most recent 30 from http://mathoverflow.net 2013-05-19T01:32:46Z http://mathoverflow.net/feeds/question/68546 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course David White 2011-06-22T20:34:17Z 2012-07-06T08:44:30Z

<p>At my institution incoming graduate students must take a semester long course on pedagogy taught by current grad students. I may soon be in the position of having to teach this course and I'm looking for advice for readings to give the students. The problem is that our grad students don't teach till after they pass their quals, so effectively the pedagogy course is teaching people how to teach when they are more focused on their qual courses and know that they won't have to teach for at least a year. Consequently, most students view it as a complete waste of time and gain little from it. When I took this course I really tried to get something out of it and some of the lessons stuck with me. Still, at that time we mostly had readings taken out of guides for high school teachers and I'd rather have more applicable readings.</p> <p>Here's what I've got so far:</p> <ol> <li>A small booklet the university produces with rules, resources for getting help when you teach, online resources the university uses, and honor code</li> <li>Old syllabi we can discuss</li> <li>All students will go observe other grad students teaching and write a report which we can discuss.</li> <li>Discuss some teaching mechanics, e.g. blackboard use, dealing with student questions, etc. Good resource seems to be the <a href="http://mathgradblog.williams.edu/?cat=21&amp;paged=2" rel="nofollow">AMS blog</a> and a <a href="http://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/ttips.pdf" rel="nofollow">document</a> from Williams</li> <li>All students will need to prepare one lecture and deliver it. We can then give them feedback. As recommended by Gerhard, I think I'll try to video tape this and give them the tapes. Below are some further readings...</li> <li>Some <a href="http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html" rel="nofollow">notes</a> by V.I. Arnold, <a href="http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/teaching.html" rel="nofollow">some</a> by John Baez, and <a href="http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~reznick/ciu.html" rel="nofollow">some</a> (recommended below) by Bruce Reznick. I'm starting to think a good exercise would be to assign these as readings and ask the students to find 3 things in a given reading which they <em>disagree</em> with. We can then discuss.</li> <li>Silly, but <a href="http://divisbyzero.com/2008/12/22/how-to-curve-an-exam-and-assign-grades/" rel="nofollow">how to curve grades</a></li> <li>Perhaps some discussions of issues of pedagogy, e.g. <a href="http://mathoverflow.net/questions/40082/why-do-we-teach-calculus-students-the-derivative-as-a-limit" rel="nofollow">why teach calculus the way we do</a>, and <a href="http://mathoverflow.net/questions/27344/what-are-your-experiences-of-handouts-in-mathematics-lectures/" rel="nofollow">pros/cons of giving handouts</a></li> <li>Discuss evaluations, teaching statements, and teaching letters with an eye towards applying for jobs</li> <li>Discuss <a href="http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/talks-are-not-the-same-as-papers/" rel="nofollow">giving talks</a> in general</li> </ol> <blockquote> <p>Does anyone have any other ideas for topics worth discussing or readings worth giving? I'm particularly interested in books on this subject which I could draw readings from.</p> </blockquote> <p>Also (and this is probably too general), since these students will have at least a year before they actually teach, I'm keeping my eyes open for lessons that will stick with them and come in handy when they finally get in front of a class. If you have any nuggets that fit the bill, I'd be interested to hear them (all mine right now come from John Baez's notes or the notes from Williams)</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68554#68554 Gerhard Paseman 2011-06-22T21:03:00Z 2011-06-22T21:03:00Z

<p>I suggest an alteration in procedure, if the department can support such. In addition to video taping and evaluating a performance which the prospective teacher T can review, offer</p> <p>a) being able to sit in on the first one or two classes given by T to provide feedback to use later in the semester, or</p> <p>b) better yet, assemble the prospective T's together so they can practice a day or week before they are "thrown over the wall", to borrow a phrase from software design. This can be done at the mutual convenience of the T's and perhaps one or two seasoned graduate students to help organize.</p> <p>Having a timely practice session or two with copies of the material from the previous year will go much further to keep the lessons learned fresh than anything else I can imagine. It can be arranged so that the T's can do most of the work in 3 days or less. Also having a check list of common errors and common success points to use in the evaluation process would help.</p> <p>Gerhard "Email Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.06.22</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68561#68561 Kevin O'Bryant 2011-06-22T22:10:16Z 2011-06-22T22:10:16Z

<p>Bruce Reznick wrote a short guide, "<a href="http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~reznick/ciu.html" rel="nofollow">Chalking It Up</a>," that I have found helpful. </p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68579#68579 roy smith 2011-06-23T02:11:09Z 2011-06-23T02:22:31Z

<p>to teach successfully, first you must decide what is your goal. this may be your innate mission, or your department's imposed outcome, or whatever. Possibilities are: my students will learn to think logically and to pose and solve reasonable problems; as many as possible of my students will choose to major in math, or to take more math courses from our department; my students will pass the departmental exam on calculus skills in as large numbers as possible.</p> <p>Need I go on? These different goals suggest rather different approaches to teaching. E.g. if you want large numbers of students to go on, your course must be easy and give good grades. If you want the good students to go on, those who have a chance at success, your course should be harder and give grades more accurately,.....</p> <p>So a teacher should have a goal. It should be a worthy goal, and it should be one he/she has some idea how to implement. But no matter what your philosophy, and no matter how long you have been teaching, you must prepare every night before class. And you must present examples, not just theorems.</p> <p>Come to think of it I have written an essay on this topic, "On teaching". Perhaps i will link to it or even post it here. <a href="http://www.math.uga.edu/~roy/" rel="nofollow">http://www.math.uga.edu/~roy/</a></p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68580#68580 Steve 2011-06-23T02:56:34Z 2011-06-23T02:56:34Z

<p>It is useful to have a course to go over basic stuff on teaching but there is nothing like standing in front of a classroom with (possibly hostile) live students. Every successful teacher will find his or her own style and having guidance will accelerate the process. What are listed in the other posts are all worthwhile but I think it would be real helpful to have the prospective TAs do some tutoring first. Most beginning graduate students are not used to explaining mathematics, especially to others who may be having problems with very basic material that they had found easy. Also, I think it is more important to have support and feedback when they first start teaching. It would be helpful to have regularly scheduled meetings for the new TAs with more experienced TAs and faculty mentors. There are also other factors to consider. For example, will they be teaching their own classes or recitation sessions? If they are teaching their own classes, then they would need more support and encouragement because it can get pretty depressing for aspiring mathematicians to teach unmotivated students in service courses.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68581#68581 known google 2011-06-23T02:58:55Z 2011-06-23T02:58:55Z

<p>Alas, here is something unpleasant you should include: you should explain the basics of how to handle a student you suspect is cheating. Different universities have different policies/procedures. The last thing you want is to have a student get off the hook for a procedural error, or worse yet, be sued for not following procedure.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68583#68583 David Speyer 2011-06-23T03:26:34Z 2011-06-23T03:26:34Z

<p>How to grade efficiently and fairly. Some things you might cover:</p> <p>Practical things like "Grade all copies of problem 1, then all copies of 2, etc" and "If you grade out of 5 points, you'll spend less time making and justifying decisions than if you grade out of 10." </p> <p>Some discussion about the merits of additive vs. subtractive grading. (I'm a big fan of additive, myself, but I know both have defenders.) </p> <p>How to keep good records of student performance. Discussion of any university policies regarding privacy of these records.</p> <p>Encouragement to return problem sets as soon as possible.</p> <p>If you want some more interesting material to discuss, you could check out <a href="http://sbseminar.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/creative-grading-schemes/" rel="nofollow">Noah's blog post</a>.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68585#68585 Frank Thorne 2011-06-23T04:56:12Z 2011-06-23T04:56:12Z

<p><a href="http://www.ams.org/bookstore?fn=20&amp;arg1=cbmathseries&amp;ikey=CBMATH-10" rel="nofollow">This</a> is a very interesting book on the subject, written by and for mathematicians, and likely to provoke discussions. I am guessing it would be ideal for your course.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68590#68590 Thomas Richard 2011-06-23T06:46:11Z 2011-06-23T06:46:11Z

<p>I don't know if this qualify as "pedagogy" but something i've found useful when I began teaching was the acting lessons I had in high school. I don't know how it is in the US but here in france you can begin teaching as a PhD student with very few experience in talking in front of people. </p> <p>I find it quite important to know how to use your voice and your body when you give a lecture (or a math talk). Of course acting lessons seems to be a waste of time at this level but a few exercise on breathing and speaking loud enough could be of some use I guess.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68592#68592 Marius Overholt 2011-06-23T07:04:25Z 2011-06-23T07:04:25Z

<p>Among possible sources of readings, I would mention the booklet How to Teach Mathematics by Steven G. Krantz. It is quite practical, and it costs very little. </p> <p>By the way, one of the other responders mentioned an unpleasant issue. I would like to mention another issue that is potentially much more unpleasant: The TA should keep the door to the office open when a student comes to office hour, most particularly if the student is of the opposite sex. Very often the student closes the door when entering the office, even if the door is open. In such cases, I tell the student to keep the door open "in case someone else comes along." The unpleasant developments that this precaution prevents are extremely rare, but when they occur, they cause quite exceptional amounts of trouble.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68632#68632 Kjetil B Halvorsen 2011-06-23T17:14:06Z 2011-06-23T17:14:06Z

<p>Most answers goes into the practics of teaching. But more philosophical thinking is also important!, and a book that I found extremely helpful (and fun!) was Imre Lakatos: "Proofs and Refutations: the Logic of Mathematical Discovery".</p> <p>Go read it! It will also help your teaching.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68641#68641 André Henriques 2011-06-23T18:17:39Z 2011-06-23T18:17:39Z

<p>Here's a phenomenon that any to-be-teacher should be made to experience:</p> <p>Give teacher #1 a given exercise sheet to grade.<br> Give teacher #2 the very same exercise sheet to grade.</p> <p>Their grades of teacher #1 and teacher #2 are likely to be shockingly different<br> (unless the exercise is either very good or very bad).</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68768#68768 Predrag Punosevac 2011-06-24T21:31:02Z 2011-06-24T21:52:05Z

<p>At the University of Arizona where I received my Ph.D. just like at your institution all incoming graduate students also had to take a semester long course on pedagogy but it was always taught by a postdoc. The mandatory reading was "How to Teach Mathematics" by Steven G. Krantz but in retrospective, I wish, the mandatory reading had been his other book "A Mathematician's Survival Guide". We did lots of exercises like video recording our lectures or grading the same exam (by the whole class) and then comparing the grades. </p> <p>Besides already mentioned Arnold's article (some of ideas from that article are also eloquently presented in his Ordinary Differential Book 1st one not the Geometric Methods) I really, really like the following writing </p> <p><a href="http://www.math.psu.edu/katok_a/reflections.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.math.psu.edu/katok_a/reflections.html</a></p> <p>by Anatole Katok which is indeed geared towards more advancing courses which you will probably not have opportunity to teach as a TA. </p> <p>I do not agree with everything Professor Katok is saying but it is a great reading. For example:"After that the picture gets filled in, sometimes straightforwardly using the most elegant or most useful available arguments". I quite on the contrary believe that the picture should be filled by the arguments which the most instrumental in exposing key ideas. I also do not believe in well polished statements of the results as they are usually result of many iterations of the original idea/discovery. I like to state result in its original form when it was discovered (for example Stokes theorem can be stated on the square in $R^2$ in which case its proof become a trivial exercise in applying Fundamental Theorem of Calculus). My advisor Qiudong Wang is a master in delivering such courses (Dynamical Systems, ODE) which are completely revealing.</p> <p>As of teaching courses taken by unmotivated learners (intro college courses) I have much less to say and in my experience you have to treat crowd on case by case basis. I am not sure that any reading can help you with that (you have to get experience). </p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/68546/teaching-a-pedagogy-course/68828#68828 Steve Hurder 2011-06-26T03:03:16Z 2011-06-26T03:03:16Z

<p>Hi All,</p> <p>I have taught such a course in the UIC MSCS Department for the past 6 years. The class meets once a week for 75 minutes, after the TA's classes on Tuesdays. Each year, this course seems to develop somewhat differently, as the skill levels and students' interests just seem to vary as well. All in all, it is a definite PLUS! </p> <p>Students especially value the discussions among themselves about teaching. But also, I sweeten the pot by discussing "practical matters". These can be found on the web site for the course, which has some original material, and links to other sites as mentioned elsewhere above. Feel free to borrow whatever might be useful from this site, <a href="http://www.math.uic.edu/~hurder/2010F_math589/" rel="nofollow">http://www.math.uic.edu/~hurder/2010F_math589/</a></p> <p>steve</p>