Friday, September 21st 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM in WWH 705
The topic of our September discussion is Universal Design for Learning (UDL). It is inspired by a brief section in the MAA Instructional Practices Guide (DP 4.3). The core idea of UDL is to use cogitative science to inform pedagogy and course design at all levels. We will discuss the Guidelines for UDL produced by CAST a nonprofit education research organization. The reading comes in two different formats: A 35 page word document and an interactive graphic. It is recommended that you begin by reading the word document and then use the graphic as a visual reference. If you would like to delve deeper into this topic, there is also a book. Chapter 7 of the book includes some nice anecdotes from teachers who use this framework.
Friday, October 12th 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM in WWH 705
Our topic this month is Standards Based Grading (SBG). This is a grading scheme where scores represent a student's mastery of a particular course objective rather than their aggregate performance on a particular assessment. Typically, the grading scheme also includes a mechanism for disregarding poor performance on earlier assessments in favor of stronger performance on later assessment. The goals of this type of grading scheme are to more accurately document student understanding, promote a growth based mindset, and to move student focus away from collecting points and towards learning.
In a slight change of pace, we will focus on practitioners descriptions of this grading system rather than evidence based studies. There are two reasons for this shift. First, studies on SBG in collegiate mathematics are limited. Second, the discussion of the basic principles and pragmatics of implementation will likely take all the time we have.
Our primary reading is a blog post by Kate Owens: A Beginners Guide to Standards Based Grading. In addition to this blog post, please pick one syllabus to read through. Here are a few samples: College Algebra, Calculus 1, Linear Algebra. Many more samples are available on Rachel Weir’s SBG Repository.
Friday, November 2nd 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM in WWH 705
Our topic for this month is growth mindset interventions. A growth mindset is one where you believe that intelligence is malleable and can be increased by hard work. This is in contrast to a fixed mindset which is the belief that intelligence an unchangeable characteristic. Carol Dweck has done a lot of research on the connections between these types of mindsets and both motivation and success. For a short intro, see this TED talk.
A growth mindset intervention is a targeted effort to move someone away from a fixed mind towards a growth mindset. In the world of math education, Jo Boaler promotes these types of interventions for both teachers and students. One of the goals of her work is to debunk the idea that some people "just aren't math people" and in so doing help more students persist and succeed in their studies of mathematics. More information about this work is available at YouCubed.org.
Our readings this month are two studies. The first is a study of a growth mindset intervention that was done in the California school system using a MOOC. This study claims to that the intervention was successful. The second is a meta study of research on growth mindset interventions and argues that they aren't particularly effective. What do you think?
Boaler, J., Dieckmann, J., Pérez-Núñez, G., Liu Sun, K. & Williams, C. (2018). Changing Students Minds and Achievement in Mathematics: The Impact of a Free Online Student Course. Front. Educ 3:26.
Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To What Extent and Under Which Circumstances Are Growth Mind-Sets Important to Academic Achievement? Two Meta-Analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549–571.
Our topic this month is building a personal theory of learning. We will reflect on our own beliefs about learning, so that we can understand both how those beliefs fit into the established theories of learning and how they influence the choices we make about teaching.
Our reading this month, comes from a book about teaching online, but should be relevant to everyone. The chapter that we are reading is titled Views on Learning. It begins with a concise overview of different theories of learning (Table 3.1 pg 47 and Table 3.2 pg 49) and ends with suggested strategies for reflecting on your own beliefs about learning (Strategy #1 pg 73, Strategy #2 pg 73. Our focus will be discussing, our personal theories of learning and how they effect our teaching.
Howell Major, C. (2015) Teaching Online : A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice. Johns Hopkins University Press. Ch. 3 Views of Learning 45-75.
Friday, December 7th 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM in WWH 705