"Challenges of Teaching Mathematics and mathematical Physics Online"

on 18th October, 2020

Panelists:

1. Kapil Paranjape Professor of Mathematics, IISER, Mohali

2. A R Ushadevi Professor of Physics, Bangalore University

3. Amber Habib Professor of Mathematics, Shiv Nadar University

4. Debashis Ghoshal Professor of Physics, JNU

5. S Kumaresan Visiting Professor, Department of Mathematics, IIT Kanpur

Chair: Ram Ramaswamy, IIT Delhi

Moderator: V Madhurima, CUTN

Major points shared:

1. The challenges of teaching mathematics and mathematical physics online can be related to the shrinking of the workspace from large blackboards across walls to laptops of the teacher and further down to the mobile screens of students.

2. All of teaching can be broadly divided into four segments - lectures, interactions, self-study and assessments. Teachers have learned to handle the first three parts online with some degree of confidence. However, in order to ensure correct evaluation of students, and also to reduce overall stress of students and teachers, administrative support and policy decisions are crucial.

3. Most teachers are yet to master the skill of writing on a screen/graphing tablet, and that is a deterrant in using in-software whiteboards. For the teachers to use blackboards, proper video recording facilities are needed.

4. Lack of interaction between students is a serious problem and there should be institutional mechanisms to deal with the same.

5. "Student" is not an abstract entity and attention should be payed to their needs.

6. Special attention needs to be paid to availability of copyrighted text books to students.

7. The opinion on the use of beamer slides was split. Some felt that it was good to list out all the steps of a derivation while others felt that there should be a judicious mix of whiteboard work and slides.

8. On the positive side, teachers now have to be even more methodical in their work than before. But, there should be a conscious attempt to take it slow and not read through the slides.

9. Some of the quiter students seem to respond well to online classes, especially in using the chatboxs to ask questions.

10. Evaluation and proctoring of exams continues to be a problem for all teachers. A few suggestions were

    1. 1. Be creative in making question papers with binary answers.

       2. Give long question papers, so that there isn't much time for interactions between students.

       3. Have multiple modes of submission of answer sheets open. Students do inevitably find difficulties in uploading their answers.

11. Some other tips for teaching online

    1. Use noise cancelling headphones since usually sound is more important than the visual, if lecture notes are shared.

    2. Provide with lecture notes to avoid copyright issues.

    3. Share recordings of the classes - either audio or full.

12. The strain on the teachers from online teaching is very high and this needs to be taken care of.

13. Syllabus and length of classes have to be reduced through policy decisions.