Homework in the world of remote teaching feels to me like it requires some rethinking. Your instructor is not as easily accessible for questions about HW problems and time in 'classrooms' (aka zoom or microsoft Teams) is more constrained. I would normally create 8-10 ambiguous or open ended questions for your homework and we would end up discussing 4 or 5 every week. Feedback from spring term suggests this traditional model is less effective in a remote model. As a result you will notice that at the end of each Breadcrumb (the notes for each class) there are a 2-3 HW style problems posed. These are due before the next class meeting.
As I have time I will also repost those homework problems here but due to the challenges of creating so much new content to support learning in this remote model duplicating the homework here will take a lower priority.
As Malcom Gladwell has suggested it seems to take serious, effortful practice to get good at anything. The practice needs to involve sustained effort, confusion and challenges, and real world meaningful (sometimes called authentic) problems. Homework can be a tool to help accomplish this. Homework is not so effective when it is "drill and kill" or mindless repetition and pattern matching. To be most helpful problems need to have appropriate ambiguity in them. They must force us to consider and then reconsider our understanding of core concepts. In that process we will need to construct our own way to make sense of the concepts and processes.
This is my intention with the homework problems I write but I have no doubt that many of my problems fall short of this goal. I'm always interested in hearing which ones pushed you hard but also led to insights. I hope you focus on the process and your understand and spend little time seeking the "right" answer. Good luck!
