The One Minute Paper and Assessment Innovation at Third Level: A Teaching Note

Abstract

This paper takes up the increasingly contentious subject of how teachers know and assess what students at third level have learned and know. While research into teaching and learning is developing in institutions of higher education nationally, the extant literature is not extensive. Specifically, instruments such as the One Minute Paper (OMP), which this study has as its focus, are not widely used, even though it is both straightforward to implement and well received by students where research has been undertaken. This study constitutes a teaching note that reflects on the usefulness of introducing the OMP to enhance the effectiveness of lectures in terms of developing student learning. It concludes that the innovation contributes substantially to students’ ability to develop their own sense of meaning and identification with lecture topics and, in this case, resulted in a noteworthy improvement in student performance in summative examinations.