My fourth year brought many new and exciting things to develop and explore. I finished my pre-tenure review, had a difficult classroom experience to overcome, launched a mobile learning study that caught the attention of Texas Instruments, and began collaboration with the physics department on what the future of math education for their majors would look like.
Let’s start by looking at a few of my stated teaching goals for the semester:
- I will revamp my grading system for homework in MATH 227 and generally increase the rigor of homework assignments for upper-division mathematics courses I teach.
- I will develop the course syllabus and curriculum for a second semester course in differential equations specifically aimed at partial differential equations.
- I will successfully complete the pre-tenure portfolio review process.
Let me interject some thoughts as they relate to each of my stated goals for the semester as well as comment on some other events which took place throughout the semester.
Revisiting Rigor
I think I generally have a reputation as being a challenging professor who asks a lot of students in regard to homework depth (not necessarily quantity). After my first year of teaching Discrete Mathematics, I was not pleased with the quality of homework I was receiving. To remedy this situation I devised a rubric for grading the homework, gave students examples of work I considered to meet each of the levels described in the rubric, and used a similar system for grading responses on exams. The result… student homework quality increased dramatically and in general performance in the class rose.
I learned a great deal from implementing a rubric style grading system in this course. So much so that I have since adopted similar grading systems in my differential equations courses. I also use a similar rubric to help grade written project components of my screen-casting projects in MATH 361.
I’m still considered a “hard” professor by many students, but I think it is perhaps a more manageable form of rigor for my students since they have a much more clear understanding of my level of expectation. I had several students thank me this semester for being thorough, timely, and transparent in my grading of their work this year. These are qualities I continue to develop in my assessments today.
An Opportunity for Collaboration
Since beginning my teaching career at ACU I have long envisioned a comprehensive differential equations sequence made accessible to the students interested in an applied mathematics or physics track. Beginning in the spring I reached out to the physics department about their interest in my teaching a partial differential equations class aimed at their majors. To my surprise not only were they excited about the prospects of the course, but were willing to discontinue their own math methods course to make it happen.
Over much of the remainder of the semester, I was able to meet with various members of the physics department and discuss course content, implications for course scheduling, and implementation of the course. I’m glad to say the first section of the course was taught just one year later in the Spring 2012 semester.
A Difficult Experience
In the spring 2011 semester I was asked to teach MATH 131, Calculus for Applications. I was initially excited about this course because the slant of the course was toward dynamical systems which ties in well with my differential equations expertise. The course did not go as well as I would have liked. The students who take this course are generally middle school math majors, agribusiness majors, and primarily pre-medical biology majors. I struggled with finding a level of difficulty that was appropriate for the students and still accurately reflected the course material.
Should I teach the course again, I plan to use a different text (the one we used placed a very heavy emphasis on algebraic skills, which is seemingly an area of deficiency for students in this track), emphasize the use of a CAS program like Maple, and provide a lot of video/podcasting support. I will also significantly rework the homework (give more of it, of my own making) rather than rely on the homework in the text. Part of me feels it was just a poor choice of textbook for my style of teaching, but I know I could have improved the course in several ways.
Texas Instruments Onboard
At the ICTCM conference in Chicago in March 2010 I was able to meet a representative of Texas Instruments who was interested in some of the work I was doing with mobile computing apps. Over the course of the year I was able to arrange a few campus visits with various groups at TI. Originally, Texas Instruments was not very interested in actually creating a mobile calculator application, but wanted to know our opinion on integrating their existing handhelds with a mobile learning approach.
Over time they began to change their position. In Spring 2011 into Fall 2011, I met with representatives from Texas Instruments interested in class visits. In Fall 2011 they observed several classes and I was able to give them valuable feedback on mobile calculator app design, student usage patterns, and classroom tips and techniques. We continue to be in contact today and I hope for further avenues of collaboration possibly resulting in piloting a calculator app in the future.
Pre-Tenure Came and Went
The pre-tenure process was successfully navigated in the Fall 2011. I received valuable feedback from my peers regarding content in the portfolio (essentially what needed to be in the portfolio, and what I could leave out). I appreciate all their helpful comments and wish to thank everyone involved in the process.
Overview
What I will remember most about year number four is the giant strides I felt I made in improving the educational experience for my students. I reworked the way I assigned/graded homework. I introduced more rigor and clearer levels of expectation for my students’ work. I continued the implementation of a more mobile classroom by leaning more heavily on students’ mobile devices as their calculator for my 120 course, and using Turning Point, screen-casts, course blogs, etc… across all my courses.