I will be co-organizing two workshops and giving one individual presentation at MAA MathFest 2018. Please contact me at sclontz@southalabama.edu with any questions!
Workshop: An Introduction to Team-Based Learning
Drew Lewis and Steven Clontz
Participants are encouraged to review the following “readiness preparation materials” (a component of Team-Based Learning), to introduce them to the basic ideas behind Team-Based Learning.
- https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/team-based-learning/
- est. time: 6 minutes
- http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/teaching-format/team-based-learning
- est. time: 4 minutes
Time estimates calculated using Niram.org.
After the workshop, you may be interested in the following resources:
- PDF of workshop slides
- The GitHub project for our in-development TBIL Linear Algebra resources.
Workshop: Mathematical Puzzle Programs: Outreach and Recruitment with Puzzles
Braxton Carrigan, Steven Clontz, and PJ Couch
Participants in this workshop will get to play an abbreviated version of the MaPP Challenge competition for themselves. If possible, please bring an iOS or Android smart device with internet access to play along using the ClueKeeper app.
Please visit MaPPmath.org for more information on Mathematical Puzzle Programs.
Theh puzzles for this workshop are available on our GitHub: https://github.com/MaPPmath/challenge18/blob/mathfest-demo/mapp-challenge-18-game-book.pdf
Presentation: Tools to Facilitate Mastery Grading
I will review two web applications I use for mastery grading.
- sbg-rails
- This app is being written by myself using Ruby on Rails. Anyone comfortable with running a Ruby on Rails app may clone and install the repo using the GitHub link above.
- A (buggy) demo is available at https://sbg-rails.herokuapp.com/. It requires a username/password provided at the presentation.
- The app is designed around two goals:
- Instructors are given an interface to efficiently log student attempts to master course standards, and produce progress reports based on those attempts.
- Exams may be custom generated based upon student progress and a problem bank.
- To enter grades, a spreadsheet-like interface is provided. However, this is still somewhat inconvenient as assessments need to be graded on paper and then re-entered exercise-by-exercise into the app.
- Gradescope
- Currently, the Gradescope Basic plan is available for free to the first five instructors from each institution who sign up; later signups get two terms free.
- Instructors can create and grade arbitrary worksheets using this app.
- While it’s designed around traditional grading, it can still be used to support a mastery grading classroom.
- My implementation: use sbg-rails to generate assessments, and students submit answers on sheets that I upload to Gradescope.
- By “exporting evaluations”, spreadsheets for each graded standard may be exported from Gradescope and copied/imported into your gradebook of choice. sbg-rails has an import utility for Gradescope reports.