June Events 2007
Paul Kates, Mathematics Faculty CTE Liaison
New Centre for Teaching Excellence
TRACE and LT3 have joined together and become CTE, the Centre for Teaching Excellence. Also included in the new centre is the LRI group. You can learn all about us by visiting the CTE site above and the FAQ located there. Liaisons will continue to assist with teaching resources and technologies, course development, information about funds for teaching, plus bring news of local teaching events and ideas and practices about teaching and learning from professors, instructors and researchers in our faculties and around the world.
Stories about CTE:
CTE Events
See the above link for details. Workshops are popular and seating is limited. Check for registration details at http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/events_registration/CUT_events.html.
Teaching Dossiers
- Monday, June 4, 12:30 - 2:30 p.m., MC 1056
Teaching in the Intercultural Classroom
- Tuesday, June 5, 12:00 - 1:30 p.m., MC 4060
The growing emphasis on the internationalization of
higher education means that virtually all Canadian
classrooms are being transformed into intercultural
learning spaces. As an instructor, you are likely to
teach not only domestic cohorts of students but also
students who are new Canadians, international (visa)
students and internationally trained professionals, among
other groups.
What do you need to know about
cross-cultural differences in teaching, learning,
assessment and communication styles in order to teach
effectively in the intercultural classroom? In this
workshop, you will learn about cross-cultural differences
in teacher-student and student-student interactions as
well as assessment practices. We will discuss how you
could use cultural diversity as a pedagogical resource
for teaching. The goal is to help you become aware of
the cultural nature of teaching and learning practices
and to develop a repertoire of skills and strategies to
accommodate linguistically and culturally diverse
learners.
Prior to the workshop, you need to prepare a very short
description of a teaching/learning issue arising from
cultural differences that you are confronted with in your
classroom. You will be asked to bring it with you to the
workshop.
Please register by June 1, 2007.
Using Second Life for Higher Education
- Tuesday, June 5, 1:30 - 3:00 p.m., CTE FLEX Lab, Dana Porter Library room 329
- Sarah Robbins Second Life, an immersive world with over a million regular users, is fast becoming the hottest new technology for higher education. With hundreds of colleges and universities present, a community of best practice (e.g. Second Life Education Wiki) is growing exponentially. Second Life can be used for teaching but also for university marketing, recruitment, conferences, and internal training. This presentation will explain what Second Life is, how it works, and why every university should be paying attention to what it can offer.
Using Course Evaluations To Improve Teaching & Learning (part of the New Faculty Lunch & Learn program)
- Thursday, June 7, 11:45 a.m. - 1:15 p.m., MC 4060
Enhancing Your Teaching With Online Learning Technologies
- Wednesday, June 13, 10:00 - 11:30 a.m., CTE FLEX Lab, Dana Porter Library room 329
- Mark Morton, Centre for Teaching Excellence Learning Technologies such as online course environments, podcasts, wikis, and so on are resources that an instructor can draw upon to create learning tasks that will help students overcome specific learning challenges. At the same time, learning technologies can also spawn additional learning challenges if their use is not pedagogically informed. This 90- minute, interactive workshop will explore both the opportunities and pitfalls of online learning technologies. In conjunction with other activities, participants will articulate a learning outcome for a course, identify a learning challenge that tends to frustrate that learning outcome, and devise an online learning task that helps to resolve that learning challenge.
Open Classroom: Carey Bissonnette, Chemistry
- Wednesday, June 20, 10:30 a.m.- 12:30 p.m., DC 1350
- demonstration of a large class using clickers Are you interested in seeing "clicker" technology in action? Here is an opportunity to observe a distinguished UW teacher demonstrating how he uses clickers in his class! Carey Bissonnette will open his classroom to share his approach to teaching and learning. This event will consist of some pre-observation material (some context about the goals and methods for this class provided by Carey), observation of his lecture, and a post-observation discussion of the event to discuss with Carey what was observed. Please plan to attend to see a teacher in action and discuss his strategies!
Understanding the Learner
- Thursday, June 21, 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., MC 5136
- Facilitator: Svitlana Taraban-Gordon, CTE As instructors, we often think about what constitutes effective teaching. But let's put ourselves in our students' shoes for a moment. What constitutes effective learning? How does learning occur and what individual differences affect the teaching and learning process? These are just a few of the questions that will be explored in this CTE event on Understanding the Learner. In this half-day workshop, key theories of learning and a variety of learning styles will be presented and discussed. Participants will identify their own unique learning styles and explore how these characteristics affect their approaches to teaching. The goal of this workshop is to prepare instructors for designing and implementing instructional activities that will maximize student learning.
A Matter of Style: Learning From Ontario's Best Lecturers
- Tuesday, July 10, 12:00 - 1:30 p.m., MC 4060
- Thursday, July 12, 12:00 - 1:30 p.m., MC 4060
Course Design
- Tuesday, July 24, 12:30 - 3:30 p.m., Location: TBA
Teaching Dossiers Workshop
- Thursday, July 26, 12:30 - 2:30 p.m., Location: TBA
Understanding the Learner
- Thursday, August 2, 12:30 - 3:30 p.m., MC 5136
CUT Research Project Presentations
- Thursday, August 16, 12:00 - 3:00 p.m., MC 5136
Conferences at UW
June events in honour of the 50th year anniversary of UW and the 40th year anniversary of the Faculty of Mathematics:
- 40th Anniversary Conference
Statistical Science: Present Position and Future Prospects, to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the University of Waterloo, and the
40th anniversary of the department.
May 30 - June 1, 2007
Please register by April 30th.
- WATSUM 2007
Waterloo Symposium in Undergraduate Mathematics (WATSUM)
The conference is an opportunity for students in math to meet and enjoy
a weekend in the beautiful region of Waterloo. Whether your interests
are in algebra, statistics, computer science or anything else math
related, we invite you to come share them at WATSUM by giving a talk
(or simply enjoy other talks!). In addition you will get to hear
several professional mathematicians describe their research interests.
Date: June 8 - June 9, 2007, UW.
Registration is $30 CAD per person before May 22, 2007.
Sponsored by the Pure Mathematics Department. - C&O@40 Conference In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the department, and the 50th anniversary of the university, the Department of Combinatorics & Optimization at the University of Waterloo is hosting a six day conference June 18-23, 2007.
More conferences:
- Taming the Quantum World
Sunday, May 27 - Friday, June 29, 2007.
Multiple conferences at the Perimiter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/] and the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC).
- Theory and Realisation of Practical Quantum Key Distribution
Monday, June 11 - Thursday, June 14, 2007, Seminar Room, BFG Buidling, UW.
Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC). - WIHIR HI Bootcamp
Thursday, June 14 and Friday, June 15, DC 1302.
A 2-day intensive on-site workshop (over 65 hours of recorded presentations/interactive sessions) introducing key concepts, issues, applications in Applied Health Informatics. - Risk Management and Insurance Conference
Saturday, June 16, 2007, Mathematics and Computer Building, Room 2065.
Online registration at the above site.
Institute for Quantitative Finance and Insurance (IQFI) - ISSAC 2007
ISSAC, the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation.
Sunday, July 29 - Wednesday, August 1, 2007, Davis Centre, UW.
Register by July 1st to receive reduced registration rates.
Symbolic Computation Group. - 2007 Imperial Oil Seminar in Computer Science for Young Women The Seminars occur during two separate weeks during the months of May and June.
Teaching: Readings and Video
Last month the Presidents' Colloquium on Teaching and Learning presented Dr. Ken Bain who talked about ""What Makes Great Teachers Great?". His research of sixty-three highly successful teachers from a wide variety of fields and higher education institutions over fifteen-years produced an award-winning book: "What the Best College Teachers Do" (Harvard University Press, 2004).
The book is available at the UW Texbook store for $25. If you would like to borrow a copy please send me email.
Dr. Bain is Vice Provost for Instruction and Director of the Teaching and Learning Resource Center at Montclair State University in New Jersey. He has received numerous awards for his research in teaching and learning as well as his scholarship on the history of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Dr. Bain has also received four major teaching awards.
Some information and reviews about Dr. Bain's book What the Best College Teachers Do available on the net:
- An excerpt from the book is available at the book's site The Teaching and Learning Resource Center at Montclair State University
- Two reviews (1, 2) from the Journal of Higher Education
- Workshop notes (39 pages) based on the book
- Interesting comments and opinions from the book's Amazon.com page.
Video of the 2006 and 2005 Presidents' Colloquiums on Teaching and Learning are available online:
- Taking Stock of What Matters to Student Success in University: Lessons for Waterloo by George Kuh, Chancellor's Professor and Director of the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, Bloomington. (2006)
- How Does 'Great Teaching' Relate to Student Learning? by Professor Keith Trigwell, Reader in Higher Education and Principal Research Fellow in the Institute for the Advancement of University Learning at the University of Oxford, UK. (2005)
And, in the spirit of Dr. Bain's lecture What Makes Great Teachers Great? a reprise of Confessions of an (Innovative) Educator the keynote presentation at the McGraw-Hill Conference on Teaching and Learning, December 2004, by Dr. Howard Armitage, University of Waterloo. Both video and audio downloads are available. Dr. Armitage was awarded a 3M Teaching Fellowship in 2004.
John Mighton, mathematician, author, award-winning playwright and founder of the JUMP Math numeracy program, has written a new math education book The End of Ignorance. The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Toronto Life have recently written about Dr. Mighton's work and new book. Visit this link to read more.
Course Development Funds
The Mathematics Endowment Fund (MEF) finances projects that benefit undergraduate math students. Proposals, accepted from students, faculty, staff and student clubs, are to be of an educational nature, providing teaching resources, equipment and services that improve student learning. Total available funds each term are from $45-60K. The proposal deadline is Friday, June 22, 2007. Proposals can be submitted anytime. Application forms are posted at the MEF site above. Details will be posted when available. Funds will be available to prepare for the Fall 2007 term.
Funded projects include:
- student, course or instructor projects,
- lab & studio equipment,
- classroom upgrades,
- course development,
- teaching resources,
- conference expenses,
- education studies,
- student club projects
Instructional Development (ID) Grants of up to $1,000 are administered twice a year (Spring and Fall) through the TRACE Office. ID Grants are designed to help instructors and staff improve teaching effectiveness. for both on-campus and distance education courses. Information and the application form can be obtained from the above link. Proposal deadlines are: Friday, May 25, 2007 and Wednesday, November 7, 2007.
Funded examples include:
- development of a training manual for teaching assistants,
- sponsorship of a conference on methods of teaching foreign languages,
- a study of independent learning methods in environmental studies
UW-ACE help
Using UW-ACE
Individuals, department and faculty groups can contact me to arrange times for sessions on their topics of interest, e.g. gradebook and Quest mark handling, communication via email, forums and calendar, and writing LaTeX-quality math in UW-ACE pages and quizzes using javascript and HTML (without using postscript or PDF documents).
See the Welcome to UW-ACE page for information about
- setting up a marking scheme in the Gradebook (assignment, midterm, final)
- configuring UW-ACE courses for first-time and experienced users
- online grade submission via Quest
- full user documentation of the current UW-ACE/ANGEL 7.1 system
UW-ACE Fall 2007 Course Requests
Request a UW-ACE course for the fall 2007 term by sending a note to Paul Kates or to uwacehelp@ist.uwaterloo.ca. Please give the course abbreviation (e.g. MATH 199), your preference for a new, blank course or one copied from a previous term, and if known, the names of additional instructors and TAs.
Seminars and Talks
Thursday, June 21, 2007, 1:30pm
Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google.
Humanities Theatre.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007, 3-4pm
Why not address clinician knowledge management needs?
Dr. G. Octo Barnett, MD, Professor of Medicine,
Harvard Medical School, Senior Scientific Dir., Lab. of
Computer Science, Massachusetts General Hospital.
WIHIR (Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research) Why Not
Waterloo Smarter Health Seminar Series.
To attend or view webcast please register at website above.
Library eReserves and UW-ACE courses
E-journal articles subscribed to by the library can quickly be made available to a class through eReserves, the library's online course resource system. In these cases no further copyright permissions are needed. See these library sites for more information:
Linking from UW-ACE to your eReserve material is easy:
- fill out the online request form for the library's copy of journal articles or books
- bring the library copies of your own articles, books, lecture notes, assignment solutions, etc
- wait 1-3 days for access to material that doesn't need copyright permission (other material can take much longer to obtain copyright permission - contact the library for advice)
- lookup your eReserve UW-ACE page
- cut the three line HTML eReserve link from the library page and paste it into any HTML text in UW-ACE (in folder instructions, HTML page, Calendar entry, syllabus, ...) or other web site
- note: javascript needs to be turned on in a browser to use the eReserve link to access the library material
Teaching with Maple, MapleTA
Maple and MapleTA upgrades
Maplesoft has upgraded Maple and MapleTA this Spring. Live web seminars for Maple 11 and MapleTA 3 (including connections to MATLAB and Simulink and teaching with Maple and MapleTA) are running April 18th and May 15. Also available is a video demonstration of Maple 11 with cameos by U of Guelph Mathematics Professor Jack Weiner and Dr. Robert J. Lopez, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA and author of several books including Advanced Engineering Mathematics (Addison-Wesley 2001).
One student writes in the recent MaplePrimes online newsletter how useful Maple is in Number Theory and Topology courses:
I've got to say, I am super-excited by the announcement of Maple 11. Is there anything I need to do now in order to purchase a student copy in March, or will I be able to simply buy the upgrade for Maple 10 when it becomes available?
I haven't even gotten to use all the features of Maple 10 yet...although this semester I'll be giving the numtheory package a workout. I'm a student at Arizona State University, and there are lots of professors who make extensive use of Maple in their advanced courses. Dr. Matthias Kawski (my instructor for general topology this semester) has an incredibly extensive library of Maple worksheets that I think may be hyperlinked on this site, and Dr. John Jones (a professor of algebra, number theory, and their applications) has a set of Maple labs that go with a book which he co-authored, Discovering Number Theory.
I'm particularly interested in the new theoretical physics and differential geometry packages, as I hope to do research in the latter field and I'm immensely enthusiastic about the former (primarily general relativity).
...
Read about teaching mathematics using the computer algebra system Maple and the computer algebra assignment and quiz system MapleTA.
In addition to MapleTA, June Lowe (x33888) in Engineering uses a quiz system based on Adobe's AuthorWare software to conduct CDTs - Computer Delivered Tutorials. Typically, students work in pairs on short problems based on the concepts and techniques discussed in class.
This quiz system is similar to the UW-ACE quiz system in question types, and doesn't incorporate a computer algebra engine like MapleTA, but unique among the three quiz systems is its flow-chart style construction method and its ability to include control logic (like a program) within a quiz. A demonstration can be arranged by calling June at x33888.
UW 50th Anniversary Events
Details of the University of Waterloo's 50th anniversary events are available for all events listed below.
Jan 11(Th) UW's 50th anniversary launch event
Feb 3(Sa) FASS 45th Anniversary Celebration
Feb 17(Sa) 50th Anniversary: fantastic alumni, faculty and staff day
Feb 19(M) Ottawa 50th anniversary alumni celebration
Feb 27(T) FASS 45th Anniversary Celebration
Feb 27(T) TD Canada Trust/Walter Bean visiting professor in the Environment
Mar 1(Th) Waterloo Engineering 50th anniversary celebration
Mar 7(W) GradFest 2007
May 24(Th) Toronto 50th anniversary alumni celebration
May 15(T) UW Staff Association 50th Anniversary BBQ Celebration
May 30(W) Graphics 50th anniversary open house
Sep 28(F) 50th Anniversary alumni awards dinner
Term Dates
May 1(T) Lectures Begin May 7(M) Distance Education Open Class Enrollment Ends May 14(M) On-Campus Open Class Enrollment Ends May 21(M) Victoria Day holiday (no clases) May 21(M) Drop, No Penalty Period Ends May 22(T) Deadline to Drop or Withdraw from Courses with 100% Tuition Refund May 22(T) Drop, Penalty 1 Period Begins, official Winter term grades available from Quest May 31(R) Final Date for Fee Arrangements June 18(M) Deadline for 50% Tuition Refund June 25(M) Drop, Penalty 1 Period Ends June 26(T) Drop, Penalty 2 Period Begins July 2(M) Canada Day holiday (no classes) July 27(F) Lectures End Aug 1(W) Drop, Penalty 2 Period Ends; Last Day to Drop a Class without petition Aug 2(R) On-Campus Examinations Begin Aug 6(M) Civic Holiday (no classes) Aug 15(W) On-Campus Examinations End Aug 10-11(F-S) Distance Education Examination Days Aug 31(F) Grades Due Aug 16(R) Unofficial Grades Begin to Appear in Quest Sep 14(F) Standings Available in Quest
Past Events
Liaison Information
Paul Kates,
Mathematics Faculty LT3 Liaison,
pkates@uwaterloo.ca, x37047
This page is located at www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~pkates/LT3/events.html.
More information about the services of the Centre for Learning and Teaching through Technology - LT3 is available at lt3.uwaterloo.ca/.
More information about learning and teaching Mathematics, Computer Science, plus a description of the services I provide as Mathematics Faculty LT3 Liaison is available here.