Hi Tina, the way I read the exercise it is not necessarily about rendering detail in the finished print but in understandng the tonal variations in a scene and most importantly the total range of stops over which your camera's sensor cab usefully record information.
I regularly convert pictures to mono (quite often IMO they look better that way) but I haven't for this module. I have simply tried to take an interesting picture (of Derwent Water) that enables me to demonstrate I've understood the exercise. I have one version in which the foreground is underexposed whilst the sky is correctly exposed. The other (of the same scene) has a correctly exposed foreground but overexposed sky. I don't like either version personally and if I was presenting the scene as a finished print I would definitely be looking at adjusting them in PS! Fingers crossed I've understood the exercise correctly. Shall know soon enough as I'm ready to submit module 2 but am waiting for module 1 to come back first.