Course:MATH TAAP/Homework

Homework

For Friday 23rd November
- Compile ideas that you have collected throughout the term into the scrapbook.
- Read over your Teaching Dossier and fill in relevant sections and reflections.

For Friday 16th November
- Write a new teaching philosophy statement that reflects what you will be up to following the completion of this course. You will be creating a new teaching dossier based on that new statement.
- Using the philosophy you wrote last week, complete your new teaching dossier by taking the evidence you have collected and put it in that new light. Your dossier should include at least points: 1, 4, 15, 16, 17, 21, 24, 29. The following points have been identified as being fairly easy to implement, please implement at least two of these: 2, 3, 6, 7, 14, 26, 27, 34, 35.

For Monday 12th November
- Online Activity:

Clicker alternatives

Let's begin with the assumption that getting feedback from the class is good, and that the more frequent, the better (debatable, but for the purposes of this activity...). One way to get a sense of the understanding of the class is to use clickers, which we have heard about before. This week's activity will be *mainly* exploring the alternatives to clickers, since clickers are done to death. Why might we want to consider alternatives? Cost might be one consideration. I'm told it costs students $30 for a clicker ($20 if they resell them), which may be a lot of wasted money for a simple device. Another consideration might be the flexibility. Certainly clickers offer a wide array of tools, but there just might be other alternatives out there that can be more impressive (possibly at the expense of price however), which justifies actual money.

This activity will be a collaborative discussion/debate. I'm very sorry about the formatting horror that I'm about to dump on you, but I couldn't get the macros to work correctly through google docs so we'll have to manually do everything: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11KQgF0YbQNIHHZiSwdn-AiXLOXCi0sC492X91qRAoL0/edit

The idea will be to gather some ideas about clicker alternatives, and try to examine their usefulness and limitations in a way that anyone could go back to the arguments/questions/comments/information presented and trace through any thread to read the discussion.

To that end, each person will choose a "background color", so that all the material they write will have their background color (I chose background color instead of text color so that it stands out more). Notice some of the choices use white text rather than black; this is to ensure higher readability. I have a few colors written there if you'd like to use them; should you wish to have a different color, please find one that is visually distinct from the others, use white or black text as appropriate, and add it to the legend at the top. Use your color whenever you add text.
See if you can find a clicker alternative. If so, create a new "main idea" by creating a bulleted list (via the icon or ctrl+shift+8) on a new line at the bottom of the page, and apply the appropriate formatting. If it needs explanation, add some in an indented bullet below it.
Whether or not you are able to find a usable alternative, add to the discussion! Respond to someone's idea by writing in an indented bullet under the appropriate thread, feel free to play devil's advocate and list a "con" or defend an idea by listing a "pro" - or simply further the discussion of a thread.
This will be an ongoing activity, since not everyone will be on at the same time, and discussions can evolve. To that end, please check the document at least once a day and try to contribute when you can.
Do not delete or modify any text that is not yours! As far as I know, google docs does not make back-ups, and you can only "undo" so much. This means there is the risk that material can be lost. To avoid this, I will be backing up the file as often as I am able to, and I encourage you to make a back-up once in a while as well (especially after you add some information about a new alternative).

For Friday 9th November
- Compile evidence on point 24: “Preparing a textbook or other instructional materials such as online courseware.” Remember to look at your teaching philosophy and highlight how your actions reflect your intentions.

For Monday 5th November
- Online Activity:

(Inspired by a David Kohler blog reply)

All of the following should be answered in a blog post so that we can keep track.

Read the chapter 5 in Bain.
Go online and find a website that has online teaching videos of Calculus

(There are plenty around - try to not use Khan Academy since we have already had a online activity on this).

Watch one of the videos (depending on where you go this could be 10 minutes to 50 minutes)

You can also opt to visit a lecture of one of your colleagues (but do be sure to ask for permission from the instructor)

Discuss things you like about the video and things you would improve.
Suppose we implemented the following structure for class:

1) Create videos on a topic

2) Students watch the videos before class

3) Students come to class and....

Complete number 3 above. What can we do instead of lecturing in class given that we require students to listen to lectures at home? Would this be beneficial? Could this be feasible in a class setting? Would you want to do this?

If implementing this, would you want to create your own videos? Given that videos already exist; should you just use these ones? Would your decision be changed if someone from UBC had created the videos?

List of Possible Lectures Online:

http://freevideolectures.com/Course/2486/Calculus-I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbIQW0gkgxo

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/calculus-lifesaver-lecture/id266853222

http://freevideolectures.com/Course/2506/University-Calculus

http://online.math.uh.edu/HoustonACT/videocalculus/index.html

http://press.princeton.edu/video/banner/

http://lecturefox.com/math/?page=2

http://freevideolectures.com/blog/2010/12/online-math-courses-video/

For Friday 3rd November
- Compile evidence on point 29: “Statements from colleagues who have observed teaching either as members of a teaching team or as independent observers of a particular course, or who teach other sections of the same course.” Remember to look at your teaching philosophy and highlight how your actions reflect your intentions.
- Compile evidence on point 15: “Maintaining a record of the changes resulting from self-evaluation.” Remember to look at your teaching philosophy and highlight how your actions reflect your intentions.

For Sunday, October 28
- Online Activity:

ONLINE PRESENCE Today internet plays a lot of roles and useful in teaching. How can we get use of this? How should we organize our online presence of the course? Using your past experience of teaching, reflect each of the following questions (Maybe we emphasize on Q 2,4). If you don’t have experience about particular topic you can neglect it:

1 Course webpage: How did you use your course webpage in your past teaching? What do you thing is the best way to organize course webpage?

2 .1Online Blog: Terence Tao making a renovation by putting his course note in a blog manner . Do you think how this would work for first year course?

2.2Latex on the Blog Some blogs are now compatible with Latex. For example, wordpress.com , you can see how to use Latex here

http://en.support.wordpress.com/latex/

Note that some blog like UBC-blog is associated with wordpress.org which does not immediately support latex , you will need some plug-in

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-latex/

I tried to write a blog post explaining what L’Hopital rule is (maybe served as a course note ,either for review after class or for reading before class)

http://tam3tree.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/lhopitals-rule/

Do you think this will be appropriate for first year student? What things you want to change? (OPTIONAL): Try to write a blog post on your own about L’ Hopital rule that you think will be suitable for first year student and discuss how you will use it.

2.3 Do you think how can we use blog in other ways to help teaching first year class.

3 Online Resources

3.1 There are many math online resource like Mactutor History of mathematics ; have you ever used it in your first-year class? If we tell them some stories like anecdotes , history or maybe application, how well do you think it motivated your students? What’s about other online resource other than mactutor

3.2 Are there (if any) other online resource that can be used on a motivation for students (esp who is not comfortable with math)

4 Online Discussion Do you use any system that allow your students to ask questions or discuss the materials? For example, https://piazza.com provide a way that students or professors can post questions or comments and other students can see and discuss.

What system have you used in your class? How does it work?

5 Online Evaluation In recent year, UBC Math implements online system for online homework like weblog. Do you have any comment about pros and cons of online homework compare to traditional homework.

Maybe you can answer these questions in your blog so everybody can share the opinions. Any other comments are also welcome.

For Friday 26th October
- Compile evidence on point 16: “Instructional innovations attempted and evaluation of their effectiveness.” Remember to look at your teaching philosophy and highlight how your actions reflect your intentions.

For Wednesday, October 24
- Online Activity:

Vlogging!

Learning objectives:

1. Go to www.xanga.com and create an account [~5 min]

2. You'll probably want to make sure everything you do is private or only visible to friends (we can add each other as friends on the site if anyone is interested). [~5 min]

i: click on your username at the top menubar and select "Settings" ii: click on the "privacy" menu item on the left (not the items beneath it) iii: select your preferred privacy settings with the radio buttons. I'd recommend turning the "Signin", "Footprint", and "Friends" locks to on - this way only friends can view your xanga stuff.

3. Read chapter 3 of the book. [not counted]

4. Reflect upon the following 3 questions [~10 min]

i: what are your big questions in preparing to teach a class? ii: what is the most actionable idea you got from the chapter (i.e. what you felt is most practical and that you want to use in your teaching)?

iii: how could a vlog be used in teaching a first year calculus class?

5. Record yourself answering the questions, either with a Webcam, smartphone, personal video camera, or something else and get the file on your computer. [~25 min total - don't worry about perfection. No one else will see this unless you want them to.]

Currently, Xanga accepts: .asf .avi .dv .flv .mov .mp4 .mpeg .mpeg4 .mpg .mpg4 .qt .wmv file types.

6. Upload your video to your xanga account. [~10 min]

i: go to your xanga home page ii: click the "more" button under "Update Your Site" iii: select "videos" iv: select your file from your computer and upload it

For Friday 19th October
- Compile evidence on point 4: “Report on identification of student difficulties and encouragement of student participation in courses or programs.” Remember to look at your teaching philosophy and highlight how your actions reflect your intentions.

For Sunday 14th October
- Online Activity:

If you are unfamiliar with it, the Khan Academy is an online initiative to give teaching to students at their own pace. It offers thousands of videos (which we won't focus on for this activity), and an interesting concept-map-pyramid skill test. The whole purpose was to give the learner the opportunity to go through material at their own pace, on their own schedule. Unlike in a lecture, students who are unclear with a concept can pause the video and replay it to review instantly. If a student is uncomfortable with a component skill, they can do numerous practice problems; if they are more competent, the system allows them to advance more quickly. At any time during a problem, a student can check the answer, look for hints, or review the material by clicking on the related video link (however these options will set them back in the progress). Teachers who use this system can even set up a class account, and get detailed information about any of their students, such as problem areas, time spent, and proficiencies. There have been any accounts of schools actually implementing the Khan Academy in the classroom, albeit for elementary through secondary education. If you're interested about the general program, you can find out more about it here: http://www.khanacademy.org/about. What we are interested in for this activity is how well this concept can work for post-secondary education. In particular, the Khan Academy has recently added a "Calculus" section to their practicable skills (in terms of videos, they've gone even further: from convolutions to Stokes' Theorem to computational number theory).

Part 1:

The first part of this week's activity (should be <30 minutes) will be to try out their calculus test. To get there, I offer two routes: A) the scenic route, where you navigate through the pages, and B) the shortcut. Feel free to check out the support the site offers (solution, hint, video) as if you were a first-year student stuck on the problem.

A) The scenic route:

Go to the Khan Academy website: http://www.khanacademy.org/
(optional) Sign in with your Google or Facebook account, or your Khan Academy account if you have one. You can do this to keep track of your progress, but it should not affect this activity if you do not wish to sign in.
Click on "Practice" in the top right-hand corner.
Navigate through the "map" to the bottom left, where you should find "Calculus" on a node. It should bring you automatically to the "Calculus challenge"; if it does not, you can find it on the left-hand side.
Try out a few questions. It should not take you long to completely finish the challenge.

B) The "I don't care how to navigate, just get me there" route:

Go to http://www.khanacademy.org/math/calculus/e
(optional) Sign in with your Google or Facebook account, or your Khan Academy account if you have one. You can do this to keep track of your progress, but it should not affect this activity if you do not wish to sign in.
Try out a few questions. It should not take you long to completely finish the challenge.

Part 2:

Reflect on the testing method. Is it a sufficient substitute for an exam? How about for an assignment? If not, could the questions be recast in a way that tests the learner more effectively, yet maintains its flexibility to the degree that it can be implemented in an automated system like the Khan Academy?

Part 3:

If you have time (likely, parts 1 and 2 didn't take you long), look at some of the instructional videos Khan Academy offers. Again, focus on the first-year calculus. How effective are the videos as a teaching method? How about simply as a teaching aid? Consider things like time (both the instructor's and the student's), learning style, motivation, and so forth.

For Friday 12th October
- Compile evidence on point 17 in the teaching dossier: “Reading journals on improving teaching and attempting to implement acquired ideas.” Remember to look at your teaching philosophy and highlight how your actions reflect your intentions.

For Friday 5th October
- Integrate the evidence you already compiled on point 1 and 21 (See pages 17-19 in the Teaching Dossier pdf), i.e. add a reflective paragraph (or two) to connect how your actions reflect your intention as stated in your teaching philosophy and make explicit your reflective process on the matter.

For Sunday 7th October
- (Online Book Club) Write a blog post commenting on who you believe is the best teacher you've ever had. For argument's sake, try to use an example of a teacher who taught you over the span of a full course (12 weeks or roughly around this size). For anonymity's sake, please change the name of the person to a different name (maybe Mr./Dr. Fox would be suitable...). Try to use the questions found at the end of chapter 1 to drive your post (though this is only a guideline and does not have to be followed religiously).
- Online Activity. See attached File:Week1.pdf.
- If you want to compile your file using Mathematica 8's CDF feature but only have access to Mathematica 7, feel free to send Carmen your file and he will compile it as a cdf file. (I'm not sure if Mathematica 7 has cdf capabilities)
- Chosen topics: Two function continuity (Carmen), MVT (Thomas)

For Thursday 27th September
- Read the conlcusion of How Learning Works
- Note that that class will take place in MATH 126 from 12.30 to 1.30pm

For Wednesday 26th September
- Read chapter 7 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
  - What kind of reflective practices are promoted by our current calculus courses?
  - From Figure 7.1 on page 193, which node or link is the most problematic for the students?
  - How can we assist the transition over this said problematic link?
- Starting thinking about the first presentation/activity :
  - In class : prepare a short proposal on the principle you want to apply and the activity you want to try in class,
  - Online : Start reading Bain and propose an activity you wish to try online.

For Monday 24th September
- Finish writing up your teaching philosophy,
- Read chapter 6 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
  - How does the social identity development of students related to first year calculus courses,
  - Are there any common practices in the UBC math department that may marginalize (intentionally or unintentionally) certain groups of students?
  - Are there any aspects of the syllabus that may marginalize (intentionally or unintentionally) certain groups of students?

For Thursday 20th September
- Prepare a list of the courses you have taught so far with : course title, course number, unit or credit values, enrollment and a brief description ,
- Make a list of courses, seminars, workshops, professional meetings intended to improve teaching that you have attended,
- Bring your laptop.

For Wednesday 19th September
- Read chapter 5 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
  - How well does current assessments in math courses (homework, quizzes, webwork, midterms, ...) facilitate learning :
    - timing of these assessments ?
    - content of these assessments ?
  - To what extend the feedback on these assessments helps students develop mastery of the material?
  - How does the current assessment organization promote integration of the received feedback? how could we improve that?

For Monday 17th September
- Read chapter 4 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
  - What is expert blindness or the expert blind spot?
  - Do the students' level of mastery at the end of first-year calculus match that of the expectations of the instructors?
  - If not, at which stage of mastery (component skill, integration, application) do students reach the bottleneck/ get stuck?
  - What strategies could we use to relief this bottleneck?
- Set up your scrapbook page on your blog and post a first entry, indicating what your framework is (which course).

For Friday 14th September
- Write a blog post on the strategy you presented in class today, go further than what you presented and how it would look like in math.
- Check the discussion page to see if all the important ideas of last time are there.
- Start thinking about a name for your team (it can be anything, a place, an NHL team, a cartoon character, an acronym, a name that you make up, ...)

For Wednesday 12th September
- Read chapter 3 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
  - what kind of motivations do first-year students come with in our calculus courses? Describe them in terms of values and expectancies (pp. 74-79),
  - what are your motivations, as a teacher, for the course?
  - how do these two sets of motivations differ and could we reconcile them?
- Finish your blog post on the two strategies you picked from chapters 1 & 2, explaining why you chose it/found it interesting.
- Verify that you have subscribed to everyone else's blog.

For Monday 10th September
- Read chapter 2 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
  - With the current way of teaching mathematics, what type of knowledge organization is promoted, in others words, what is the typical organization a student ends up with ?
  - What changes would you propose to promote a better knowledge organization?
- Find a blog or podcast about education you find interesting/striking and post the link of it on the reference page of the wiki.
- Write your five questions about teaching on the questions page.
- Bring your laptop

For Friday 7th September
- Read the Introduction and first chapter of How Learning Works answering the following questions :
  - How do I define learning? how is my definition similar/different from the one given in the introduction (answer the first part BEFORE reading)
  - What are the main misconceptions undergrads bring into our calculus courses? how could we address them?
- Prepare a list of five questions you have about teaching
- Bring your laptop