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<\/a>I’m getting used to the view from the back of the classroom this semester. Image: Derek Bruff, via Flickr.<\/p><\/div>\n
Although I\u2019m new to teaching using IBL, I\u2019m not new to IBL. The class that made me want to be a mathematician was taught using an IBL model where students presented\u00a0all theorems and proofs. The class structure was perfect for me, but it turns out my experience as a cocky college student in the class isn’t very helpful for me now that I’m a less cocky teacher trying to run the class. Luckily, between my facebook friends and math blogs, I do have a lot of places to go for guidance.<\/p>\n
There are many different ways to implement IBL. I decided to emphasize student presentations of material. I give them notes with definitions, theorems, and exercises, and they supply the proofs in class. The notes I\u2019m using are by Richard Spindler, and I found them in the Journal of Inquiry-Based Learning in Mathematics<\/a>. I am of course making some modifications, but it\u2019s been incredibly helpful to have a base to work from. I follow more IBL-ers than I can mention here, but for course structure, I am probably most indebted to Dana Ernst<\/a>. I borrowed heavily from his past syllabuses when I was setting mine up.\u00a0I have also benefitted from reading Dave Richeson\u2019s posts, especially the one about his inquiry-based topology class<\/a>.\u00a0While I was preparing\u00a0for the first few weeks of class, I found Carol Schumacher\u2019s Instructor\u2019s Resource Manual<\/a> (pdf) invaluable. It is designed to be a guide to use with her abstract mathematics textbook Chapter Zero<\/em><\/a>, but the first 30 pages are about course organization and strategies for various types of active learning in the classroom, and her advice in those pages applies to many different math subjects.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a new IBL blog on the block that has also been interesting for me: the Novice IBL Blog<\/a>. It\u2019s a joint blog by David Failing of Quincy University, Liza Cope of Delta State University, and Nick Long of Stephen F. Austin State University that\u2019s been running for about a month, the same length of time as my class. It\u2019s nice to feel like there are a few other people with some of the same questions I have, and reading about their experiences. For example, I am currently not entirely satisfied with the quality of course presentations and of my assessment of them, so I am grateful that Cope has written about the way she evaluates presentations<\/a>. I also keep an eye on Stan Yoshinobu’s IBL blog<\/a>. I’m trying to incorporate more of his tips for positive coaching<\/a> into the way I give feedback.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to pretend things have gone entirely smoothly for me so far. I had more students drop the class at the beginning of the semester than I expected, and the drop rate for women was higher than it was for men. One of the reasons I decided to go for IBL<\/a>\u00a0was that many people believe that IBL and other active learning techniques are more fair to people who aren\u2019t\u00a0 well-off white men. (See for example this recent\u00a0New York Times article about whether lectures are unfair<\/a>.) Of course I could not do exit interviews of students who dropped (they tend to ghost<\/a>), so I don\u2019t know why they left, but I am disappointed that my class has\u00a0not retained women as well as men. If I set up a similar course in the future, I need to think carefully about how to get better student buy-in and assuage students\u2019 fears that they are not prepared for the class.<\/p>\n So far, my semester has been a bit of a roller coaster, but I’m glad I’m trying something new. And I’m extra glad to be\u00a0teaching complex analysis. For never was a math topic\u00a0of more whoa<\/em>\u00a0than this of complex differentiation and its lovely Cau…chy-Riemann equations. (With apologies to Shakespeare<\/a> and all people of good taste.)<\/p>\n