Blog

What I Learned About Pedagogy from Magic School

In August 2018 I had the immense pleasure of attending my first live action role-playing game at Bothwell School of Witchcraft. Everyone was given a character to play, and the action unfolded over 3 days based on the group’s collective improvisation skills as well as the groundwork laid by the organizers. I thought I was merely vacationing while indulging in my fascination with a certain fictional British magical boarding school, but it turns out even in a real castle in East Sussex there is pedagogical inspiration to be found.

Getting Students to "Think Like Actuaries"

I attended the 2017 Actuarial Research Conference (ARC) and was fascinated by a talk that argued insurance companies should consider firearm ownership as a rating factor. Firearm presence has a stronger impact on claims than many other factors that are used. The reason for its absence is not efficacy but politics: there is opposition from groups that have a vested interest in more firearms being sold. I was intrigued and wanted to weave this kind of topic into my teaching.

Around the same time, I was finishing up the Fundamentals of Actuarial Practice modules, which examine...

See my original teaching blog here:

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~dkchisho/teachingblog.html

I am in the process of moving posts over to this platform.

Assessment Design for Learning

I was invited to give a talk for Dan Wolczuk's seminar for UW instructors, and chose to talk about Assessment Design for Learning. You can view the presentation here and access the slides below. In it, I touch on several of the ways I design assessments in my courses to encourage student learning, including:

Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning
Incorporating high level questions into assessments
Interactive tutorials...

CS Section of STAT 230

Back in early 2015, the SAS (Stats and Act Sci) department was having a discussion about CS students in the two required STAT courses (230: Probability and 231: Statistics). While CS students are as strong as other Math students in most courses, they were systematically underperforming in STATs.

The idea that got the most traction was to pilot a special section of STAT 230, which would focus on the CS applications of probability. The hope was that by including more relevant examples, and pointing out the many important tie-ins to later CS courses, the students would be more...

Designing Exams to Test Higher Levels of Learning

This post is based on a presentation I made at the 52nd Actuarial Research Conference in Atlanta, Georgia in July 2017. The slides for the presentation are attached.

I was inspired to give this talk by a few conversations I had with other actuarial educators at last year's conference. I mentioned my usual approach to testing both basic and high level thinking skills, along with communication, in the same question on my exams. More than one person was extremely surprised by my approach and exclaimed "I wish I could write...

Summary: Using Interactive Tutorials and Case Study for Deeper Learning

As part of my LITE grant (see posts below) I presented the outcomes of my work with STAT 334 at UW's Opportunities and New Directions conference in April 2016. I also gave a similar (and a bit more detailed) presentation to my own department of Statistics and Actuarial Science in June 2016. Finally, I talked about how to extend these ideas to Actuarial Science courses at the ...

My LITE (Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement) Grant Project: a 3-part series - Part 3

Part 3: Oral Exams

I have used Oral Exams in several courses in the past (STAT 430/830: Experimental Design, ACTSC 455/855: Advanced Life Insurance Practice, and ACTSC 613: Probability and Statistics for Actuaries) based on research I had done while completing my Certificate in University Teaching. So I was eager to use them in STAT 334 as well. I always use them in addition to, rather than instead of, a traditional written final exam.

My LITE (Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement) Grant Project: a 3-part series - Part 2

Part 2: Case Study Competition

A lot of applied statistical techniques are best learned by doing, such as experimental design, predictive modelling, simulation, etc. Probability models (what is covered in STAT 334) are often fairly theoretical, but STAT 334 is a course for business and accounting students, who are more interested in the applications. They are also familiar with the idea of case studies from the business courses they take.

Because of that, I decided to have a Case Study Competition in STAT 334. The choice of topic was completely up to the...

My LITE (Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement) Grant Project: a 3-part series - Part 1

Last year I applied for and received a LITE Seed Grant to add some new techniques to STAT 334. The three main things I added were interactive tutorials, a case study competition, and oral exams. I'll talk about each one in a different post.

Part 1: Interactive Tutorial Activities

Different instructors use tutorials in different ways, but for me the most effective way is to give the students...

Diana Skrzydlo

Math Faculty Teaching Fellow and Associate Professor, Teaching Stream