I see that I didn't make any comments about Fall 2008. The only thing I would have to say there is that I decided that I didn't really like the Math 093 textbook.
Math 093 - I'm probably about 30-40% done with a textbook/workbook for this class. My primary concern is that the content is not well organized in the current textbook, and that it does not emphasize the points that will help students succeed in Math 097. One of the frustrating things about this textbook is that I feel like I'm giving the students something other than what they really need, and consequently propagating a systemic problem with mathematics education out here. I hope to have this textbook completed in the next four weeks so that I can get it to print with some help from the bookstore.
Math 330 - Linear algebra is a notoriously difficult class because it's very easy to mess up in one of two extremes: Too much computation without enough theory or too much theory without enough computation. I don't know how well I did on this balance. The students came to the class underprepared as a majority of the students are ARL students who don't necessarily have a good mathematics background. In particular, the students really lacked several basic notions of proof and had some problems with basic manipulations at the beginning of class that I wasn't expecting to see.
Math 466 - Numerical analysis is a class that I never took as a student, so I was sort of making it up as I went. The book was pretty good, and I put the emphasis more on the computational methods than the theory. The problem (again) is that the students' background is not as strong as it could be. Their calculus and general proof-writing backgrounds were limited, so the emphasis on methods made sense to me. I found the material to be somewhat interesting, though the derivations were somewhat tedious.
Showing posts with label End of Semester. Show all posts
Showing posts with label End of Semester. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Monday, May 12, 2008
Spring 2008 reflections
I don't think I put thoughts in this blog nearly as often as I did in the first semester, but now that the semester is over, I have the time and energy to put a lot of thought into how things went this semester.
First of all, Math 124 went a lot better this time around. I still don't think I connect quite as well with that class as I do with the Math 097 students. It is true that I go into the classes with different mentalities. Since Math 124 is a college level class, I treat them more like how I think college math students should be treated. I do less hand-holding and I let the students work on their own more.
Math 097 went very well this time around. I think I found the right level at which to try to meet the students and the introduction of more worksheets seems to have had the effect of helping the students to understand the material.
The homework cover sheet was a pretty good addition. Some students didn't really take to them, but I'm going to keep using them anyway. I changed them slightly so that they interact with the course content more, so that should be a positive change. I also need to write a more defined homework policy and let the students know much more clearly what I am really expecting from them in the homework.
There were a number of interesting comments that I received on the unofficial evaluations I handed out to the students, and even though the probability of them actually seeing them here is very small, I believe it is a useful exercise to reflect on them, and then to take my thoughts from here and put them into the next syllabus and work them into the class content. (Side comment: I'm always amused by the level contradiction from different students about how things have gone in a class.)
"I do not think quizzes you be a part of attendence." The same student also wrote "I like participation credit for [the] test." This is the type of comment that I feel deserve little attention. I know that Jason gives credit for attendence (he also has 'detention' where he forces students to show up to the tutoring center for specified periods of time to make up for missed classes), but it seems like extra paperwork to me. This is a college level course in which the emphasis is on learning content. What part of that description implies that credit should be given for simply showing up? It's very much like a work environment. Do you expect to get paid simply because you show up for work, and not because you actually perform your job competently?
"Quizzes should be at the beginning of class." Over the course of the last year, I have started to agree more and more with this, and will probably implement it during the summer session. This will also be used to make sure class actually starts close to 'on time' and only punish the students who show up late to class.
"Too much homework." No student actually used that phrase this time around, but a couple students commented on it. Students who say this are usually the ones who aren't very good at math, and they often spend far too much time on their homework because they spend all their time being lost and making zero progress. These also tend to be the students who don't come to office hours or ask questions to get help. Even though students will probably make this comment as long as I'm teaching math, unless the response is overwhelmingly stating that the assignments are too long, I will tend not to give much weight to these comments. (There was another comment from another student: "The amount actually helped me to learn the material." That's the whole point of the homework!)
I had a spot on the evaluation where I ask the students to write themselves a short note to themselves at the beginning of the semester. I find this quite amusing and I will definitely have to talk about this on the first day of class for the upcoming semesters. I added my own comments in parentheses:
First of all, Math 124 went a lot better this time around. I still don't think I connect quite as well with that class as I do with the Math 097 students. It is true that I go into the classes with different mentalities. Since Math 124 is a college level class, I treat them more like how I think college math students should be treated. I do less hand-holding and I let the students work on their own more.
Math 097 went very well this time around. I think I found the right level at which to try to meet the students and the introduction of more worksheets seems to have had the effect of helping the students to understand the material.
The homework cover sheet was a pretty good addition. Some students didn't really take to them, but I'm going to keep using them anyway. I changed them slightly so that they interact with the course content more, so that should be a positive change. I also need to write a more defined homework policy and let the students know much more clearly what I am really expecting from them in the homework.
There were a number of interesting comments that I received on the unofficial evaluations I handed out to the students, and even though the probability of them actually seeing them here is very small, I believe it is a useful exercise to reflect on them, and then to take my thoughts from here and put them into the next syllabus and work them into the class content. (Side comment: I'm always amused by the level contradiction from different students about how things have gone in a class.)
"I do not think quizzes you be a part of attendence." The same student also wrote "I like participation credit for [the] test." This is the type of comment that I feel deserve little attention. I know that Jason gives credit for attendence (he also has 'detention' where he forces students to show up to the tutoring center for specified periods of time to make up for missed classes), but it seems like extra paperwork to me. This is a college level course in which the emphasis is on learning content. What part of that description implies that credit should be given for simply showing up? It's very much like a work environment. Do you expect to get paid simply because you show up for work, and not because you actually perform your job competently?
"Quizzes should be at the beginning of class." Over the course of the last year, I have started to agree more and more with this, and will probably implement it during the summer session. This will also be used to make sure class actually starts close to 'on time' and only punish the students who show up late to class.
"Too much homework." No student actually used that phrase this time around, but a couple students commented on it. Students who say this are usually the ones who aren't very good at math, and they often spend far too much time on their homework because they spend all their time being lost and making zero progress. These also tend to be the students who don't come to office hours or ask questions to get help. Even though students will probably make this comment as long as I'm teaching math, unless the response is overwhelmingly stating that the assignments are too long, I will tend not to give much weight to these comments. (There was another comment from another student: "The amount actually helped me to learn the material." That's the whole point of the homework!)
I had a spot on the evaluation where I ask the students to write themselves a short note to themselves at the beginning of the semester. I find this quite amusing and I will definitely have to talk about this on the first day of class for the upcoming semesters. I added my own comments in parentheses:
- "Do your homework." (This was the most frequent comment)
- "Stop slacking!" (Do I need to say more?)
- "Do not miss any classes, you will get behind."
- "Be prepared for the quizzes." (If you spend the 5 minutes before class glancing over the homework, the quizzes will be significantly easier because the ideas will all be fresh in your head.)
- "Don't take this class if you are taking other hard classes." (Straight-forward, reasonable advice. Math classes take up a lot of time if you're not as natural with it, and this is worth considering at the start of the semester.)
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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