Teaching

Teaching and outreach are at the core of my activity as a mathematician, as they allow me to play an active part in the scientific community and the society in general. I particularly enjoy working with students who do not study mathematics as a major or minor, but need to have some math courses.

When it comes to designing teaching activities, I dedicate a good portion of my thinking to address the so-called mathematical anxiety that can too often be felt by students having to take math classes, and that can greatly impact negatively their motivation, self-esteem and progress. I cannot accept it as a necessary evil or an unfortunate, yet irremediable, situation.
In order to  address  the notion of mental health and stress with students, I offer them the opportunity to work on a so-called 'Feelgood serie', which contains a list of more than 20 'challenges' designed to have students break from the day to day routine, engage in creative, cheerful or insighful activities, and share their achievements with the community. This typically takes place just before the Holidays break, when everybody is exhausted, and yes, students can get credit for it. Here is a recent example.
Furthermore, in my day-to-day teaching, I integrate topics such as 'right to be wrong', productive failure, and related concepts, to my didactical approach, as well as mini-projects or guided exercises dealing with everyday or scientific applications of mathematics, allowing students to 'see' math in action.
Examples of topics my students and I discuss include the perfect shape for a funnel (based on a paper by Leonid Hanin), at what speed one should drive in a traffic jam, how to perform incredible magic tricks, how to survive in a zombie invasion (based on the excellent paper by Stacey Smith?), or discover through an escape game what kinds of emotions one might feel when one does research in math or science (more on this on the Games page).

The COVID situation gave me the opportunity to think about and work on online educational tools, for instance Moodle modules in a  'Choose your own adventure'-fashion for my students in engineering, or the use of a Discord server as a way to keep a sense of community and proximity for the 300+ students I work with in Fribourg (it worked so well that I intend to keep it as a central part of my teaching environment in the future).

Publication

Git Gud. Conception et itérations successives d'un dispositif d'enseignement en parallèle à la formation didactique: l'exemple d'un cours de mathématiques pour non-mathématicien·ne·es, DAS Thesis in Tertiary Didactics and Education Technology, University of Fribourg (2022).

Interview

Enseigner n'est pas une science infuse, Interview with Sophie Roulin, Alma & Georges, 14/11/2022.

Invited Speaker

• 07.11.2023 L'innovation pédagogique à l'honneur, Association Internationale de Pédagogie Universitaire AIPU Suisse, Lausanne.