What can I learn from Coward's lecturing (UKPSF A2, K1, K2)

There was an interesting article about Alexander Coward a lecturer at Berkeley. The lecturer was very popular with the students, but he did seem  to have pissed the faculty off. I don't want to get into his strike breaking activities, but I would like to see why the students liked him.

• The web site for his course;  Math1A 
• The official web page for the course.

He did his PhD at Oxford and he had passed the PGCAP exam.

Looking at the content of the course, it is more technical than we would teach at Plymouth as a service course. For example, it includes limits.  The course is very close to a text book. This is a very US way of teaching.

There is a blog of his teaching, which seems to be written by students.

Here is a link to a video.  Oh, dear did he really start the class by walking around and saying "I am really proud of you."

He is not systematically organizing the material. It looks as though he is just giving good lectures with examples.

Statistics books (UKPSF K1)

The statistics  books I used for teaching STAT353 (Engineering examples). I used the statistics books with Engineering themes to present many examples to the students. This is essential for motivation. In a staff student committee, a student said that there were many examples from Engineering.

• Kendall's advanced theory of statistics.Kendall, Maurice G.12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable2 
• Engineering statistics : the industrial experience /12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable3 
• Modern engineering statistics /Lapin, Lawrence L.12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable4Mathematical statistics /Freund, John E.12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable5 
• Common errors in statistics ( and how to avoid them ) /Good, Phillip I.12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable6 
• Statistics and probability for engineering applications : with Microsoft Excel /DeCoursey, William.12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable7
• 53 ways to ask questions in mathematics and statistics /Hubbard, Ruth.12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable9 
• The psychology of mathematics for instruction /Resnick, Lauren B.12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable10 
• A history of mathematics education in England /Howson, A. G.12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable11
• Issues in teaching mathematics /12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable12
• Statistics in the 21st century /12/01/201523:59Charles Seale-Hayne LibraryRenewableRenewable

Getting students to talk (UKPSF K2, A2)

I asked a lot of questions today in class, but I got no answers. There are much fewer students, because we are in the revision section of the course. I am going have to try this electronic clickerless system. It is not clear how to structure the questions. I have more time now, because I am just doing revision, so the preparation time is down.

Maple TA webinar (UKPSF K4)

I listened in on the webinar on Maple TA by a Maplesoft speaker. MapleTA is a system for the computer assessment of mathematics.

I had used most of the techniques shown in the webinar.

He used the tags to classify the questions in the repository. For example, he used "lecture 1".

He also showed a page with a lot of training videos.

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As a reminder, the Maplesoft webinar "Creating Questions in Maple T.A. – Part #1" you registered for will take place in approximately one hour. Here is the information you will need to attend this event:

Webinar Details

Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Time: 10:00 am, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00)

Flipped class room (UKPSF V3 A1)

Today I went to a mini workshop on the flipped workshop. This was just maybe two hours long.
There was much discussion about whether the students would look at the videos before the
class started. The experience seemed that they would not. As this is a key part of  the method, it is a
real problem if they don't come prepared.

There is a flipped classroom app.  and see 

Martin uses a problem in the middle of his podcast to make sure the students are learning stuff. I talked to him afterwards and he told me they had not understood what he was doing. The solutions were at the end of the podcast.  He was not doing anything fancy with interactive HTML.

• avatar was mentioned 

MapleTA first thoughts (UKPSF K2 K4)

I have set the first coursework in MapleTA. The exercises were released on Sunday, by Monday, two students told me they were done (although they had a technical problem).

Two students have already had problems, because they inputed probabilities as percentages rather than numbers between 0 and 1. On the second try they seem to have scored better.

One issue with getting Maple to make their results is that it is hard to give them method marks. On the other hand the computer marks them, so they can see any errors immediately. I am hopefully careful not to print out the solutions, as this would give them a big help.

The deadline is November 20th, so they have a long time to submit.

Standard based testing (UKPSF A3)

I enjoyed this discussion of standard based grading.