got a bad grade. I just didn't enjoy it.

I sometimes felt that CPRs just got in the way of the actual class work. There is a great deal of outside work; which I have personally benefited from, but the CPRs were just something that I really hated about the class...and I do enjoy chemistry.

I think CPR was a Complete waste of time, and I got nothing out of it.

i think CPR was great but i think there should be more of a reward for all the assignments we have with CPR. we have one lab period we get to miss? i think we should have more reward for writing all these papers and doing all the calibrations.

I think cpr was more time consuming than helpful.

I think CPR's benifit most people because it helps them to further investigate the material we learn. It also provides another grade into the average of the class which helps people out sometimes. One thing I didn't like about CPR's though is sometimes they are subjective and it can be hard to give straight yes or no's to questions in the calibrations.

I think I was too leeniant on CPR and I got penalized for it.

I think it helps most people. Most college students could stand to improve their writing.

I think it is a good writing exercise, and it helped boost my grade. However, this class is complicated enough without CPR. Possibly it could be optional.

I think it is very important for students to make every effort to improve their writing ability.

I think it really did inmprove my writing abiblities

I think its a great way to learn more about what may be going on in the class as well as be able to learn about how to write about other things than just novels and such in english and history class. So, overall I think it was a benefit to my grade because it wasn't that difficult and it was a learning experience.

I think its pointless for a Chemistry class to be graded on our writing skills

I think that CPR can be a tool to help student learn chemistry and learn to communicate better. I felt that I did both of these well coming into the class so I did not experience any great gains from CRP. I think that it should be continued in the class because it will help most students.

I think that CPR consists of reading some source material, figuring out what the review questions will require you to include in the essay, and copying what the sources say just as much as you can without turnitin.com catching you. I do not believe it teaches you very much for the amount of time it takes.

I think that CPR helped to raise your grade in the class if you put adequate effort into it and also helped the students learn how to write scientifically.

I think that CPR is a good thing, but i think the grading for CPR is not helpful. The grading on CPR has to do with English and is an English assignment not a chemistry one.

I think that CPR really helped to raise your overall grade in the class if you put alot of effort into it and it taught me alot about scientific writing.

I think that future classes should do CPR's, but I also think that some of our CPR topics were very difficult. I think that future students would benefit more if it were easier to understand and grasp.

I think that they should do it, but not as many as we had to do. The only part that I thought was beneficial was the part where we had to critique other students' work. The other stuff was really unnecessary because this is not an English class. It helped a little though, to expose students to writing in terms of science.

I think that they were a waste of time. What we did for a cpr assignment could have been adequately addressed in lecture without the extra hassle.

I think the grading on the CPR's were unfair because everyone grades different. Some people's writing styles are hard to read but that doesn't mean they don't know the material.

I think they should do CPR instead of writing regular papers, but I dont think that CPR should be used in a science class when it is obviously set up for an english or history class. I dont think CPR has any relevance to chemistry whatsoever.

I thinnk CPR should be use for English classes

i thought cpr helped, but i felt it should have been an optional thing, as were the BOPs. In my opinion writing papers and critiquing others is a very subjective thing. It just depends on the writer and what they were trying to say. However, it did help in some aspects for understanding certain topics covered in class. So, i would say keep it for future classes, but have it be more of an extra credit thing.

I thought CPR was an easy A but I do not feel it helped me. I have taken 4 semesters of english and I do not believe that CPR has taught me anything that I had not already figured out. The whole semester I just kind of thought of it as busy work.

I thought CPR was more of a hassle than a help, almost like busy work. I think all the other practice we get in BOPS, chemskill, and lab are plenty for learning the information.

I thought it was a waste of time as far as the class went; however the extra grades did help.

I understand that we do some writing such as abstracts and lab reports, but nothing that would require a designated activity to improve writing skills. Enough practice is writing abstracts. Assignments like these generally turn into a pain for a student because it takes up a lot of time and not much is gained from it. I would recommend not continuing CPR future classes.

If i had to do it, they should to, it wasnt that bad

If you put in the effort, this is really an easy way to boost your grade.

I'm glad we had them for the extra grades, but they seemed irrelevant to what we were learning, and I got alot of points counted off for "grammatical errors" that really weren't errors; they just weren't understood by the graders. They also took alot of time to do, but I guess it was better that we did have them for those who need the extra grades.

It can't hurt your grade.

It did take time; however, it helped me in many ways and also helped my grade.

it didn't improve my writing and i felt like it was a waste of time.

It didn't really help me grasp what we were doing so it wasn't beneficial for me.

It does give the opportunity to improve writting skills and get a better grasp of what upper level classes will except

It does help students to research and read about certain subjects.

It does not significantly help the curriculum, and it takes too much time.

It doesn't really help that much honestly. It's stuff we learn from class... we learned it; having a to write a paper on it just seems like busy work.

it doesnt relate to chemistry enough to motivate students to do it ie essay on plagarism, sig figs 1/2 had little to do with the subject matter in class

It forces the student to understand the concepts of which they were writing.

It has helped me in the class, because I am not a good test taker.

it helped and writing makes people have to understand

It helped me somewhat, and it is another grade to bring up exams.

It helped me write and understand the chemistry concepts better.

It helped my grade out by letting me explor the topic given, then expressing what I grasped from the info. I read on the topic in my own way, not having to use a "verbatim" wright or wrong answer.

It helped my writing skills.

It helped you understand concepts better and offers hardworking but confused students an advantage over the lazy but chemistry minded ones.

It helps alot to be involved in these topics rather than just looking over them.

It helps people like me who aren't good test takers have a chance to prove they know the material. I'm a good essay writer and a terrible multiple choice taker

It helps with some understanding of whats going on in class, can help students' grades.

It helps you to become a better writer as well as teaches you how to critique others' writing. It also helps you learn the subject you are writing about.

It helps you to better understand the subjects we are covering and gives the students the opportunity to get more points towards their grades.

It helps you write about scienfic topics which most people don't have much experience doing.

It helps your grade out. It takes time but somethings can be learned from it.

It is a big help when it comes to grades and it helps improve your writing and understanding of the material.

It is a big wast of time, that doesn't teach us anything we need for chem. Leave the writing to english classes.

It is a great cushion if you have done poorly on a test.

It is a pain but it only helps with the students understanding of the material. I hate to say it but it really is a good skill builder.

It is a valuable skill to be able to write in all areas of academia.

It is a way for people who right well and follow intructions well but are bad at problems to gain points in another way.

It is a way for students to get more involved with concepts that are being introduced in the class and understand them more.

It is an opportunity to add potential extra good grades to your test average.

it is chemistry not english. 3 tests and that is it. and i really dont think labs should be mandatory unless the student is a chem major

It is important to know how to write and critique writting :) word limits are good so you learn to be short and concise.

It is not the most fun thing to do, but if we had to do it, the other students should have to do it also.

It is something that I don't quite understand how it goes along wtih Chemistry, although at another point it really helps your grade...if there were a neutral answer for this I would have chosen that...I'm torn between yes and no!

It is time consuming, but if you do it right it can help your grade out!

It just seemed like busy work to me. Maybe it was because I already understood the subjects.

it really did help out with learning information and is a good grade booster

It takes up the students time when they could be doing Chemistry Homework or studying Chemistry

it took a lot of time to do and sometimes was a little complicated to understand. It was an easy grade, but not as easy to do the assignments.

It was a burden.

It was a pain at times but if you actually try hard on it your grade will improve.

It was an easy way for me to earn points towards the class, plus it really helped me improve my writing abilities

It was not very helpful and the program is slightly unfair becuse the worse you grade yourself and others the better you do. THe program makes the assignments more of a contest of who can work the CPR system the best, not who can write adequate papers.

It was not well related to all the things we were doing. It took a lot of time up and was just tedious.

it's a good way to get an extra grade for the class, plus you learn alot more than you would ever expect.

It's a great way for people to prove they've learned something, especially if their test scores do not adequately reflect that. CPR, also is very applicable to the "real world". The ability to write an objective paper and proof read are both very necessary and useful skills to have.

its better than hard copy papers

it's chemistry not english i want ot learn about chemistry adn get graded on chem not my abilities to write a peper that's teh english dept's job ya know

It's not fun, but it's important to be able to write about chemistry. The way we are taught to write in high school is very different from what is needed in a science class.

It's overwhelming, there's just too much work in this class.

It's wonderful to have another change to raise your grade besides having only exams.

just busy work

More of an undecided... it was good for understanding the material, but it was bad when there was too much on my plate with Chemistry.

NO ANSWER

not chemistry or any science class

Not enough people seem to have a basic grasp of grammar.

Of all the activities we did in class, I found CPR to be the most time consuming. It is not necesarily the time factor that I am opposed to but the reward for spending this time. I did not feel that I received any sort of benefit as far as understanding chemistry from doing CPR whereas I did recieve extra knowledge from taking the time to do BOP's and CSB.

Other than help me with my grammar and writing, CPR in no way made me understand the concepts of chemistry better.

People just breeze through it and it grades you on how u grade not what u know.

Perhaps the instructer should take the top two scores rather than three. This would give the students a break, they would not get tired of the assignments, and we would still learn important concepts from doing the assignments.

Personally, I dreaded doing CPR but I do think that it improved my understanding and my critiquing skills. Also, I'd recommend it because it is really beneficial to the students overall grade (assuming he or she does well).

same as above

See comments in Q6

Since writing is now required for each major this is just a waste of time.

So everyone else can suffer like I did :)

The amount of time needed to receive a "good" grade was more than I felt was needed to gain a good understanding of the report topic.

The assignments were not too hard, and they really can add to students' understanding of the subject. Also, I really liked that we only had seven labs instead of ten, so anything to cause that is fine by me.

The CPR assignments really do help you to research and understand the concept behind the assignment. Even though they are time consuming, you get to apply what you've learned in class by doing these CPR assignments. The CPR assignments also help your grade if you take advantage of them. :)

The CPR assignments were not unfair and they possible could have been beneficial except for a few serious problems. On multiple occassions it would take off points and state that I was wrong when I could go back through and find evidence to support my answer. For example, when a question would ask: "Are there two exceptions stated?" If I could only find one, I would answer only one. The program would count off and state that there were two exceptions stated when there was really only one. That was just an example, but that really happened too many times for me to support the program at all.

the CPR forces you to understand the subject matter completly

The CPR helped me understand some concepts by giving demonstrations we could play with and see different situations right in front of us. Not only did it help with science, but it improved my writing skills as well and taught me how to critique my own writing by comparing it to others. What I thought was a good paper, I found out could have been better by reading others papers.

The CPR in place of the labs acts as a different form of learning style for those who might have difficulty with learning concepts in the lab itself.

The CPR really helped me understand the topics. It reinforced the material by forcing me to teach myself and explain it to others through writing. It was very helpful.

the Limiting Reactant assignment was helpful in understanding the concepts and it helps boost your grade if you do well

the way we had to learn the material, in order to write it, was clearly laid out for us to understand

The wok of one student should not be graded by students who are not experienced in that particular field. Only the teacher and/or the TAs should be grading a student's work.

There are too many things to do outside of class on the computer. Its hard to keep up with when you have other classes doing the same kind of things.

there is enough work in the class without having to grade others work.

These assignments are very time consuming, but they do HELP with the class average. My grade would probably be much lower without the CPR. I am very appreciative we had these assignments. The test are so long, and it is difficult to finish them on time so these CPR assignments are a BONUS to poor test takers!

they are all wastes of time... I already had a clear understanding of all of the topics before the assignment... and they in no way improve my writing skills... hopefully they will improve other's... students grading students papers is not a good idea... colage kidz dew knot no how two properness yus da English langugae

They are helpful in numerous ways

They are very time consuming. Sometimes it is hard to balance CPR with all the rest of your classes. It does help with your writing a little, but I do not necessarly think it helped me that much in my knowledge of chemistry.

They really are a great way to boost your overall grade if you just don't do well testing but have the time to put into work outside of class

They really dont help that much and it is kinda a waste of time although it does help your grade...that aspect is cool:)

They really help you get an understanding of the concepts you learn in Chem 101, not to mention they help your grade!

They take a long time, and the information that I learned was not enough to account for the time I put in. I learned very little about chemistry from writing the papers. My writings skills didn't improve, I just answered the questions.

They weren't too bad. And it's nice if you like to write about a subject and it helps you figure it out.

This is a good effective and fair way to help your grade ( given that it is fairly easy to MAKE a good grade)

This is chemistry, not english.

This was one assignment that I actually did consistantly well on, although I think its from all of the writing I've done since I've been in school. I also found it quite helpful in learning some of the basic concepts.

Though i do like the way CPR has helped out with my grade in the class i believe those points could be used else where. The writings just don't help you understand the concept that well

Though I do not think CPR is the best way to teach. However, since it is with other materials, it is helpful in making you think deeper about the subject.

too time consuming for a 3 hour class

Waste of time that could have been better spent doing more BOP's and/or CSB. I learned more doing those problems. Also, the peer grading STUNK. I went back through to check what I had done wrong, and I found multiple contradicting answers between students in every lab. Students don't understand how to grade. Many of them grade much too harshly due to their first god complex or something.

We did it...so should they. :)

We shouldn't be graded on how well we can grade other papers. The stress on writing should be less on the CPR's and the stress on learning the material should be greater. However, reviewing and looking for the right answers in some of the CPR's did help to understand some concepts. However, I feel CPR homework could be replaced with more useful homeworks.

When i worked on them, I wasn't thinking about the science part of the class; but, instead of the English part. I know how to write essays. I need to learn more of understanding chemistry and less of english.

When you have to make a report over any topic, you become very knowledgable in that particular topic. I believe that it is a gerat way to learn and that the future classes should definately do CPR.

with so many other things going on in class like BOP's, csb, lab reports, etc., it is just one more thing to keep up with that was not always that relevant to what we were learning.

With the amount of outside homework, work from other classes, and then adding a part time job, there weren't enough hours in the day it seemed like to finish the assignments.

Yes and no. CPR was a nice way to boost one's grade outside of exams. However, not much was gained conceptually from it.

yes i do but i feel that the cprs should be more like cpr3. which was related to the material we were going over and it really help you to break down the process and really understand it. i feel that cprs are a good idea, but i feel they should more closely follow the course.

yes the establish the concepts more strongly

Yes, as much as I disliked doing them, there was only four assignments for the entire semester. I really disaggreed with the grading on some of them, the calibrations, but Dr. K would look over and give credit back to the ones that were graded unfairly.

yes, because it is such a grade booster and it is so easy peasy

Yes, I do think CPR should be offered as a way of helping your grade. If offered the grading scale should be changed so CPR doesnt negatively affect your grade as much by miss grading yourself or another by more than a a couple of points. Especially so when others dont complete the CPR and you get reviewed by less people.

yes, it was very helpful and really helps improve your grade

You actually have to put the effort of not only learning the concept but putting it in essay form. It made you have to understand the concept. It was also a useful way to learn how teachers and TA's grade your work.