Center for Teaching & Learning Amalia Culiuc (Math and Statistics)

This upcoming semester [Fall 2020] I will be teaching a first year seminar, FYSE 103 - Fake News, and an upper level math elective, MATH 345 - Complex Analysis. I expect these two courses to be extremely different not just in terms of content, expectation, and typical student profile, but also in terms of delivery: as a predominantly junior and senior class, MATH 345 will probably be entirely remote and possibly asynchronous, while the first year seminar could go in any way, from fully synchronous and in person, to none of the above. I’m choosing to answer these prompts with reference to my first year seminar course, allowing for various possible scenarios: 

First day activities:

• Start the class with introductions - everyone, including myself, says their name, where they are from, and shares two truths and one lie about themselves (in line with the “fake news theme”). If we are fully synchronous, this will be done verbally. Otherwise, this will also take the form of a forum post.
  • Each student randomly gets assigned two classmates - their task is to find out, by reaching out to them outside of class, which of the facts they shared was a lie. Then they’ll have to report back in some form (TBD)
  • Note: I’ve typically used this assignment as part of a “homework 0”, whose purpose was also to teach students how to use an online homework submission system like Gradescope or Crowdmark. This was their first experience scanning and uploading “solutions”, and viewing the comments once everything was “graded”. Since this is a non-math class, I’m thinking of just making everything due via Moodle. In this case, there’s no benefit to them submitting their answers separately to me, and it might make more sense to share those in a forum as well.
• Syllabus discussion: read the syllabus with one or more partners. Take a minute to highlight what you noticed/what you have questions about and share it with the class.
  • If remote and synchronous, this is easy to do via breakout rooms
  • If mostly in person, send groups as far away from each other as possible (easier to accomplish outside) and group remote students together?
  • If asynchronous, turn this into an individual activity (an asynchronous discussion-based class sounds terrifying to be honest)
• Create a “seminar contract” together - ask students to contribute ideas for classroom and discussion rules (things like respectful participation, acknowledging differences of opinion, sensitivity to political issues, and, if we are in person, rules about mask wearing and social distancing). Summarize all this into a document that will be posted on Moodle.

Semester strategies:

• Introduce an “engagement points” system - a list of points-bearing activities that they can do and a list of “benefits” they can trade their points in for
  • Some “benefit options” - clearly I need to think of it some more
    • A 24 hour extension on an assignment
    • The right to redo an assignment
    • Control of 20 minutes of class (dance party? Informal discussions? A nap?)
    • No class that day (this will require all students to pool together points)
  • Some points bearing activities:
    • Share a resource (paper, article, fact checking website, book) in the forum with an explanation of what you found it useful for.
    • Meet with someone from the Writing Center.
    • Attend a “writing party” where you meet with classmates to work together and/or to review each other’s work (bonus points for on campus students setting up work dates with remote students).
    • Make a “deadline calendar” where you compile all the deadlines for all your classes in one document.
    • Offer to lead a class discussion.
    • Submit a personal reflection on how you applied something you learned in the course outside the classroom environment (e.g. reading an article more carefully, fact checking someone on social media, confronting personal biases, finding ways to improve writing)
• Organize “writing and assessment” workshops: have groups of students design a rubric for evaluating a paper and then using that rubric to assign a grade (I plan on using my own papers from college if I can find them)
  • I’ll probably set up a Google Document they can edit simultaneously and, if everyone is remote, divide them into breakout rooms.
  • If in person, find ways for students to collaborate quietly while 6 feet apart - maybe Google Document and the Zoom chat feature?
• Start every day with a “check in activity”
  • If remote and synchronous, use the Zoom whiteboard feature: ask a question (favorite song right now, best food they’ve ever had, what they do for self care, what would make them happy that day) and allow students to add an answer (or doodle). I’ve used this before and it works great. Plus, it can be made anonymous.
  • If remote and asynchronous, have a forum thread for random discussions - sharing links, memes, recipes, and whatever else has nothing to do with the course. Post in it often and encourage others to do so too.
  • If in person, simply ask how everyone is feeling, if they have any milestones to share (birthdays, academic achievements, anniversaries) or if there’s anything they’d like to recommend to the group (a show, a book, a song, a place on campus)
• Announce office hours at the beginning of each class (or, if asynchronous, every week via email).
  • Why I’m doing all this:
    • The goal of a first year seminar is to build connections with peers - I’m hoping that making these interactions part of the course will incentivize them to view each other as a resource.
    • I want students to be comfortable and confident enough to reach out to me - I can try to check in with each of them individually, but it helps a lot when it starts on their end.
    • It’s rare to get to teach a discussion-based class as a mathematician, and more often than not, we are so constrained by the content that we don’t even get to know our students as people. I want to take full advantage of the fact that I’m not lecturing for once.