The last post in the co-req series. Again, if you somehow missed them, make sure to read part 1, including the disclaimer, HERE and also the rest of the series.
Lessons learned so far
We are now in the middle of our third long semester (and one
summer) of doing this. What are the
things we have learned? A bunch! Here are the most important ones in no
particular order:
·
Communication between pairings is huge. In hind sight this seems obvious, but
communication between the two professors was/is huge. Not only because different people will be at
slightly different places, or I might have 5 exams in a MWF while you only have
4 in a TR, but because of a holiday or something different sections of the same
class will be at slightly different places.
So letting your support professor know where you are is important.
·
It is also really important to communicate your
expectations in the class. For example,
when I teach finite mathematics, we solve all systems of equations by using the
RREF feature in our calculators. We
don’t even really cover row operations, just dump and go. Other members of my department spend some
time on row operations and want their students to do that in the
calculator. Letting my paired professor
know this means they don’t spend time on things that will not be needed in your
particular class.
·
Communication was also crucial to make sure the
professor for the support class understood what a support class is and what it
was to do. We had a real problem at
first with many of the professors for the support class just teaching it like a
regular class, and not staying with the credit level class.
·
We have tried to have professors pair with
themselves in paired classes. This is
clearly ideal, but again, as explained in the first post, we cannot do this for
all of our classes. We have at least
been able to make sure that if I have two sections of paired classes, say
1324-P37 and 1324-P40, then there is (usually) only one professor covering both
the support classes. Yes, for our fifty
to sixty sections this becomes a scheduling headache, but it is worth it.
·
I have surveyed MY paired classes, and roughly
85% of those in a paired mathematics classes are also in a paired
(developmental) reading and writing class.
Not too surprising maybe, but this impacted what type of assignments I
do (I used to give a bunch of writing projects, for example) but also how I
approach topics. Conditional probability
is much more involved with students who do not read well, for example. I have added some online topics that deal
with learning to read mathematics to try and help those students succeed.
·
Most of the students in a paired class, well,
they are developmental students. So
their study skills are weak. And they
need a good bit of hand holding at first with getting into our online homework
system, into the Learning Management System (LMS) that we use, where our tutor
center is, etc. Almost every class for
the first 2-3 weeks I now spend a couple of minutes reminding students in the
paired classes of all of these things so they will remember them when they need
them.
·
We have to remember that success means something
different now, in terms of pass rates and other things. Cynical, but we can only teach the students
we have, not the students we wish we had.
It has been an adjustment for most of us, not only in how we explain
things, but also what assignments we give, how we write and structure
exams. Griping about “the good old days”
is not helpful to the students we have now, and frankly, it is also likely with
a fuzzy or clouded memory….. Mine
included!
As always, if you have questions, comments, etc, let me
know.
Twitter: @robebymathdude
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