Editing Homework (section)

=== Busy work ===
{{Tone|section|date=March 2025}}
The intention of homework is to further test students' knowledge at home. However, there is a line between productive work and busy work. Busy work has no inherent value; it just occupies time. Karin Chenoweth provides an example of a student taking chemistry who must color a mole for homework.<ref>Chenowith, Karin. "Homework vs. Busywork: Tales from Home and a Request for More." ''The Washington Post'', Feb 13 2003.</ref> Chenoweth shared how busy work like this can have a negative effect on students, and explained that having this simple drawing is of no worth in terms of learning, yet it lowered the student's grade in class. However, Miriam Ferzli et. al. point out that just because an assignment is time consuming does not give students the right to call an assignment "busy work," which can be seen in the case of lab reports, which are indeed time consuming but which are also key to learning.<ref>Ferzli, Miriam, Michael Carter, and Eric Wiebe. "Transforming Lab Reports from Busy Work to Meaningful Learning Opportunities." LabWrite. ''Journal of College Science Teaching'', November/ December, 2005.</ref>

One way to promote productive learning starts in the classroom and then seeps into the homework.<ref name=":4" /> Brian Cook and Andrea Babon point to the difference between active and passive learning, noting that [[active learning]] promotes engagement and "a deeper approach to learning that enables students to develop meaning from [[knowledge]]." Cook and Babon discuss the use of weekly quizzes, which are based on the course readings and which test each student's understanding at the end of each week. Weekly quizzes engage not only students, but also teachers, who must look at what is commonly missed, review students' answers, and clear up any misunderstandings.<ref name=":4">Cook, Brian Robert and Andrea Babon. "Active Learning Through Online Quizzes: Better Learning and Less (busy) Work." ''Journal of Geography in Higher Education'', 41,1. 2017. 24–38.</ref> 

Sarah Greenwald and Judy Holdener discuss the rise of online homework and report that "online homework can increase student engagement, and students generally appreciate the immediate feedback offered by online homework systems as well as the ability to have multiple attempts after an incorrect solution."<ref>Greenwald, Sarah J. and Judy A. Holdener. "The Creation and Implementation of Effective Homework Assignments (Part 1): Creation." ''PRIMUS, 29''(1): 1–8, 2019.</ref> Greenwald and Holdener state that after creating effective homework assignments, teachers must also implement the learning from that homework.<ref name=":02">Greenwald, Sarah J. and Judy A. Holdener. "The Creation and Implementation of Effective Homework Assignments (Part 2): Implementation." ''PRIMUS, 29''(2): 103–110, 2019</ref> Greenwald and Holdener point to a teacher who uses a two-step homework process of connecting homework to classroom learning by first assigning homework followed by in-class presentations. The teacher says using class time for following up on homework gives that connection to what is learned in the class, noting, "In the initial step students complete and submit (traditional) homework assignments electronically, and then later they revisit their work through presentations of selected problems during class.<ref name=":03">Greenwald, Sarah J. and Judy A. Holdener. "The Creation and Implementation of Effective Homework Assignments (Part 2): Implementation." ''PRIMUS, 29''(2): 103–110, 2019</ref> [[File:Homework in the bus.jpg|thumb|upright|Tanzanian student doing her homework in a [[school bus]] before getting home]]