I just finished grading my Math 097 exams this afternoon. There were two parts to the exam. The first part was a 125 minute in-class exam with one page of notes. This is the standard sort of in class final that you would expect from a math class. The second part was a two day take-home final, where students could work together in groups, talk to tutors, and do whatever it takes for them to figure out what's going on (except asking me for help). It's also exactly the same test as the in-class exam.
The average for the in-class: 42.5
The average for the take-home: 55.5
13 point improvement... That's not too bad. However, the exam was out of 94 points. That means that even if the students were allowed almost unlimited resources, they were still only able to get about 60% credit. I find this very disappointing. I also don't understand why the students couldn't pull off at least a solid finish. This is even more confusing to me because the take-home part was worth a full 13% of their final grade!
Sadly, this result on the final exam means that over half the class failed. There were a couple of bright spots. I had a couple students who worked very hard and came away with a well-deserved B.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Coming to the end of the semester
Even though there's another week left in the semester, I've reached the point where I have no more teaching to do. At least, no more planned teaching of new material. I have one more class this evening to teach, but we're just doing review. I've got a couple hours right now with no specific plans, so I'm going to spend the time rambling away with my thoughts on how this semester has gone in order to prepare myself for next semester. I'm pretty sure some of this stuff I have mentioned before, but it's worth reconsidering again.
General things
I'm not going to be using WebCampus for my homework postings next year. Doing it this year was too much of a hassle without enough benefits to make it worth my time and energy. I think by hosting it on a normal webpage will make my life much easier. (Hopefully, I can figure out how to get proper FTP access from home to make this part even more flexible and accessible.) Along the same lines, I need to get better posting quiz solutions and that sort of thing.
I let myself get lazy with my bookkeeping and grading, which was a little bit frustrating just because I don't like to have stuff like that hanging over my head. I also found myself about halfway through the semester not having my quizzes ready until just before class. I think if I get myself a little more organized (the point above with the homework posting frustrations comes into play here), I should be able to make that happen a little more regularly (and efficiently).
I made a homework cover sheet that I think I will have my students use. The point of it is to increase the impetus on my students to be organized. It has questions on the front that I want students to answer, which will force them to think a little bit about what they did with their homework instead of just turning it in. I also gave them a space to ask questions. I didn't leave myself any room to make comments in return, so maybe I'll change that.
I want my students to check their answers in the back of the book. I don't feel that grading their homework is actually something that is particularly benficial for them. I think they need to learn how to use the tools they have to assess themselves. Of couse, I need to explain this process to them on the first day of class.
Math 097
I feel that I need to change my approach to this class completely. I almost want to break it into two different sections: One hour lecture and one hour lab. That might even need to be broken down into two half hour lectures and two half hour labs. I want to keep the daily quizzes, though I may change them into weekly quizzes. There's something about giving them a problem to do and forcing them to show what they know that has seemed to help things stick in the minds of some of my students.
I think the first 4 weeks of the class are the most critical as the foundational algebra must be set up by then for any of the rest of the stuff to have a real chance of making sense. But this doesn't just mean the mechanics of algebra, but a sense that the algebra is actually connected to real life (as a way of representing real values). I've got some ideas that I'm working out right now, but nothing solid yet. It has to do with starting the class using just numbers and then introducing variables *after* they have a sense of seeing patterns and *after* they have a notion of what it means to generalize a pattern.
I am also going to be less ambitious about the number of topics I cover in that class. I need to think a little more carefully about it, but I've got a preliminary schedule that feels like it's only about 2/3 the speed as I had this semester. I would like to follow the "teach less, teach better" mentality this time around and see if I can cut back to the core essentials.
There are things I want to do, but I don't know of any textbooks out there that do it. Maybe I'll write my own someday...
Math 124
There is a move right now for us to get rid of this class. The entire math department wants to do it. We've got a proposal in the works to make it happen.
The problem is that the course has turned into a terminal course, meaning that most students who take this will have this as their last math experience. Unfortunately, the content of the class doesn't really climax very well as a mathematical exeperience, and just leaves students with the feeling that math is a bunch of nonsense that doesn't go anywhere or have any real application. That's all very disappointing because it continues to perpetuate the sense of how hard and weird math is.
As far as how I might change how I teach this class, I'm really not sure. The difficulty is that this class has less time than the other one, so I can't break it up into lots of little pieces and have time for things. However, I still like the idea of breaking it into a lecture/lab combo, but I need to spend time working out how much information I can put in front of them in a 20 minute span and have them make sense of it.
Math 283
This was my fun class all semester long. I hope my number theory class next semester goes just as well if not better than this one. I don't really have too much to say about this one just because it was the one that I could relax the most in (even though it was the most difficult content) and everything that happened in that class just seemed to be very enjoyable.
General things
I'm not going to be using WebCampus for my homework postings next year. Doing it this year was too much of a hassle without enough benefits to make it worth my time and energy. I think by hosting it on a normal webpage will make my life much easier. (Hopefully, I can figure out how to get proper FTP access from home to make this part even more flexible and accessible.) Along the same lines, I need to get better posting quiz solutions and that sort of thing.
I let myself get lazy with my bookkeeping and grading, which was a little bit frustrating just because I don't like to have stuff like that hanging over my head. I also found myself about halfway through the semester not having my quizzes ready until just before class. I think if I get myself a little more organized (the point above with the homework posting frustrations comes into play here), I should be able to make that happen a little more regularly (and efficiently).
I made a homework cover sheet that I think I will have my students use. The point of it is to increase the impetus on my students to be organized. It has questions on the front that I want students to answer, which will force them to think a little bit about what they did with their homework instead of just turning it in. I also gave them a space to ask questions. I didn't leave myself any room to make comments in return, so maybe I'll change that.
I want my students to check their answers in the back of the book. I don't feel that grading their homework is actually something that is particularly benficial for them. I think they need to learn how to use the tools they have to assess themselves. Of couse, I need to explain this process to them on the first day of class.
Math 097
I feel that I need to change my approach to this class completely. I almost want to break it into two different sections: One hour lecture and one hour lab. That might even need to be broken down into two half hour lectures and two half hour labs. I want to keep the daily quizzes, though I may change them into weekly quizzes. There's something about giving them a problem to do and forcing them to show what they know that has seemed to help things stick in the minds of some of my students.
I think the first 4 weeks of the class are the most critical as the foundational algebra must be set up by then for any of the rest of the stuff to have a real chance of making sense. But this doesn't just mean the mechanics of algebra, but a sense that the algebra is actually connected to real life (as a way of representing real values). I've got some ideas that I'm working out right now, but nothing solid yet. It has to do with starting the class using just numbers and then introducing variables *after* they have a sense of seeing patterns and *after* they have a notion of what it means to generalize a pattern.
I am also going to be less ambitious about the number of topics I cover in that class. I need to think a little more carefully about it, but I've got a preliminary schedule that feels like it's only about 2/3 the speed as I had this semester. I would like to follow the "teach less, teach better" mentality this time around and see if I can cut back to the core essentials.
There are things I want to do, but I don't know of any textbooks out there that do it. Maybe I'll write my own someday...
Math 124
There is a move right now for us to get rid of this class. The entire math department wants to do it. We've got a proposal in the works to make it happen.
The problem is that the course has turned into a terminal course, meaning that most students who take this will have this as their last math experience. Unfortunately, the content of the class doesn't really climax very well as a mathematical exeperience, and just leaves students with the feeling that math is a bunch of nonsense that doesn't go anywhere or have any real application. That's all very disappointing because it continues to perpetuate the sense of how hard and weird math is.
As far as how I might change how I teach this class, I'm really not sure. The difficulty is that this class has less time than the other one, so I can't break it up into lots of little pieces and have time for things. However, I still like the idea of breaking it into a lecture/lab combo, but I need to spend time working out how much information I can put in front of them in a 20 minute span and have them make sense of it.
Math 283
This was my fun class all semester long. I hope my number theory class next semester goes just as well if not better than this one. I don't really have too much to say about this one just because it was the one that I could relax the most in (even though it was the most difficult content) and everything that happened in that class just seemed to be very enjoyable.
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