Guest post by Ty Ghaswala, CEMC and Pure Math (tghaswala@uwaterloo.ca)
This past weekend, I attended the CMS Winter meeting in Toronto, attending both research and education sessions. In particular, I attended a session about instructor training. One presentation in particular, by Vanessa Radzimksi from the University of the Fraser Valley, triggered a lot of thoughts about how (if at all)...
Guest post by Anton Mosunov, Math Undergraduate Group (amosunov@uwaterloo.ca)
In this blog post, I will tell you about some exciting work done by our working group at the Aug 7-12 Okanagan BIRS Workshop Teaching First-year University Mathematics Courses: Past, Present, and Future. Together with Lauren DeDieu, Chunlei Ge, Spectrum Han, Asia Matthews, Vilma Mesa, Anton Mosunov and Yas Yamin, I explored what virtues, knowledge, and skills a university mathematics instructor will need in 2030 to...
Guest post by Anton Mosunov, Math Undergraduate Group (amosunov@uwaterloo.ca)
In this blog post, I will tell you about one excellent talk that I’ve attended at the EdCog Conference at McMaster University on July 15 this year. The talk was by Bridgette Hard, and while she presented three case studies of pedagogical research, I will focus on only one of them — the one about technology multitasking in classrooms.
Guest post by Brian Ingalls, Applied Mathematics (bingalls@uwaterloo.ca)
Indigenous Science was in the news last month. The Globe and Mail reported on the Ford government’s decision to remove Indigenous Science content from the elementary school curriculum. This move was criticized by those who view the weaving of Indigenous knowledge systems into mainstream education as key to Canada’s reconciliation efforts (e.g. the ...
Guest blog post by Asma Karovalia, aakarova@uwaterloo.ca
My name is Asma Karovalia and I had the opportunity to be Diana’s co-op student and work with her as an Educational Research Assistant for four months. Diana and I both conducted a scoping review to help answer our research question: “what is known from existing literature about practices for educators to assess students in undergraduate STEM education?” ...
Over the next few months, this blog will feature some guest posts from UW Math faculty members who attended teaching conferences to share what they learned.
I encourage all faculty, regardless of rank, to make use of our Teaching Development Fund for professional development activities. You can find a list of potential conferences with dates, locations, and conference websites here, and apply for funding using this very...
Last Friday UW announced the return (for all but a few large classes) of in-person instruction on Monday Feb 7. Here are some suggestions for making the return as painless as possible, while still supporting student learning.
Establish classroom norms. It would be a good idea to take a bit of time to introduce yourself and make your expectations clear about classroom participation (raise hands? call out answers?) Many students have never been in a university classroom, and you have the chance to shape the culture of yours.
Here are some resources for instructors looking to adapt their Winter 2022 courses to be online until Jan 24 (and robust in terms of when we actually do return to in-person.)
Course delivery in first three weeks:
In Math you *are* allowed to have synchronous lectures at the scheduled class times
For live meetings, use interactive tools (ask questions for students to answer in chat, use polls, Kahoot, etc) to engage students. If all you are doing is lecturing with no interaction, it might as well be a video.
When we go back to in-person classes in Winter 2022, we know things won't go back exactly to the way they were before. Nor should they! We have learned a lot about alternative ways of assessing students, delivering content, and designing courses during the 6 terms we've had to do some remote teaching. Here are some of the things I'm hoping to keep when we move back into the classroom:
Online office hours as well as in person - convenient and practical
Use a variety of authentic assessment techniques - not just closed-book time-limited tests, although...
On July 1, 2021, I took over the position of Math Faculty Teaching Fellow, following in the footsteps of two of my fabulous colleagues, Brian Forrest and Cyntha Struthers. I'm really excited to bring my expertise and passion to the job, and here are some of the things I'm hoping to accomplish in my 3 years:
Blended Learning Initiative
This is part of a long term University-wide plan to have more blended courses. COVID teaching was the push some needed to create resources, so let's use them for the long term! If you have an in-person component this...
