Balancing Structure and Creativity in Culminating Projects for Liberal Arts Mathematics

摘要

Liberal arts mathematics courses can provide non-majors the opportunity to connect mathematical topics with areas of personal interest. This article describes two end-of-unit writing assignments (on voting and graph theory) that have been structured so that each student is able to synthesize course material in a unique way, while ensuring a consistent level of depth and efficient assessment for the instructor. Students are free to choose the context for their project, but they must incorporate a "skeleton" of data that is common to the entire class.