Spring 2019
I taught one section of Pre-Calculus Algebra, one section Calculus I, and two sections of Calculus II.
I feel like Pre-Calculus Algebra went much better this time around, even though it had a 6:00 PM meeting time. I was better able to convey to the students that we were in this together, and that I was there to help them succeed. I taught using a combination of slides and handouts, giving the students time to sit and attempt problems quietly before pulling the class back together to discuss. I didn't have any issues with covering the required material doing this even though it would seem to take more time. It also led to noticeably better discussion and engagement than I had seen when I did not give this time. Homework, quizzes and exams were run through MyLabsPlus, so I did not have much control over those aspects of the course. In the future, I would like to make the breakout, work, and then discuss idea even more explicit and structured. My course evaluation for Pre-Calculus Algebra is below.
I ran Calculus I mostly off of the resources I built in the fall, with some minor tweaks. I placed Newton's method immediately after linearization to emphasize the approximation idea inherint in both topics. I also updated the problem sets to better assess the intended topics. The other major change I implemented was to turn review sessions into group work days. That went so much better than me trying to review at the board that I don't think I am every going back. Another change I made was to use appoint.ly to have students scheule office hours vists. This completely solved the problem from the fall of students bunching up at the last moment to do test corrections. Many students do procrastinate and put things off, but appoint.ly shows them what times have already been booked, so the timing of the procrastination is pushed forward to the latest available office hours time. I had a really good batch of students this time around, sprits and motivation were high essentially all semester. I don't have too much else to say, other than that the success of this run of Calculus 1 emphasizes my point about the value of being able to iterate on a course design. My course evaluation for Calculus I is below.
The structure of my Calculus II courses were essentially the same as my Calculus 1 course. The major challenge for Calculus II was creating a reasonable sequence of topics from the mess that is our text/base curriculum. I decided on four fundamental units: integration techniques, applications of integrals, series, and then power series. The idea is to use the techniques in the various applications so as to reinforce them. Power series are motivated by the need to approximate integrals which do not have closed forms. This then necessitates new ideas about convergence which takes us through sequences and series. One change I anticipate making it so move improper integrals from the techniques portion to the series portion, right before the integral test. A colleague who tried this experimental order out with me did that and it seemed to go better. Some benefits of this order: First off, I was able to come up with some really good assessment techniques. Matching problems between integrals and techniques, set-up but do not solve application problems, and having the students build their own series flow chart to use on exams. It was pretty easy to design exams which featured problems of varying difficutly in each of the topics. I had never really been able to do that before in a course, and I think it did a nice job of making it possible to earn a C/B What I mean to say is it created a space between perfect mastery and failure without giving partial credit or curving. I still think the list of topics for Calculus II is fundamentally flawed and a lot of what I did was put lipstick on a pig. My course evaluation for Calculus II is below.
Fall 2018
I taught two sections of Linear Algebra and two sections of Calculus I.
I inherited the Linear Algebra course from Dr. Clontz and Dr. Lewis. Following our official university educational improvement program, they redesigned the course using team based learning. The course also used standards based grading and elements of inquiry based learning. It takes a moment to sell the students on these various elements at the start of the semester. Some students are resistant to working on teams in particular. Most students, however, adapted to the structure of the course quickly, and seemed to thrive in it. This was the first course I ever taught that used team based learning, so I struggled to find the balance between lecturing and letting the students learn on their own. In other words, I probably lectured too much, but it's just so much fun to talk to students about dimension. A lot of things about this course brought me joy. Teaching four classes a semester can be exhausting, but I usually left these classes more energetic than when I started them. It was nice to be able to iterate on a designed course. When Dr. Clontz and Lewis first did the Linear Algebra redesign, the student success rate was around 70 percent. As of the spring semester of 2019, the course has a 95 percent student success rate. In terms of mastery, On average, students show complete competency twice on 21 out of 22 topics. This level of success has been across five different instructors. I think part of the reason for the success is that we came together every semester to talk about what worked with the course, what didn't, and how it can be improved. A cool thing happened with this course. I had students who had me for calculus III follow me to differential equations and then this linear alegbra course. It was really awesome to see them grow over these three courses. It also scares me that I am responsible for a huge chunk of their mathematical education. My course evaluations for linear algebra are below.
My design for the calculus I course was a bit of a compromise between traditional methods those I applied in linear algebra and differential equations. The course meets five days a week, and the students meet with a TA for the tuesday and thursday classes. For the TA sessions, I applied aspects of team based learning. The students were in persistant groups, worked on problems related to the most recent lecture, and the TA was there to go around and help as needed. I tried my best to make the lecture more interactive as well, giving the students the time to work out problems before asking them to follow along with me on the board. I didn't always have the time to do this as well I would have liked, but I still got more student interaction than I had in previous lecture style courses. The course was traditionally graded, but I built in a form of test corrections as an element of standards based grading. The lectures, homework, and exam reviews were all built according to learning objectives I set for the course before the semester started. Every exam problem lined up with one of the learning objectives. For the corrections process, students could come to office hours, show me their corrected exam, and then take a quiz with problems from the learning objectives they had missed points on. Each learning objective they showed mastery of got htem credit back on their exam. I also drastically reduced the amount of partial credit in the course. Half of each exam would be problems that are either correct or incorrect, no partial credit at all. The other half would be more traditional free response, but students can only earn a 0, 1, 4, or 5: 'completely wrong', 'somewhat correct', 'mostly correct', and 'completely correct.' This scale was used for all quiz problems and free response exam problems. I used mylab math for online homeowork so that students had some form of practice with feedback. Quizzes were used to give feedback on the students ability to write a complete solution. Even though there was little to no partial credit, the corrections allowed students to come out of the course with reasonable grades. I had a bit of a problem organzing office hours with this class as students would all want to do their corrections at the last minute. The course evaluations for calculus I are below.
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