Welcome to this page, where a more detailed information and documentation on most unclear discussion (MUD) cards is available.
<aside> 🖋️ Abstract Programming skills are becoming increasingly relevant nowadays, regardless of the field of study. However, they are even more critical in areas of computer science and engineering where a more refined study of these skills is expected. As part of introductory programming courses for first-year computer engineering programs, strategies of active learning were experimented, including the implementation of most unclear discussion (MUD) cards. Results show that this methodology is thought to be particularly beneficial in classes where the topics to be covered are intrinsically cumulative, such as of computer programming, and where a student may have some difficulty keeping up with the level of detail once they deviate from the expected course of a semester. For students, it allows them to feel they have a judgment-free and anonymous means of leaving questions that might already be felt inappropriate, basic, or obvious, which they would most likely never ask in class. For professors, initially, some extra time is required for class preparation, but once the adaptation curve is overcome, the weekly time overhead is not higher than 1h30min. In result, the professor will have a new source of feedback on the current state of their classes, which is essential for adapting each class to the students, while maintaining the necessary level of demand, thus placing students as an integral part of class preparation.
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Following the active learning paradigm of a learner-centered approach to classes, in which students actively participate in their learning process during a semester, most unclear discussion (MUD) cards are presented as a continuum approach to interconnect lecture and workshop sessions from one to the next.
This tool is a type of end-of-class feedback that allow students to reflect and assess which are the topics they find the muddiest (the most unclear) and that need some clarification about. It is relevant to mention that these cards are anonymous by default, which gives students a clear opportunity to comment on topics they would most likely never ask in class: they can ask questions that might already be felt inappropriate, basic, or obvious, but free of judgement.
This approach is not necessarily novel to the academic community as it first appeared by the words of Mosteller [1], a statistics professor at Harvard University. In this first publication, Mosteller describes three questions to students, to retrieve some feedback, using the last 3 to 4 minutes of each class: “what was the most important point in the lecture?”, “what was the muddiest point?”, and “what would you like to hear more about?”.
MUD cards can be seen as a lighter variation to the One-Minute Paper technique [2], but specifically oriented to class content, to clear gaps on students progress during a course. Alternatively to question students on specific questions such as of “what are two most significant things you have learned during the session?”, “what questions remain uppermost in your mind?, or “is there anything you did not understand?”, with MUD cards they have a free page in which they can express themselves on which content they identify as being the muddiest point in the session.
[1] Mosteller, F., “The ’Muddiest Point in Lecture’ as a Feedback Device”, On Teaching and Learning: The Journal of the Harvard-Danforth Center, Vol.3, 1989, pp. 10-21.
[2] Angelo et al., “One-Minute Paper technique”, Classroom assessment techniques, 2nd ed., Jossey-Bass.