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Using Discussion Boards to Teach Calculus
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Teaching
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By jvano
Posted Fri Sep 24, 2004 at 07:06:33 AM PDT
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This semester I am again teaching a large (approx 180 student) first term calculus class. My past experience with teaching in this type of large class setting using the standard "Big Univ." approach has been mixed, but one thing that has consistently frustrated me was that I always felt out of touch with the students. Even encouraging the students to stop by my office hours, having extra reviews, regularly meeting with "class reps" from every section, and trying to get feedback from my TAs; I still never really felt that I got enought "face time" with students to feel comfortable knowing where they were at.
This semester I have set up several discussion boards and have made regular posting about the reading a small portion of the students' grade. So far I am very happy with the results: reading through the questions and comments the students post about the sections of the text is not only forcing them to keep pace with reading through the book, but it seems to be giving me (as well as the TAs) a "window" in the mind of the class.
Has anyone else out there ever tried using discussion boards in their classes before?
Was it useful? What issues arose? How did the students react? Did it help their learning?
Please post and share your experiences.
Post a Comment
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| One issue/problem that I have noticed is that, at least with the software we are using, one is constrained to posting in ascii and hence it is a bit hard to talk about the limit of sine of x over x as x approaches zero, etc.
and since a fair bit of students' difficulities are language related, discussing them in this format almost compounds the obtuse-ification ;)
In spite of this, the general impression I have gotten from the students has been positive.
But, the real question is what beasts lurk later in the term?! This is why I would really like to hear from people who have some experience with this! Am I deluding myself in thinking that this is helping me better understand where my students are at? Is there a danger of this deluging or confusing the students? If so, how can I mimimize this?....
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