Assignment 1: Write a paragraph or so on how your first day of class went this semester. (Due in the dropbox
folder for "Assignment 1" on D2L, by 9 am Wednesday, Aug. 31.)
Assignment 2:
Visit the class of another TA or professor (not one of the TAs in this seminar) who is teaching the same class you are.
Write a paragraph or two on your impressions. (Due in the dropbox
folder for "Assignment 2" on D2L, by 9 am Wednesday, Sept. 7.)
Assignment 3:
This assignment is to say what you would write in a recommendation letter for Samuel, the student in the handout "Seeking Points". (Due in the dropbox
folder for "Assignment 3" on D2L, by 9 am Wednesday, Sept. 14.)
Assignment 4:
This assignment is to do part (a) of the Sept. 7 handout about designing problems for Terry, the TA in "Order out of Chaos". (Due on paper in class or via e-mail by 1:30 pm Wednesday, Sept. 21.)
Assignment 5:
This assignment is to write a "teaching statement", expressing your approach to teaching or philosophy of teaching, in a couple of paragraphs. It should be a short, preliminary version of the type of teaching statement you would expect to include in your application materials if you're looking for a job in academia. (Due in the dropbox
folder for "Assignment 5" on D2L, by 9 am Wednesday, Nov. 9.)
Links
There is some advice on how to write a teaching statement in this article by Gabriela Montell in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
There is a nice collection of essays aimed at college mathematics instructors at this website.
At the same website, you can find some "video cases" designed for use in seminars like ours.
There are links to some interesting articles about undergraduate math education on the webpages for previous semesters of this seminar. To see them, go to http://www2.math.ou.edu/~jalbert/courselist.html and click on the links for "Math 5990, Teaching College Mathematics".
There will be a conference on research in undergraduate math education hosted by the math department this fall (October 8 to 9).
Here is the conference website.
Prof. Brooke Shipley at Univ. of Illinois Chicago runs a seminar with similarities to ours. She has some interesting links on her class pages for Fall 2016 and Fall 2015.