This semester we will be discussing various aspects of online teaching. We will be reading excerpts from the following books:
Boettcher, Judith V. 2016. The Online Teaching Survival Guide : Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips, edited by Rita-Marie Conrad. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. NYU Library listing, WorldCat listing
Moore, Michael G., editor and William C. Diehl editor. 2019. Handbook of Distance Education. New York: Routledge. NYU Library listing, WorldCat listing
Nilson, Linda Burzotta. 2018. Online Teaching at its Best : Merging Instructional Design with Teaching and Learning Research, edited by Ludwika A. Goodson. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. NYU Library listing, WorldCat listing
Friday, October 23th, 10 -11 AM on ZOOM. Meeting link shared on mailing list.
Student projects are a form of assessment that gives students a chance to explore the topics that interest them. They also emphasize important skills including technical communication and independent learning. As an alternate form of assessment, projects can also help reduce the emphasis on exams which in turn can reduce academic dishonesty. For all of these reasons, many of us have chosen to add projects to our course.
This months readings focus on the logistics of including student projects in your course. In addition to the readings listed below, I encourage anyone planning students projects to do a quick search in PRIMUS for articles describing how others have include projects in the same course.
Our discussion will focus on practical questions like the following:
How do we structure the project assignment?
How do we help our students choose appropriate topics?
How best to support students as they work on their projects?
How do we grade the projects?
Assessing learning as you go with projects [Boettcher 2016, pg. 255 - 267]
K. Cline, J. Fasteen, A. Francis, E. Sullivan & T. Wendt (2020) A Vision for Projects Across the Mathematics Curriculum, PRIMUS, 30:4, 379-399, DOI: 10.1080/10511970.2019.1600176 (NYU Library listing)
Friday, November 20th 10 -11 AM on ZOOM. Meeting link shared on mailing list.
How do we foster active engagement outside of synchronous class meetings? What strategeis lead to higher quality discussions on class forumns? What support do students require to engage meaningfully with online matterials? All of these quesitons are addressed by Riggs and Linder in their paper sited below. We will discuss their suggestions and how we can use them to improve our coruse.
S. Riggs, K. Linder. 2016 "Actively Engaging Students in Asynchronous Online Classes" IDEA Paper, no. 64, (December): 1-10, https://www.ideaedu.org/idea_papers/actively-engaging-students-in-asynchronous-online-classes/
Friday, December 11th 10 -11 AM on ZOOM.
Multiple choice questions are a useful assessment tool. Because they can be answered and graded quickly, they make it possible to include large number of learning goals in one assessment. It is however important that the collection of learning goals assessed reflect the depth as well as the bredth of the course. Thus, we need questions that reflect the full range of student understanding from recalling facts to conceptual understanding and interpretation. While it is important to include some basic recall questions, these are generally easy to compose. By contrast, writing qhestions that address conceptual understanding can be challenging. This is the focus of our readings this month. The first reading contains examples of multiple choice questions that address higher order thinking as well as general tips for writing multiple choice questions. The second reading contains examples of mupliple choice questions that address conceptual understanding while minimizing computation. You are alos encouraged to bring your won examples of multiple choice quetions that go beyond recalling terms and crunching numbers.
Timothy W. Bothell PhD (2001) 14 RULES FOR WRITING MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS, Bringham Young University Annual University Conference, BYU Testing Center.
Mark D. Schlatter PhD (2002) WRITING CONCEPTESTS FOR A MULTIVARIABLE CALCULUS CLASS, PRIMUS, 12:4, 305-314, DOI: 10.1080/10511970208984036
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1. If you are having trouble accessing the readings, contact Corrin Clarkson for assistance.