Teaching Reflection

Fall '23:

I have received many positive feedback on my teaching over the years. Along with these is also the negative feedback. Many of my students comment on how "hard" I can be, how "tough" I am, and how that can be perceived as me being mean. While trying to maintain a safe and healthy learning environment, I want to keep a certain level of rigor and standard in my classroom. However, over the years, each semester, I express to my students that while my classes can be difficult and stressful I am willing to provide more guidance and support in my classroom should students vocalize their needs with me. Therefore, to help provide students an outlet to express their concerns, I began utilizing the Brightspace Discussion Forum feature. This forum allows students to ask questions, post their comments about the notes/class, reflect on exams, and share their thoughts with others. This forum has allowed me to reply to their concerns and provide solutions and guidance. In a way, it's more of a collective community effort than asking students to send an email to inquire about the class. This change is reflected in my Teaching Changelog (https://sites.google.com/view/timmyma/teaching/teaching-changelog) for each of my courses.

Another concern that students have highlighted is the need for more examples or problems to work on. In response, I have changed my notes from semester to semester to incorporate more examples ranging from easy to difficult and provided worksheets with more problems.

Reflecting Fall 2023:

The Brightspace Discussion Forum wasn't quite popular in Fall 2023, therefore to increase engagement, I decided to give students credit for participation in the Discussion Forum as part of their grade. I definitely want to give this another try in spring 2024 before changing direction completely on how to engage students. Students have given positive feedback to the notes and examples nothing that I "explain everything in detail" and that I "...provide clear examples in the notes." 

In 2022-2023, I started utilizing Cengage for their homework system. While they have a vast library of problems, students still ask for more or certain examples. I realized that students were not just asking for problems in terms of quantity but problems with certain characteristics so that they could practice. Wiley's Knewton Alta advertised their online homework system as an adaptive system; which means when a student answers a problem incorrectly and shows that they are struggling with a certain deficiency in a topic then they can review those questions before moving on to the next objective of the homework. This system intrigued me as it can help identify the areas where students are struggling and provide problems for them to practice on so that they can remediate through their system. I am implementing this system for Spring 2024 and am hopeful of the results.

Spring '24:

This semester we are using Knewton Alta for 0990D, 1070, and 2070. At first, the system seemed to be what these classes needed in terms of understanding the needs of what all of our students require in their studies. However, as the semester went on, I began to realize that the adaptive system allows the students to review only certain questions or certain parts of questions that Knewton Alta recognizes. Therefore to have a more robust system, instructors need to tell the content makers what type of problems they should incorporate into their courses. The adaptive system is a great feature to have, but there are drawbacks in that their system is not fully capable of identifying the vast common cases and only the common cases that the content developers have seen. 

This semester, I began uploading old exams on Brightspace for students to practice. I asked students to try to study and utilize these exams as practice exams. I would recommend that students allocate time over the weekend to study notes, review homework, and then work on an old exam as if it were the real one. Then I would go over their solutions in class. Many students did do this as recommended, but a lot of students did not. This was troubling as I didn't want to provide solutions to the practice exams for students who did not work out the problems since seeing the solutions before attempting them would not provide them with much information on what they understood or if they were ready for the exam. But I also did not want to deprive students who did work out the problems of the review. There was a lot of back and forth with the students throughout the semester of me wanting them to be cognizant of their studying time, working out the problems on their own, and providing them with the solutions. 

Reflecting Spring 2024:

I can say that I had difficulty finding a balance between allowing students to work out the practice exam and providing them with the solutions. And I believe that this balance will be different for each class and semester. I think that the most important thing is that students are taking ownership of their time and doing their best to study and work through balancing all aspects of their life and that I should provide as much guidance as possible while still maintaining the rigor of my courses. This is something that I will be reflecting on over the summer to prepare for the next academic year. 

While I would like to keep using Knewton Alta and provide insights into it, I feel that my students need a wider range of problems to work on that have been developed as opposed to using a system that's still fairly new. I will revisit this in a year or so to see if there have been developments. 

Students have provided comments on me trying "to find ways students can learn or understand" and that he "does his best to make sure we understand the material. This includes going over a particular topic or concept multiple times." I am still receiving comments about my pacing and how I need to teach slower or to not skip steps. There are still comments about my attitude or how I speak to students. I am always reflecting on these comments and will keep finding ways to appear less aggressive and more approachable to my students. 

Reflecting before Fall 2024 and Spring 2025:

I would say that the comments in my evaluations that detail how I can improve pertain to how I react to students when they don't know the answer to a question or if they are still struggling with a concept that we went over weeks ago. Therefore to understand this situation better I spoke to many of my colleagues in the department and around NCF such as people in Biology and Chemistry like Dr. Boissiere and Dr. Adams. The consensus is that I need to recognize the issues my students are having in the classroom, and then recognize my feelings on the matter, put aside my feelings in order for me to help my students, and then revisit my feelings in a place where it doesn't harm the students. 

I have to remember that first and foremost the students' feelings about math are not as strong as mine or positive for the most part. Therefore, I have to help them through their anxiety and negative emotions about math. A few ways for me to help them are to ask them what they need, what they think they need, and be encouraging when they are asking for help and giving their best effort. My feelings and reactions on the matter are only pertaining to me and it doesn't help the students so I definitely agree that I need to keep my reactions to myself and for my sanity to revisit them when it doesn't affect the students. 

This reflection over the summer has helped me get into a mindset of how I can approach my students for the upcoming academic year and I hope that I can show improvement in my teaching and my ability to help students and how they perceive me. 

The Fall '22 semester was a difficult one for me to process as I had no release time and had more courses to teach. The department had some unfortunate circumstances where some of our faculty had to take some medical leave. To help offset this, I took on extra courses for Math 1070. We had to combine two sections to make a larger section so that we could maintain the number of students for the term. This meant that I had an overload of 4 units. I also was teaching Math 1070H, Math 2070, and Math 2070H. It was quite a lot but also rewarding teaching-wise.

My students responded well to my notes online as it gave them a way to review the materials beforehand, catch up on the notes after class, and allowed them to follow along in class. I did a mid-course review and many students commented on what worked (notes, homework), and what didn't work (pacing). So I slowed things down in my courses and made adjustments to my students' needs.

In Fall '22, more than 70% of my students passed with a 70% or above in my Math 1070 courses, and about 87% of my students passed with 70% or above in my Math 2070 course.

The Spring '23 semester was quite the opposite of my Fall '22 semester. Given that I had an overload, my department head gave me fewer classes to teach. I had one 2070 course and was responsible for 1070H, 2070H, and a section of 0990L (drill for developmental).

I approached this semester just like the last seeing that many things worked well. I provided notes online, had online homework, and kept the same examples and notes from the previous semester.

In Spring '23, more than 71% of my students were passing with a 70% or above in Math 2070.

In the honors section, I went in a different approach and wanted to focus more on problem-solving with students. We worked on many complex problems together to explore the intricacies of Calculus that they would not normally see in their respective non-honors portion of the course.

Many students responded well to my approaches this semester which tells me that things are working well. I do occasionally get the usual, "Dr. Ma is too stern" type of comments. But I am working on them! I preface at the beginning of the course, that ultimately I want the students to succeed and will do my best to help them get to where they want to be with the course. At times, I will be tough, but I also let them know that they can tell me that I am too tough and I will ease off on the pressure that I give them.

It was a trying year but it was an experience that I have taken into the '23-'24 academic year to improve my teaching and connect with the students even further. 

I took the time over the Summer of 2022 to reflect on what worked and did not work over the Fall '21 and Spring '22. 

My students were quite responsive to having Cengage WebAssign and felt that the resources provided were excellent. 

My goals for this semester are to engage with the students more and have them come to office hours. I am promoting that there will be extra credit given if students come to office hours regularly. This will give them more motivation to come and discuss their work and studies in the course. 

Not many students filled out my Spring '22 evaluation but those that did gave an impression that I should be more gentle in my delivery of topics. I am mindful of how I approach my class but also provide caution to them that the material is difficult to get through and needs careful guidance. 

I have provided all of my notes for all of my courses online. This is a way for them to see what we will cover and when we will cover them should they miss class due to COVID or other reasons. Other actions that I have taken to provide a better experience for my students is to ask at the beginning of the course what students have reflected on from the previous lecture and if they have questions; and then at the end of the lecture, I would provide a glimpse of what to expect for the next lecture.

I am hopeful of how the semester will progress.