Method & Mindset
1/14/2025: Note-Taking Philosophy
I think that using slides in math courses does not benefit learning. If I am expecting my students to take notes I should give them the appropriate time to write things down and to ensure I give them that time I write everything I would expect them to write down on the board. I will use slide notes as my notes and post them to the Blackboard website, but for during lecture I will do my best to write on the board. I also ask my students to have laptops away during lecture. It is very difficult to type math notes on a computer and it is best to have then write down their notes by hand. I have found that if students have their laptops out that they either will be doing something completely unrelated to class or try and do the homework for the class during class. I want them to have notes they can come back to when it is time to study for exams. While finishing the homework early is appealing to the students, I think without a log of their thought process or ability to replicate their solutions in general leads to more confusion at the end of the unit.
2/13/2025: Deadline Expectations
I am a believer in working with students to adjust assignment due dates when they ask before an assignment is due. I have several student athletes in my class this semester and most of them have been really good about communicating with me about deadlines conflicting with traveling for their athletics. When they communicate early with me I will bend over backwards getting dates adjusted and notes sent out. When students do not reach out to me until the day an assignment is due or after the deadline has passed I am less flexible. I want them to learn that when they have a conflict they know about in advance they have the foresight to tell their instructor early in order to get a plan in place. This will lead to less frustrated instructors (and in the future employers/managers) who will be more likely to help them. I obviously work with students who have emergency conflicts after deadlines.
3/11/2025: Adjusting Policies in a Problematic Class
I have discovered an issue with my current class when I had to get a substitute to cover my section. I gave my sub the option to not take roll since they do not have access to the Blackboard roster. My sub reached out to my after she covered my class to inform me that a large group of students walked out after she admitted that she would not be taking roll. I have had issues with students walking out in the middle of lecture for a chunk of this semester, so I am going to have to adapt my roll policy. Although normally I trust my sections to treat the attendance policy with respect, I am changing my policy to be that I will pass out a paper roll at the beginning of lecture (a few minutes after the start in case people are running a few minutes late) and then take roll at the end of class. I hope this will lead to students not packing up and leaving in droves in the middle of the lecture. I have had students complain that this group leaving in the middle of lecture is distracting as they are not quiet in their departure. (4/15/2025 Update: I did not need to change my policy for long because these problem students started cutting class entirely. While I was disheartened to have these students miss out on lectures, I was at least grateful the other students in the class would no longer have such frequent disturbances and could focus on the lectures.)
5/12/2025: Dealing with Cheating on a Final
It finally happened; I had a student cheat on an exam. This student goes to an accommodations testing center for their exams. This student left their exam to Google questions and was caught with the computer's search results by the manager of the testing center. So I got to have my first experience with the All-University Academic Integrity Board. My case was not resolved until after the semester had ended so I had to put an incomplete for the grade and wait to hear. Luckily for me, the student confessed to cheating so there was no hearing and the Integrity Board was able to handle all sanctions internally. Hopefully, I will not have another incident like this while at the UofA. The silver-lining is that now I have experience working with the Integrity Board in case I have further incidents like this.
8/19/2025: Trying New "Get to Know Me" Frist Day Activity
This semester I am teaching College Algebra with review. This means we meet 5 times a week, instead of the regular 3, and that I tend to get the students with less math confidence. Another instructor made a first day hand out for the students that I thought would be good to also hand out. I have never done one of these "Get to know me" activities before, but I really liked getting the feedback from my students. It was a quick hand out asking their name (and how to pronounce it or if they go by a nickname), where they are from, their major, their math confidence on a scale of 0-10, an interesting fact, and any concerns about the class I should know about. My two favorite takeaways from this is that I can see the overall confidence of the class and some specific concerns right from the start. For example, I had a student on the worksheet tell me that they are partially deaf. By knowing this early I am already being mindful of how clearly I am speaking and making an extra effort to write everything important down on the board. Another perk is that collecting the worksheets made it easy to take attendance the first day.
8/26/2025: Active Shooter Hoax Response
I truly thought dealing with students cheating on exams would be the biggest thing I dealt with as an instructor at the UofA. Yesterday our school was one of many affected by false calls of an active shooter on campus. Luckily, no one was injured and no shooter was actually on campus, but for over an hour we did not know that. I was not teaching when the alert went out, but I have been working on accommodating my class in the aftermath. Normally in these pedagogy thoughts I am trying to record aspects of my own teaching where I have found something that works well for me or something I should adjust- this feels like something much different. This is the first time as an instructor I am having to adjust how my class operates for every student. I had class be optional today and extended the due dates for assignments due this week. I also emailed the class with information about our university's Counseling and Psychological Services. I am just trying to help my kids out as much as I can.
9/17/2025: Goal with Class
So far I have primarily been teaching students who actively dislike math. I am very fortune if I have students in my classes who are simply neutral to math. My goal with these students is not to have them living every aspect of my class or even walking away knowing everything we covered. My Goal with every class is to give them a slightly better outlook on math. Since I have been teaching mostly remedial math courses I usually get students that claim to be "afraid of math." I actually prefer students who claim this to students who think they already know everything when they usually do not. I try to have the students walk away from my class "less afraid" of math even if it is still not their favorite subject.
10/19/2025: How to Work with a Particularly Quite Class
This class has a particular aversion to talking during class. They will not talk to me to ask questions, they will not talk to each other during a practice problem to check their work, they will not even chat before or after class most days. I have attempted many different techniques trying to coax answers out of them; asking a question and waiting in absolute silence, asking a yes or no question, asking them how their weekends were. They do not want to talk during class. I usually have a group of students who come up after class has finished to ask clarifying questions about something from the lecture, but they still refuse to ask these questions during class. I have adapted the course to try to adjust to this group of students. I have started asking them to hold their thumbs up if they understood the examples I just worked and a thumb down if they had questions. Since they are able to hold this close to their chests they are way more likely to participate in this. This has let me get a handle on what topics the students have mastery of and which need more work. I have done a similar system when I give them problem to work on on their own. When some collection come and talk to me after class about questions they had during lecture I jot down a list of common questions and address it at the beginning of the next class. I think we have found a healthy balance of still getting a read on the understanding of the class, and adjusting to the unique quietness of this group of students. I have made some progress on having them make a noise in my class. I made a joke last week about how quite they have been this semester and about 5 students chuckled. I will take progress where I can take it.
3/3/2026: Group Projects
I really struggle incorporating group work into my classes. I think this stems from my hatred of groups projects when I was a student. In my courses I try to limit the amount of outside the classroom work for our group elements. If the 3-day version of college algebra instead of weekly quizzes we have weekly group assignments called wikis. I hope that by having the group wikis during class time this cuts down the burden of all of the work falling to one students and encourages actual collaboration. I feel that often group projects, instead of being collaborative, end up being divided into smaller pieces that are worked separately. The in class assignment also allows me to walk around and answer questions in the moment. This also puts a quite pressure on the group to at least appear to be working together and not just having a single student complete the entire assignment. Half way through the semester I have started letting them choose their groups instead of randomly assigning the groups. My goal with the random assignment in the beginning was to ensure that students were getting to know most of their other classmates and not having students face the social stress of asking to join groups where students may already have connections outside of class. Now that they have had several group wikis they have had an opportunity to have a friendly face in any group they inevitably join.
5/1/2026: Reflection on Different Version of a Course
This semester I had the regular version of College Algebra (without the extra review). It was a bit of an adjustment. I am used to having students who claim to "fear" math. This semester I instead had many students who felt they had a good background in math and thought my class was a waste of their time. For most students I am a general education class and not required for their major. I have to find a way to "sell" this course to my students in order for them to stay invested. I tend to try to tie in more application problems into lecture in this version of the course. I also know that all of the business majors, who make up the majority of this course, have to take an additional math course called finite math. I will highlight examples that I know will be similar to this next course to try and show what we work on in College algebra will help them in other semesters. I will also try to impart that while they might not need to know how to convert a Standard form linear equation into slope intercept form outside of this course, the main skill they are developing in my course in critical thinking and breaking complex problems into easier steps. The ability to explain a complicated idea or procedure to another person is a valuable skill that will help them in the future. Even if that other person is just a future version of themselves studying for a final weeks from now.
8/31/2026: "Get to Know Me" Activity returns
It has been a year since I introduced a "Get to Know Me" activity in my College Algebra with review class. I have used the same activity this year and found it equally helpful. I think in these early mathematical courses this is a helpful and quick way for students to tell me something they are concerned about in a course. It is also a good first step in convincing them it is not them against me in this course. That we are a team and I want them to succeed in my course just as much, if not more so, than they do.