Fostering Proving Skills in Upper-Division Mathematics Classes through Peer Feedback Assignments

Abstract

Teaching proving skills is one of the most challenging tasks university mathematics professors face. Often professors are not successful in solving this challenge, and they pass the burden along to the next instructor. We try to address this issue by using peer feedback assignments—an approach that has shown itself fruitful in other fields and lower-division mathematics classes. In this paper, we describe this approach in detail so that interested readers may reproduce this experiment in their classes. Moreover, we reflect on our experiences as educators and provide students’ feedback on these assignments. Overall, the paper provides an easy-to-implement approach that can be used in a fully remote setting. In our opinion, it yields an efficient way to help students learn how to prove.