The minute paper, usually associated with physics professor Charles Schwartz, is a simple assessment form which elicits students’ knowledge about a topic or concept, or the contents of a lecture. It fosters deeper learning because students only have one minute to summarise the key points of a lecture in their own words, hence cannot rote-learn or regurgitate. Usually the form involves students organising their thinking by summarising or ranking the most important things they have learned that day (or yesterday, or in the previous week), formulating a question, or identifying areas they are struggling with.
Guidance on minute papers can be found on our ‘Assessment for learning at King’s‘ resource.
Image source: Stopwatch 2 by Casey Marshall on Flickr. Licensed as CC BY 2.0.
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