Course:MATH TAAP/2014/Homework
< Course:MATH TAAP | 2014
Homework
- For Friday, March 28
- Read chapter 6 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
- What was the relationship you had with your favourite teachers?
- What are the concerns you have abut having relationships which are either too closed or too open?
- Teaching dossier:
- By now, most of you should have a few items in your teaching dossier: teaching philosophy, description of teaching responsibilities, and a section on reflection and improving your teaching. Consult with your partner about your dossier, and provide feedback on their dossier.
- On-line activity:
- The goal of this online activity is to practice giving good, targeted feedback on student work.
- Read chapter 6 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
The activity has three parts, but they are really simple, fun parts. Note that Part 3 will involve your TAAP partner.
PART 1. This part should take no more than 45 minutes. Complete it by Tuesday, March 25.
Print and solve the exam in the link below like an average student would. Be sure to make some mistakes that a student might make. Scan your completed exam as a pdf (using the scanner in the copier room, for example) and post it at: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:MATH_TAAP/2014/OnlineActivity On the edit page, the picture icon lets you embed a file.
Exam: http://www.math.ubc.ca/~kliu/math100and180/samplemidterm1.pdf Exam Solutions: http://www.math.ubc.ca/~kliu/math100and180/samplemidterm1_solns.pdf
PART 2. This part could take 30 minutes or up to 120 minutes, depending on how much you want to do. Complete it by Friday, March 28.
Download and print (at least) your partner's completed exam. Mark the exam exam and try to provide good, targeted feedback. To get an idea of what you should aim for with your feedback, refer back to Chapter 3 of How Learning Works (in particular p.137-144, 148-152). Don't worry about any marking scheme. Focus on the feedback. It is probably unrealistic practice to provide a paragraph of feedback for each question. Therefore aim for concise, targeted feedback.
If you want, you can also mark and provide feedback on other completed exams as well. I would suggest marking at least two exams.
Scan the exams you marked and post them on your blog in a single blog post.
Your blog post is also a great opportunity to provide group-level feedback. For example, you can list some common errors you saw and explain or demonstrate via an example how to correct them.
You may even prefer to give more very little feedback on the exams themselves and focus more on the group-level feedback. It's up to you.
PART 3. This part should take 30 minutes. Complete it by Sunday, March 30.
Read the feedback your partner gave in his/her blog post and comment on it. You can give feedback on the feedback (Xzibit-style), remark on a piece of feedback your partner gave which you think is particularly valuable, or whatever.
Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together. Keep your stick on the ice.
- For Thursday, March 20
- Read chapter 5 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
- Bain writes about "creating a natural critical learning environment" in 5 steps, as outlined on page 107. How does your lecture compare? How do the lectures of your favorite professors compare?
- Also on page 107 (and on) are some strategies designed to engage students and develop the critical learning environment mentioned above. How effective do you think these techniques would be in your class, if you used them? What about used with you, as a student?
- On-line activity:
- Create a concept map!
- Focus on a central node, then expand your map around it. The central node should not be too broad (like functions or calculus), but must have enough material around it to build a healthy map (continuity would be a good example).
- Link nodes together with links describing the relation between them. Try to find links between as many nodes as possible.
- Here is a beginning of a map, for inspiration:
.
- Create a concept map!
- Read chapter 5 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
- For Thursday, March 13
- Read chapter 4 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
- What do you expect of your students (or, would you expect)?
- How does Arons' series of ten reasoning abilities and habits of thought fit in a mathematical setting (pg 85-86)?
- In what ways can an instructor of a math class provide help in "personal development" (pg 89-97)?
- Teaching dossier:
- Produce a list of examples of how you have evaluated and improved your teaching. This can be in terms of reflection and how you have adapted your teaching style/philosophy; it can also be a description of seminars, workshops, and education/training programs you have partaken in. (Tip: you can put down this TAAP mini-course in this section!)
- On-line activity:
- This week we would like everyone to create a worksheet and/or notes motivating an abstract topic from a real-world perspective. You are open to write this project for any course you have in mind. For example, Vanessa will be motivating group theory from examples and Rob will motivate the halting problem. The purpose of this activity is for us to branch outside of our own abstract desires and to provide students with real-world examples of why the mathematics we are doing is valuable.
- Read chapter 4 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
Here is Rob's halting problem example:
File:TAAP Online Activity 4 (Rob).pdf
- For Thursday, March 6
- Join the Piazza class and begin a private discussion with the coaches.
- Read chapter 3 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
- How does the way you prepare to teach compare with those methods outlined in Chapter 3?
- To the extent that you can answer, how does it seem your "best" professors prepare to teach, and how does this compare?
- Do you have personal criticisms about the methods outlined in this chapter?
- Teaching dossier:
- Provide evidence on evaluating and improving your teaching.
- On-line activity:
- Invent or pick an assignment style question. Rather than writing a marking schedule, write out a complete guide for how you would expect students to work their way through the question, for example File:RocketGuide.pdf. This guide is intended to serve two purposes- firstly, you can give it to students after an assignment as a worked example perhaps helping them to learn from their confusion/mistakes. Secondly (and perhaps more importantly) by WRITING the expected thought process out in full, it is easier to see any leaps in understanding that your students may be expected to make. This will help calibrate question difficulty, and may allow you to provide suitable hints to your students on sections of the question where a "leap of faith" my be needed. Additionally, you can use it to place "midway milestones" or fine tune your hints more effectively.
- For Thursday, February 27
- Read chapter 2 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
- How does Bain's explanation of learning model compare with your own beliefs, or with those explained in How Learning Works?
- How does the section on motivation compare with your experiences in learning or teaching?
- What level of "knowers" do our students become, and how does this compare with our goals for them?
- Teaching dossier:
- Produce a new draft of your teaching philosophy and post it on your teaching dossier portion of your blog, making changes as necessary based on your feedback from our last prep week session.
- On-line activity:
- Construct a challenging problem (with an audience in mind) in the sense that it involves multiple steps, the combination of seemingly disjoint ideas and/or applying a familiar method in an unfamiliar context. Write the problem in a way that provides scaffolding (hints, breaking the problem into parts) as to reduce the cognitive load and help students to develop better knowledge organization.
- Read chapter 2 of Bain and write a blog post about the chapter. Here are some seed questions to help you think of what to write (it is not necessary to specifically answer the questions, they are meant as a guide):
- For Thursday, February 13
- Read chapter 1 of Bain
- Write a blog post about the "best" teacher you've ever had
- On-line activity:
- Create a video illustrating some concept in differential calculus. Your video should use some sort of prop to illustrate the concept. Here is a sample video that demonstrates the linearity of the derivative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmPvXoWLq9Q
- Read chapter 1 of Bain
- For Thursday, February 6
- Read the conclusion of How Learning Works
- With the material from How Learning Works as an inspiration, flesh out your teaching philosophy - we will be spending Thursday going over one another's philosophies.
- For those of you who have taught, prepare a list of your teaching experience. This includes:
- a list of course titles and numbers, unit values or credits, enrollments, brief elaboration,
- course materials prepared for students
- information about availability to students
- steps taken to emphasize the interrelatedness and the relevance of different kinds of learning
- statement about quizzes and examination items being keyed to instructional objectives.
- For Monday, February 3
- Read chapter 7 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- What kinds 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 problematic link?
- Online activity prep: Continue working on your blog if you started writing about your online activity last week. Otherwise, start working on an idea or a collection of ideas for online activities.
- Work on your teaching philosophy. Develop your list of ideas into paragraphs, ideally with the property that the first sentence of the paragraph gives the main idea of the paragraph itself.
- Read chapter 7 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- For Thursday, January 30
- Read chapter 6 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- How does the social identity development of students relate 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?
- Write a blog post about an idea or collection of ideas to incorporate technology into your teaching. If you wish, you may write about how to use your online activity; two birds with one stone.
- Read chapter 6 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- For Monday, January 27
- Read chapter 5 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- How well do current assessments in math courses facilitate learning?
- To what extent does the feedback on these assessments help students develop mastery of the material?
- How does the current assessment organization promote integration of the received feedback? How could we improve that?
- Develop your scrapbook page from last week.
- Read chapter 5 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- For Thursday, January 23
- 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 get stuck?
- What strategies could we use to relieve this bottleneck?
- Post a first entry on your scrapbook page on your blog, indicating what your framework is (which course). Try to be as detailed as possible.
- Read chapter 4 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- For Monday, January 20
- 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?
- Write a blog post on a strategy from chapters 1 & 2 or from the class's discussion, explaining why you chose it/found it interesting. How would you implement it in your practice class/online activity?
- Come to class with a list of ideas you want to include in your teaching philosophy.
- Read chapter 3 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- For Thursday, January 16
- 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, podcast, or video about education you find interesting/striking and post the link of it on the reference page of the wiki.
- Complete your blog about the question(s) you're interested in. The instructions were:
- Pick a few questions of “medium” difficulty (have answers, tricky).
- Explain why it interests you
- Brainstorm some ways to explore these questions this course (in context of presentations and online activities)
- Read chapter 2 of How Learning Works and answer the following questions :
- For Monday, January 13
- Answer the following question: How do I define learning?
- Read the Introduction and first chapter of How Learning Works answering the following questions :
- How is my definition of learning similar/different from the one given in the introduction?
- 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.