To Dorrit and the list serve:
As chair of the department I have the responsibility and the opportunity to
visit each class as the students complete the course/instructor evaluation. I
have been doing that over the past two weeks.
1. I have been very pleased with the students' comments regarding
instruction. They tell me how much the instructor seems to care, how willing
they are to go over material or explain it differently, to meet with them out of
class, and how knowledgeable they are in their subject. And, I could go on.
Since we strive to follow the standards in what we teach and how we teach, these
comments have been very rewarding.
2. I had several students come up to me, after I dismissed the class, and
tell me how much better they are doing in math because of the way we are
presenting the material, and I think, because of what material we are
presenting. We try to use a great deal of hands-on activities, spreadsheets,
group work, projects and less lecture. The students are very involved in the
lessons. In the courses we teach for non-math intensive AA and AAS degrees, the
content is carefully selected and taught in the context of applications. The
emphasis is not on algebraic manipulation-rather, it is on problem solving,
understanding the solution and selecting the appropriate tools for solving the
problem. For example, two students (older ladies) came up to me after a
Mathematical Models class. They both said how much they understood slope because
of the applications (depreciation, pitch, inventory...) that were used to show
how meaningful slope is in so many applications. They said that the definition
of slope had been drilled into them in high school, but they never understood it
before. They said they were very glad that we were changing the way mathematics
is taught--making it more applied and more meaningful. I must say though, that
there were several students who said they didn't like all the "word problems."
However, they agreed that they would see a great many word problems in their
intended major (business).
Thanks for the opportunity to share, glad you asked.
Rob
Rob Kimball Chair, Mathematics and Physics Department
Office: 919-662-3602 Wake Technical Community College
Home: 919-266-0850 Raleigh, North Carolina 27603-5696
Visit the department's web site at http://www.wake.tec.nc.us/math
and the C.H.I.M.P. web site at http://www.wake.tec.nc.us/math/Chimp
--------------F05329247076A9BDC44E696A
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
To Dorrit and the list serve:
As chair of the department I have the responsibility and the opportunity
to visit each class as the students complete the course/instructor evaluation.
I have been doing that over the past two weeks.
1. I have been very pleased with the students' comments
regarding instruction. They tell me how much the instructor seems to care,
how willing they are to go over material or explain it differently, to
meet with them out of class, and how knowledgeable they are in their subject.
And, I could go on. Since we strive to follow the standards in what
we teach and how we teach, these comments have been very rewarding.
2. I had several students come up to me, after
I dismissed the class, and tell me how much better they are doing in math
because of the way we are presenting the material, and I think, because
of what material we are presenting. We try to use a great deal of
hands-on activities, spreadsheets, group work, projects and less lecture.
The students are very involved in the lessons. In the courses we
teach for non-math intensive AA and AAS degrees, the content is carefully
selected and taught in the context of applications. The emphasis is not
on algebraic manipulation-rather, it is on problem solving, understanding
the solution and selecting the appropriate tools for solving the problem.
For example, two students (older ladies) came up to me after a Mathematical
Models class. They both said how much they understood slope because of
the applications (depreciation, pitch, inventory...) that were used to
show how meaningful slope is in so many applications. They said that the
definition of slope had been drilled into them in high school, but they
never understood it before. They said they were very glad that we
were changing the way mathematics is taught--making it more applied and
more meaningful. I must say though, that there were several students
who said they didn't like all the "word problems." However, they
agreed that they would see a great many word problems in their intended
major (business).
Thanks for the opportunity to share, glad you asked.
Rob
Rob Kimball Chair, Mathematics and
Physics Department
Office: 919-662-3602
Wake Technical Community College
Home: 919-266-0850
Raleigh, North Carolina 27603-5696
Visit the department's web site at http://www.wake.tec.nc.us/math
and the C.H.I.M.P. web site at http://www.wake.tec.nc.us/math/Chimp
--------------F05329247076A9BDC44E696A--
****************************************************************************
* To post to the list: email mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu *
* To unsubscribe, send mail to: majordomo@archives.math.utk.edu *
* In the mail message, enter ONLY the words: unsubscribe mathedcc *
* Words in the Subject: line are NOT processed! *
* Archives at http://archives.math.utk.edu/hypermail/mathedcc/ *
****************************************************************************