Introducing the Precis

Thoughts on Teaching
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February 20, 2013
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Photo of Ted CrossOffline
Ted Cross
Creating space for students to summarize and then share information can be a great way to help them deeply understand material.
When I was in graduate school studying literature I had professor who taught Literary Theory and Criticism that introduced the Precis to us.
 
Finding ourselves knee deep in the likes of Kant, Marx, Foucault, and Butler, our teacher asked us to do the impossible: write one page summaries of all the major points of each philosopher's ideas. This was formally called the Precis. It was hard, but well worth the effort as each of us struggled to synthesize and then put in our own words the deep thoughts of these authors. Later, our teacher would have us share our Precis with each other, in a process that further refined our thinking to understand the essence of each work of theory.
 
The Pecis or even the mini-precis (I know redundant mini-precise) could be a useful tool in the online environment as we ask learners to condense big ideas down to their essence and then perhaps share with each other in the discussion forums.
 
Read more on the Precis here:
 

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Photo of Eric NordinOffline Eric Nordin said 13 years ago

Hello Ted:

Coming from a newspaper background where conciseness mattered and you were allowed only a finite amount of space to within the print edition of a newspaper to convey the pertinent points of a story, I appreciate your thoughts on narrowing down complex information into a manageable and readable size. I think many of our students struggle with this concept-I still do as well-as there is the belief that more is better. What strategies could you offer to promote Précis writing within the online setting to online instructors?

Thanks,

Eric

Photo of Ted CrossOffline Ted Cross(Author) said 13 years ago

Good Questions,

I can think of two ways to use the Precis in the online classroom. It could be used as a wrap up exercise at the end of the week. Perhaps, asking students to summarize the main themes and objectives from the week's lecture. Also, it could be used a formative check for understanding within the discussion questions.

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