Melissa's Musings

The course that I have been developing as we work through BOLT-101 is an accelerated introduction to statistics that is offered in a blended format. However, as we've worked through the material I've also been thinking about how I'd adapt calculus for an online environment. This week as we read about how to adapt content for an online course, I found myself simultaneously very excited and very frustrated. Excited because I think that I'm going to be able to use what I'm learning in BOLT-101 to make my blended statistics course really focused on student learning and that in turn will help me to improve my face to face intro stat course. Frustrated because the more I learn about best practices for an online course, the more I become convinced that the first course in calculus is not one that should be taken online (and I'd really like to be able to offer it online). So I'm joyfully moving forward with preparations for my statistics class and I'm hitting pa...

The emphasis on engaging students in an online course through discussion has me questioning whether or not online is the appropriate format for most mathematics courses. One of the themes of Bolt 101 has been about how to make an online course more than just a correspondence course. It seems like the most natural format for having students engage with each other is to have them first engage with the content and then to engage with each other via discussion about the content. However, 'discussion' in my courses often looks more like collaborative problem solving and that's enough of a difference that I am struggling with figuring out how to translate it to an online setting. In my face to face courses, this collaborative problem solving usually takes place when students are first interacting with content and there's not a lot of (formal) discussion after they've solved the problem. Ideally, I'd like to mimic this and have students work through lessons together ...

One of the things that I continually struggle with is when and how to communicate expectations regarding assessments and learning outcomes to students. On one hand, how can students possibly do what we expect them to do, if you don't tell them what to do? On the other hand, giving too many details too often can be overwhelming and counterproductive. When I first started teaching, I completely failed to do this in any capacity. I gave students no framing regarding what the learning goal of any given assignment was and just assumed they would figure it out based on what happened in class that day. I now spend a few minutes at the beginning and end of each class telling students what the learning goal of the lesson is, however I don't have them any sort of tangible reference for this. The reading in Chapter 3 of Conquering the Content (in particular the box on page 61 where it discusses the audiences and functions of a learning guide) made me realize that a learning guide may ...

During my on campus interview this time last year someone somewhere in some meeting (the days just sort of blend together in my head at this point) asked me about an area where my teaching could improve. My response? That I needed to work on my storytelling. It's easy for me to lose track of the story arc of a course amidst the technical list of skills I want students to learn. Those skills are important (I think we can all agree that we'd like the people building our bridges to have a precise grasp of Calculus -- right?!), but they lose their meaning when they're not explored within the context of what Calculus is (which at it's heart is a story about chasing after infinity) and how it fits into the broader context of mathematics (a way of describing the way God ordered our world). Aside from the fact that you're probably more interested in calculus than you were five minutes ago, you're probably wondering what in the world this has to do with content mapping...

As we've jumped into the deep end this week talking about teaching online, I've been reflecting on my teaching journey so far. I had the (somewhat shocking) revelation that 7 years ago, I'm not sure I knew what pedagogy was (or at least I couldn't articulate it).  Regardless, I definitely couldn't tell you what was different about math pedagogy from other content areas. However, five years ago, I jumped into learning about mathematics pedagogy by joining some welcoming communities that encourage me to try things outside of my comfort zone, comfort me when things don't go well, and cheer me on when they do go well. I am excited to be learning about online education in an equally welcoming community. In particular, I’m excited to fill in the various sectors of the TPACK Venn diagram that are currently empty. For example, what precisely is at the intersection of mathematics, pedagogy and technology? I have some vague ideas, but I think they’re mostly trying ...