Skip to main content

Few undergraduates have recitations in high school or have a clear sense of what a recitation is. Explaining what you (and their TA) expect them to prepare beforehand and to do in recitation can help students get the most out of these smaller sections.

Sample Language

Alain Plante, ENVS 100: "Introduction to Environmental Science"

Recitation is designed to be a workshop where you will apply lecture content to help develop quantitative skills and a deeper understanding of the course material. This recitation is not a review of lecture material. Each week, you will work in small groups on the key elements of the recitation assignment and how it relates to lecture material. Please bring your calculator and/or laptop to every recitation because we will be accessing online data sources and using Excel (or equivalent) frequently in-class.

Recitations are where you will develop your data literacy skills (and thus fulfill your QDA requirement). The problems addressed in recitation will be lecture-relevant, but will be larger and more complex. The skills you will develop will include:

  • data acquisition: find and download real-world (sometimes real-time) data from online sources
  • data processing: "cleaning" data to put in usable form and remove unnecessary or incorrect items
  • data analysis: manipulate data using various statistical analyses to answer specific questions
  • data visualization: represent data in meaningful visual forms (e.g., graphs and tables)

Weekly recitation materials will be posted on Canvas the week before recitation. You are expected to review the content of the recitation materials before coming to class.

Recitation will serve as a "workshop" for you to begin the week's assignment.

Assignments are due at the beginning of the following week's recitation period, unless otherwise noted.

No late assignments will be accepted, you will automatically receive a zero.

Allocations of points in recitation assignments are outlined in the grading rubrics on Canvas. Each assignment is weighed equally, but graded out of differing amounts of points. Some assignments will be submitted in pairs, while others will be submitted individually. All students are expected to comply with the Code of Academic Integrity.

Cam Grey, Ancient History 027: "Ancient Rome"

Most of the skill development in this course will happen in recitations, using the Recitation Readings as the principlal materials. Each week students will be expected to have read carefully, and in detail all of that week's Rectiations Readings, and be prepared to discuss them. Part of preparation for this exercise involves knowing basic information like the identity, dates of birth and death, and geographical origin of an ancient author, and what his or her text is more breadly about. In order to help you to find this information—and to utilize the tools you will need in preparing for the Final Exam—we will, episodically thoughout the semester, consult resources from this course's Library Lounge website (linked from Canvas.)