Category Archives: testing

From Teaching Math to Teaching Students Math

by Yvonne Lai (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) I did not want to present. Someone had selected my solution to a geometry problem to present at a Mathfest 1996 session. I wasn’t sure who this person was, but I knew already that … Continue reading

Posted in testing | 3 Comments

Outcomes-Based Assessment — Structural Change in Calculus

by Rebecca Torrey Associate Professor of Math Brandeis University Traditional Grading Sends the Wrong Message For many years I taught Calculus with a traditional structure, in which the students’ grades were mostly determined by a few high-stakes exams (a final … Continue reading

Posted in testing | 2 Comments

Mastery Grading for Future Elementary School Teachers

By Emily McMillon and George Nasr (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) We—Emily McMillon and George Nasr—are graduate students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We implemented mastery based testing for two sections of a course on geometry for pre-service elementary teachers during the … Continue reading

Posted in testing | 2 Comments

Remote proctoring: a failed experiment in control

By Ben Blum-Smith, Contributing Editor Due to the global health crisis, a huge amount of instruction that was happening in person a year ago is now happening online. One theme highlighted by this change is the question of control. When … Continue reading

Posted in Education Policy, testing | Comments Off on Remote proctoring: a failed experiment in control

Bridging Cultures: An Iranian Woman from an Historically Black College Teaching in a Prison in the US

by Zeinab Bandpey (zeinab.bandpey@morgan.edu) Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD 21251 Prisoners are provided with a college education so that when they are released, they will adjust easily to society and won’t return to prison. I was fascinated by the idea … Continue reading

Posted in testing | 2 Comments

Pedagogical implications of Mathematics as the art of giving the same name to different things

by Daniel Chazan, University of Maryland; William Viviani, University of Maryland; Kayla White, Paint Branch High School and University of Maryland In 2012, 100 years after Henri Poincare’s death, the magazine for the members of the Dutch Royal Mathematical Society … Continue reading

Posted in testing | 5 Comments

Active Learning and the Transformation of a Graduate Student Instructor

by Sarah Hagen Recently as a graduate student I taught a week-long boot camp for incoming mathematics graduate students at Oregon State University. It was my first foray into teaching under the active learning model and it was a completely … Continue reading

Posted in testing | Comments Off on Active Learning and the Transformation of a Graduate Student Instructor

Starting Earlier on Lifelong Learning

By: Matt Stamps, Yale-NUS College When Yale-NUS College reviewed the curriculum for its Mathematical, Computational, and Statistical (MCS) Sciences major in the autumn of 2018, I spent several weeks reading about mathematics programs at similar institutions.  A common learning objective … Continue reading

Posted in testing | 2 Comments

Square peg in an octagonal hole

Interview with Ari Nieh, with commentary from Yvonne Lai Like many of us, I began teaching online this Spring. Unlike many of us, I began doing so at the start of the semester. I am co-teaching a class at Michigan … Continue reading

Posted in testing | Comments Off on Square peg in an octagonal hole

The Dysfunction of Functions in Abstract Algebra

Kathleen Melhuish & Kristen Lew Texas State University “[Functions] are completely different, which is what makes this course so challenging.” – Abstract Algebra Student Functions are hard for students, even students in abstract algebra courses. Even if students have seen … Continue reading

Posted in testing | 2 Comments