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Full-Text Articles in Education
Imagine Math Day: Encouraging Secondary School Students And Teachers To Engage In Authentic Mathematical Discovery, Darryl H. Yong, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
Imagine Math Day: Encouraging Secondary School Students And Teachers To Engage In Authentic Mathematical Discovery, Darryl H. Yong, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
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Research mathematicians and school children experience mathematics in profoundly different ways. Ask a group of mathematicians what it means to “do mathematics” and you are likely to get a myriad of responses: mathematics involves analyzing and organizing patterns and relationships, reasoning and drawing conclusions about the world, or creating languages and tools to describe and solve important problems. Students of mathematics often report “doing mathematics” as performing calculations or following rules. It’s natural that they see mathematics as monolithic rather than an evolving, growing, socially constructed body of knowledge, because most mathematical training in primary and secondary schools consists of …
The Art Of Teaching Mathematics, Garikai Campbell, Jon T. Jacobsen, Aimee S A Johnson, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
The Art Of Teaching Mathematics, Garikai Campbell, Jon T. Jacobsen, Aimee S A Johnson, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
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On June 10–12, 2007, Harvey Mudd College hosted A Conference on the Art of Teaching Mathematics. The conference brought together approximately thirty mathematicians from the Claremont Colleges, Denison, DePauw, Furman, Middlebury, Penn State, Swarthmore, and Vassar to explore the topic of teaching as an art. Assuming there is an element of artistic creativity in teaching mathematics, in what ways does it surface and what should we be doing to develop this creativity?
Teaching Time Savers: The Exam Practically Wrote Itself!, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
Teaching Time Savers: The Exam Practically Wrote Itself!, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
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When I first started teaching, creating an exam for my upper division courses was a genuinely exciting process. The material felt fresh and relatively unexplored (at least by me), and I remember often feeling pleasantly overwhelmed with what seemed like a vast supply of intriguing and engrossing exam-ready problems. Crafting the perfect exam, one that was noticeably inviting, exceedingly fair, and unavoidably illuminating, was a real joy.
Teaching Time Savers: Style Points, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
Teaching Time Savers: Style Points, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
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When I began as an assistant professor, I had a pretty good sense of how much time it would take for me to prepare for each class. After a few conversations with my new colleagues, I even had a good sense of how much time I should devote to tasks like office hours and committee work. Somewhere in the middle of grading my first exam, though, it became painfully clear that I had underestimated the amount of time I would need to grade exams!
Teaching Time Savers: A Recommendation For Recommendations, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
Teaching Time Savers: A Recommendation For Recommendations, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
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I admit it — I enjoy writing recommendation letters for my students. I like
learning about their hopes and dreams, where they have been and where they want to go. A recommendation letter is an opportunity to remind myself how much my students can grow while they are in college, and how much I have grown as an instructor, advisor, and mentor.
Communicating Applied Mathematics: Four Examples, Daniel E. Finkel, Christopher Kuster, Matthew Lasater, Rachel Levy, Jill P. Reese, Ilse C. F. Ipsen
Communicating Applied Mathematics: Four Examples, Daniel E. Finkel, Christopher Kuster, Matthew Lasater, Rachel Levy, Jill P. Reese, Ilse C. F. Ipsen
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Communicating Applied Mathematics is a writing- and speaking-intensive graduate course at North Carolina State University. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief description of the course objectives and the assignments. Parts A–D of of this article represent the class projects and illustrate the outcome of the course:
• The Evolution of an Optimization Test Problem: From Motivation to Implementation, by Daniel E. Finkel and Jill P. Reese
• Finding the Volume of a Powder from a Single Surface Height Measurement, by Christopher Kuster
• Finding Oscillations in Resonant Tunneling Diodes, by Matthew Lasater
• …
Looking Beyond The Curriculum In Jamaica, Jon T. Jacobsen, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
Looking Beyond The Curriculum In Jamaica, Jon T. Jacobsen, Michael E. Orrison Jr.
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In August 2004, we had the opportunity to travel to Jamaica to lead a pilot workshop for Jamaican high school math teachers. The workshop focused on the importance of mathematical context in the teaching of mathematics. It was sponsored by the Gibraltar Institute, a Jamaica-based nongovernmental organization led by Trevor Campbell (Pomona College) and Reginald Nugent (Cal State Pomona), Jamaica’s College of Agriculture, Science and Education, and Harvey Mudd College.
An Integration Of Chemistry, Biology, And Physics: The Interdisciplinary Laboratory, Gerald R. Van Hecke, Kerry K. Karukstis, Richard C. Haskell, Catherine S. Mcfadden, F Sheldon Wettack
An Integration Of Chemistry, Biology, And Physics: The Interdisciplinary Laboratory, Gerald R. Van Hecke, Kerry K. Karukstis, Richard C. Haskell, Catherine S. Mcfadden, F Sheldon Wettack
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As a new venture to integrate research and education, a pilot section of a first-year laboratory sequence known as the Interdisciplinary Laboratory (ID Lab) was introduced on the Harvey Mudd campus during the 1999–2000 academic year and continues to be offered. The ID Lab attempts to bridge laboratory experiences from biology, chemistry, and physics for the first-year student. Taught by a team of faculty from these disciplines, the course seeks both to illustrate commonality of investigative methods and laboratory techniques in these sciences and to introduce discipline-specific principles. Experiments with a chemistry component include the Molecular Weight of Macromolecules, the …
A New Experiential Course In Engineering Management, Donald S. Remer
A New Experiential Course In Engineering Management, Donald S. Remer
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Institutions with undergraduate programs of the engineering management type often find their introductory courses to be popular electives for students in more traditional engineering disciplines, while in other cases specific courses from business management or industrial engineering departments are elected. Where none of these options are available or suitable, engineering schools are well advised to provide one or two key courses to provide at least an introduction to the management problems their graduates will face. At Brown University, according to Prof. Barrett Hazeltine, a series of two courses in engineering management serve this function; more than half of Brown's undergraduate …