Course:MATH TAAP/2014/Questions

My questions about teaching.

Vince

1. How do we evaluate the effectiveness of a teaching technique?
2. What are some ways to integrate real-world, physical experiments into our teaching of math?
3. How does providing lecture notes affect student learning?
4. How do we integrate today's technology into the classroom?
5. How do we properly and fairly evaluate student understanding?

Alastair

1. How do we best balance the needs of a variety of students with a wide range of abilities. How do we address the weaknesses of our less experienced students, while providing challenges to our more experienced students
2. How can I get students to work together in a way that includes all group members (not just strongest).
3. What do students care about? What types of examples best demonstrate the use of mathematics in the real world?
4. How can I improve my board work?
5. To what extend does the actual teacher effect students success? What is the effect size of a teacher?
6. How can I do this stuff faster?

Matt

1. How can we make assessments that accurately determine whether the desired learning has taken place?
2. How can we motivate students?
3. How do we facilitate the application of prior knowledge in unfamiliar situations?
4. How do we impress upon students that the reason for learning math is not to be able to perform computation and that problem solving is the useful skill gained from studying mathematics?
5. We have personal experiences with teaching that we found effective as well as ideas of how we prefer to be taught. However, as people who chose mathematics we are a very small minority. The typical student likely would benefit most from/prefer different methods. How can we mediate the desire to teach the way we would have wanted to be taught as students?

Carmen

1. How does one deal with unfamiliar subject matter?
2. How does one motivate students to work on a subject they have no desire to work on?
3. What items in a syllabus make it a useful resource?
4. What defines a great teacher?
5. How does one balance teaching with problem solving in class?

Kyle

1. How can I help students improve their knowledge of arithmetic and algebra efficiently.
2. What are good examples that illustrate calculus concepts that draw on students **everyday** physical intuition or **genuinely** interesting physical examples that ? (I'm not sure falling balls cut it.)
3. How can I harness students' motivations to help them learn?
4. Are problem-based lectures more effective than definition-example lectures?
5. How can I be "on the students' side"?
6. How can I write lecture notes that trim out more of the "fat"?
7. Does it hurt students learning if I keep the in-class examples simple? Can I save the hard "tricks" for homework and show them during office hours.
8. Does it hurt students learning if I don't give examples or assign problems that hit all the "tricks"?
9. Are quizzes more effective for student learning than hand-in homework assignments?

Laurent

1. How to effectively account for all the different notations, methods, misconceptions, etc. that first year undergraduates use from high school?
2. How to effectively assess the progress of the students?
3. How to encourage students to attempt exercises that do not count towards the final grade?
4. What are the biggest challenges with office hours?
5. What kind of analogies should we use to explain concepts?

Vanessa

1. How many examples are appropriate during a lecture?
2. Is in class group work effective? What are the downfalls?
3. How can I make lectures more dynamic and interactive (besides clickers)?
4. How can we keep students on top of material?
5. What can we do to get students to improve their retention?