Uncategorized

Small Nudges and Their Impact on Student Success

Small Nudges and Their Impact on Student Success

We get them in our inbox every day – a reminder for the dentist appointment, an alert about a payment from the bank account, or a possible fraudulent charge, and so on. Many of us have become so accustomed to these reminders and alerts that we find ourselves somewhat dependent on them. This led me to wonder if my students… Read more →

Student engagement and technology apps

Lately, I have been using various technology tools to increase interactivity within the classroom. I have moved toward smartphone apps that can readily engage students.  Here’s my current list: Google Classroom – students can post comments and answer questions in real time Remind – this is a messaging service where I can instantly text message students without knowing their phone… Read more →

Online math courses and academic integrity

For the past three years, I have been teaching an online math course every semester. To ensure that the students taking the class are really the ones who signed up, I have always used in class midterm and final exams. I check their ID and my grading system system reflects a heavy weighting toward the in-class tests. I encourage students… Read more →

Counterexamples in Calculus

One way I motivate critical thinking in my Intro to Proofs class is by using counterexamples. The book, Using Counter-examples in Calculus by Mason and Klymchuk, provides an accessible set of ideas to think about. Producing counterexamples is an important step to thinking about proofs in general, especially for students who are used to computations. What I really liked about… Read more →

The paradox of higher math standards in high school

Those of us who regularly deal  with entering college freshmen are all too familiar with their inadequate math preparation. But in fact, high school mathematics has been ramped up quite a bit in terms of content. What happened? An article in the American Physical Society discusses this paradox. The author of the article, Dr. Joseph Ganem,  is a professor of… Read more →

Teaching Reading in a Math class?

An often asked question from my students is “but this is a math class – and you want me to read and write?” When teaching my upper division Intro to Proofs class, I find a certain discomfort among students in extracting information from a math text. Most students are used to skimming over some examples and finding one that matches… Read more →

Connecting concepts with Wolfram Alpha

I posted earlier about using Wolfram Alpha to create worksheets with conceptual understanding. One of the most central ideas in college algebra and precalculus is the connection between zero, x-intercepts and factors of a polynomial. However, it is an idea that many students have trouble grasping. So I made a short worksheet using Wolfram Alpha that engages students in studying… Read more →