# MER Contributor guide

Hello,

We are excited to have your help in writing solutions for the Math Education Resources. In a few aspects, writing solutions for exam questions for this learning resource differs from just writing an answer key for yourself or your class after the exam. The main points are summarized below, but the most import difference is that your hints and solutions will be used by students who are using your solutions to learn the subject. Hence we highly value clear and simple step-by-step solutions.


## Question statements

Question statements are stated as closely as possible to their original statements on the exam. When appropriate however, questions statements are suitably modified so as to make sense of the problem. In multipart problems, the common text should be copied to all subparts.


## Hints

Hints help students who have difficulties understanding what the question is asking, how to get started, or which key concepts they will require to solve the problem.

**A good hint should be:**

* Something that helps the student move forward with the problem while revealing as little as possible.
* Something that focuses on a conceptual understanding of the underlying mathematics instead of highlighting procedural methods.


## Solutions

Since our mission is to support student learning, we want to strive for solutions which encourage students to learn and think deeply of their work and the concepts involved with calculus. Avoid promoting rote learning and procedural thinking as much as possible, i.e. avoid phrases such as *in class we saw*, *as we've seen many times*, *we know that*, *we can immediately see the answer*, etc..

**A good solution should be:**

* Simple, given the concepts and tools that are available to a typical student.
* Clearly highlight the reasoning that is involved in making decisions when solving a problem.
* Spend some time discussing how word problems are modelled. This element is critical for students and constitute one of their biggest weaknesses. As such, extra care should be taken to explain and guide students through that step while explaining alternate and equivalent choices which would also work.


## Images

Using images is encouraged wherever it makes sense. When you add a plot of a function, we encourage you to not use a graphing tool. This is not what a student could use in a real exam and hence does not allow the student to pick up what an expert (you) would do. Instead, scan or take a photo of your hand drawing and attach it.


## LaTeX

Please use the template that we provide here, and follow the styling described there as closely as possible. We run an automatic script on your submitted file that re-formats your LaTeX into a wiki-friendly version.


## License and publishing

The new content you create will belong to MER and will be published under a Creative Commons BY-SA licence. We will happily acknowledge your contribution, simply add your name to the respective field in the LaTeX template that you’re submitting.