Hi everyone!
As is evident from the appearance of my blog, I am a math nerd. As is evident from my participation in OL 101, I am seeking to share my love of math with others, potentially in an online format.
As I begin this series of blog posts reflecting on my experiences in OL 101, I feel compelled to mention a few disclaimers. First, I have never actually taught any courses. In fact, I'm still a full-time student myself. Although I have done a fair amount of tutoring have performed various teaching-related support (such as grading) over the past few years, the closest I have come to teaching an actual course is leading weekly recitation sessions. I'm far less experienced than any of the other OL 101 participants, and since I have little to contribute from an instructor's perspective, I will have to offer all of my insights from the perspective of a student/future instructor and hope that I'm not wasting the time of the more experienced educators. Second, I have never actually taken an online course. The closest I have come to that is taking an educational technology course which was in an online format for two weeks of the semester. I was, however, homeschooled through high school, and so I believe the independent and self-paced nature of most of my education will help me to understand the challenges and benefits of online courses.
Of all the disciplines, math seems to me to be one of the most difficult subjects to teach online. As I've been reflecting on my own education, I have realized that math was one of the only subjects that I pretty much always had a real instructor for. For instance, I learned history and economics by reading textbooks and being tested over the material. Although my mom was the one who made sure I stayed on track and was doing well in the course, I was basically my own instructor. For math, however, I really needed an actual person to teach me the material before I could do the work on my own to reinforce the material I had learned. I know some students can learn math by reading a textbook, but those students are far and few between, and I'm certainly not one of them. As I prepare to teach a math course online, I need to keep in mind that although I won't be seeing my student in the typical face-to-face setting, I am still that "real teacher" that they need.
For all of these reasons, I treating these blog posts as a way to communicate the various ideas I have of what teaching online is all about and how to implement these ideas into my own online math course. I would love for all of my readers to comment and improve upon the ideas of an inexperienced math nerd. Your contributions will be an integral part of my learning, and I hope that somehow my ideas will be an integral part of your OL 101 experience as well.
Math people aren't generally known for their excellence in writing, and I'm certainly no exception to that stereotype. Please be patient with me as I seek to derive ideas from the readings, forum discussions, etc., from OL 101 and integrate them into coherent blog posts.
I promise I won't use as many math puns from now on.
As is evident from the appearance of my blog, I am a math nerd. As is evident from my participation in OL 101, I am seeking to share my love of math with others, potentially in an online format.
As I begin this series of blog posts reflecting on my experiences in OL 101, I feel compelled to mention a few disclaimers. First, I have never actually taught any courses. In fact, I'm still a full-time student myself. Although I have done a fair amount of tutoring have performed various teaching-related support (such as grading) over the past few years, the closest I have come to teaching an actual course is leading weekly recitation sessions. I'm far less experienced than any of the other OL 101 participants, and since I have little to contribute from an instructor's perspective, I will have to offer all of my insights from the perspective of a student/future instructor and hope that I'm not wasting the time of the more experienced educators. Second, I have never actually taken an online course. The closest I have come to that is taking an educational technology course which was in an online format for two weeks of the semester. I was, however, homeschooled through high school, and so I believe the independent and self-paced nature of most of my education will help me to understand the challenges and benefits of online courses.
Of all the disciplines, math seems to me to be one of the most difficult subjects to teach online. As I've been reflecting on my own education, I have realized that math was one of the only subjects that I pretty much always had a real instructor for. For instance, I learned history and economics by reading textbooks and being tested over the material. Although my mom was the one who made sure I stayed on track and was doing well in the course, I was basically my own instructor. For math, however, I really needed an actual person to teach me the material before I could do the work on my own to reinforce the material I had learned. I know some students can learn math by reading a textbook, but those students are far and few between, and I'm certainly not one of them. As I prepare to teach a math course online, I need to keep in mind that although I won't be seeing my student in the typical face-to-face setting, I am still that "real teacher" that they need.
For all of these reasons, I treating these blog posts as a way to communicate the various ideas I have of what teaching online is all about and how to implement these ideas into my own online math course. I would love for all of my readers to comment and improve upon the ideas of an inexperienced math nerd. Your contributions will be an integral part of my learning, and I hope that somehow my ideas will be an integral part of your OL 101 experience as well.
Math people aren't generally known for their excellence in writing, and I'm certainly no exception to that stereotype. Please be patient with me as I seek to derive ideas from the readings, forum discussions, etc., from OL 101 and integrate them into coherent blog posts.
I promise I won't use as many math puns from now on.
It's great to hear that you are reflecting on the ways that you have learned as a student. These ideas will benefit your instruction as you help your students wade through the information and methods you are sharing. I agree that math does seem like one of the more difficult subjects to teach in an online course but I'm sure there are some great examples that you can learn from that have been previously developed. No need to reinvent the wheel! Teaching definitely gets easier as you have a little practice!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement, Lorinda! I'm definitely looking forward to finally getting some real teaching experience. And yes, there are definitely plenty of resources and examples available that I can learn and get ideas from!
DeleteHi Elizabeth. We've all been inexperienced at teaching at some point in our lives, and we're all still constantly learning, so please don't feel you have to apologize for anything! Your background images to your blog, for instance, cause me instantly to marvel at you for understanding what those symbols mean. Looking forward to working with you in the Monkees group.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Karen, but please don't marvel at me! Math symbols really are just meant to look scary, but once you learn what they mean, they're nothing to be afraid of. It's kind of fun to be taking a class with non-math people for once, and I admire people like you who can write poetry and analyze literature.
DeleteI completely understand where you are coming from! Not only am I also very new to teaching, much of what I end up teaching in some of my chemistry classes is actually applied mathematics, especially in general chemistry and analytical chemistry.
ReplyDeleteHere is an idea I had. I don't know how well it will work. There are some mounted cameras that you can point down at a desktop that we use to project experiments (I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to rig any webcam to do something like this). I bet that we could use them to record going through a problem on paper along with talking through the work in a way that could mimic traditional instruction. Students would be able to pause or play back the video at any point. I am planning on slowly adding this type of tool to some of my courses this semester and seeing how students respond. I'll let you know.
Yes, please do let me know! I was a TA this past semester for a somewhat hybrid course - the students only spent one hour in lecture every week and then were required to spend three hours weekly in a computer lab. To supplement the 50-min lectures, the professor had videos of himself working out problems on the screen while he talked in the background, similar to Khan Academy videos, if you're familiar with those.
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