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ABSTRACT: This study examines the potential performance benefits of an often-cited pedagogical tool: one-minute papers. The effect of various forms of one-minute papers on quiz scores was investigated in an undergraduate introductory accounting course with over 850 students. Students were required to write one-minute papers addressing (1) the main point learned in class and (2) the main unanswered question from class that day. Overall results indicate that performance on subsequent essay quizzes was significantly higher by students who wrote one-minute papers than performance by students who did not write the papers. Of particular interest to instructors was that the increase in quiz scores when one-minute papers were not graded was significantly higher than when the one-minute papers were graded. Results of this study should be useful to instructors interested in an efficient and effective pedagogical tool.
The Accounting Education Change Commission has called for students to be more active participants in the learning process and for instructors to utilize methods which increase interaction with students (AECC 1990) . A pedagogical tool promoted by Harvard University, which addresses both of these concerns, is the one-minute paper (Light 1990). One-minute papers require students to take a minute at the end of a class period to respond to the following two questions:
(1) What is the big point you learned in class today?
(2) What is the main, unanswered question you leave class with today?
Often the papers are written anonymously for the instructor to read after class. The common intuition is that the learning benefits of one-minute papers accrue as students actively contemplate what they did and did not learn during class in order to respond to the two questions. Additionally, one-minute papers are believed to benefit the education process by providing timely feedback to instructors.
Recently, one-minute papers have gained attention in accounting education. Stocks et al. (1992, 197) suggest "asking students to write a summary of the major issues presented in class and a question on a point or topic that is unclear to the student" to enhance students' understanding of a topic being presented. In an AECC-sponsored monograph, Francis et al. (1995, 64) suggest a similar activity to encourage student skills in questioning, organizing, connecting, reflecting and adapting. Bryan et al. (1993) evaluated...