STLF Report to CWSEI and Mathematics Department
STLF: Costanza Piccolo
Period: 11/04/12 – 15/05/12
Submitted: 16/05/12
Specific activities performed by STLF
1) Professional development
 Attended weekly STLF meetings.
 Attended most of the Reading Group meetings.
2) MATH SEI general meetings/activity:
 Held regular weekly group meetings with STLFs.
 Attended monthly meeting with Sarah and the Math-SEI team.
 Attended monthly Working Group meeting with Sarah and other SEI directors.
 Presented at the April 19th department meeting. The meeting was dedicated to a review of current
CWSEI projects and discussion about formally adopting new course material/teaching practices created
under CWSEI. After some discussion, the department voted to adopt the materials, as last year. The
adoption is intended as not binding though. Instructors have the option of not using these materials or
changing them if they think it’s necessary, but there seemed to be a general agreement among faculty
about the fact that it’s a lot more efficient to use materials/practices that have been tested out already
rather than reinventing them from scratch.
 Prepared two posters for the CWSEI end-of-year event.
 Attended CWSEI end-of-year event.
 Met with the Math Teaching Master Plan committee to review plans for a potential new building and
discuss the department needs relative to teaching.
 Set up the May sitting of the BST and revised the written instructions on how to set up the test online.
I’m trying to design an efficient protocol for the next person in charge of the test. The test currently runs
on WebWork, so there are a few technical details that need to be made clear in case the next person in
charge is not familiar with WebWork.
Planning for next year’s projects continues. Sandi and I met with Andrew Rechnitzer to discuss future
directions of the Math 220 project. There is a possibility of running workshops again next year in term 2, so
term 1 could be used to collect appropriate baseline data to make a clear comparison on the effect of the
workshops. I also contacted another faculty member to see if he is interested in helping Sandi develop a
higher-level proof diagnostic (Andrew is going sabbatical next year so he won’t be able to help her much),
I’m waiting to hear back from him.
I met with the IIC of Math 221, Linear Algebra, to discuss the introduction of online homework and
computer labs. Depending on the quality of existing linear algebra questions in Webwork, developing online
homework may require some additional work, but it might be worth considering that the same assignments
can be used also in Math 152. Computer labs in Math 221 instead seem to be a less realistic project. The
IIC will not be teaching a section of the course, and is not familiar with MATLAB so he is not willing to put
time into developing labs. I’ll contact the instructors directly, as soon as I know who they are.
I also met with one of the instructors of Math 200, Multivariable calculus, to discuss a potential project
involving developing computer-based simulation of surfaces and volume. The simulations could be used as
in-class demos or as part of interactive homework assignments (to be decided). She was quite interested. We
also talked about the possibility of running a diagnostic as the beginning of the term, which leads nicely
with the plan of developing a calculus concept inventory.
3) Course-specific meetings/activities
No significant progress on any course specific projects.
Plans for immediate future work on course-specific projects
MATH 360
1. meet with the instructor to review the course and plan changes for next year.
2. develop topic-level learning goals.
3. develop/adapt existing surveys on student attitudes to the use of computers to measure the
effective of the course of students’ attitudes.
MATH 264
1. review quizzes and exams for consistency with course material
2. finish topic-level learning goals for the math portion of the course and send them to the instructor
for his review.
Other plans:
1. analyse data collected from the 2010 Math 180 final exams regarding student ability to set up
and solve problems
2. analyse student responses to online diagnostic tests in Math 307 to inform future instructors of
student difficulties.
3. upload materials for CWSEI-involved courses on the department course database.
4. analyse Math 184 grades to assess the effectiveness of the oral assessments in the workshops.
5. analyse Math 101 grades from the IIC’s section and compare them to his section last year to see
if the introduction of WebWork had any effect.