STLF Report to CWSEI and Mathematics Department
STLF: Warren Code
Period: 13/9/10 – 25/10/10
Submitted: 25/10/10
Specific activities performed by STLF
1) Professional development
 Attended Science Supper Series: Bruce Dunham’s “Transforming the Instructor” (Sep 19) and
Costanza Piccolo’s session discussing the Basic Skills Test (Oct 19).
 Attended NOJO meeting for new STLFs (Sep 17).
 Attended weekly Reading Group meetings (Sep 22, 29, Oct 13, 20).
 Self-study of Daniel Kaplan’s “Statistical Modeling” and associated R (stats package)
programming. The book is based around the core idea of linear modelling and using
computation to explore ideas in statistics, including modeling in several variables.
2) Department meetings/activity
 Planning meeting at CTLT for Math Department ISW, including Desiree Mou (CTLT), Jan
Johnson (CTLT and ISW Council), Joanne Nakonechny (Skylight Director and ISW facilitator
for previous Math ISW), David Kohler (Math Grad Student and Facilitator); the goal is to hold
an ISW for graduate students in December, 2010 (Sep 16).
 Math Department ISW meeting to plan for December. The workshop will be advertised for
postdocs and graduate students shortly (Oct 25).
 Participant in TAAP Seminar debate session, arguing against “The lecture is the best method of
university education” (Oct 20).
 Classroom Services planning focus group (with Mar Ness and Mark MacLean) (Sep 22).
 Faculty of Science Strategy Group, focus on issues of personnel, like recruitment and retention,
acknowledgement of achievement for faculty, staff and postdocs.
 Organized Lunch Series in Teaching and Learning session (first this term) to take place Nov 2
(12:30-1:30pm in GEOG 101). The event will feature a panel of six instructors of various
ranks (2 research faculty, 1 teaching faculty, 2 grad students with teaching experience and 1
grad student teaching for the first time) who are using clickers this term or did so last year. My
plan for the format is a brief introduction on instructional use, and then having the panel
members share their experiences (did the technology aid in instructional goals, what was
surprising, what were the challenges in terms of design time and technology use).
 Met with the panellists for the lunch series in advance to ask them about their use of clickers in
their classes.
3) MATH SEI general meetings/activity
 Weekly meeting with other Math STLFs to discuss project updates (Sep 30, Oct 7, 14), and
with Math-CWSEI Director Costanza Piccolo for more detailed updates on other occasions.
 Meeting with Sarah Gilbert to discuss project status (Sep 23, Oct 21).
 Worked with Sandra Merchant and Joseph Lo to adapt the C-LASS for physics to mathematics
(working title Mathematics Attitudes/Perceptions Survey, MAPS). The version in Appendix A
below is being given to students in Math 104/184, Math 100/180, Math 220 and Math 307 this
term as an initial trial.

Met with Joanne Nakonechny (current Skylight Director and one of the original people
involved in the calculus workshops) to discuss the current draft of the Mathematics
Attitudes/Perceptions Survey (MAPS).
4) Course-specific meetings/activities
MATLAB Labs (Math 152 and MECH 2)
1. Met with Brian Wetton to plan MECH 221 Lab 5, the one lab that will see some change this
term. It will also include a short “lab quiz”, a programming task that students will have a fixed
time to complete, with their sessions logged for me to analyze for programming technique.
2. Visited MECH 221 labs to meet this year’s TA and get an initial impression of this year’s lab
activities. This term’s labs feature more explicit programming practice such as debugging
activities. The MECH 2 coordinator (Pete Ostafichuk) has asked the TA for sample of labs
that are well done and those that are poorly done; I plan to follow up to see what the plans are
for these samples (email sent).
MATH 104/184 – Differential Calculus for Social Sciences
1. Met with Instructor In Charge, Mark MacLean, multiple times per week, usually immediately
after class or between his two classes. Materials for the other instructors have been produced
in a timely manner, early enough to keep everyone informed.
2. Weekly learning guides (we are calling them "Fresh Sheets") are still being provided for
instructors, and more recently have had suggested problems linked to learning goals.
3. Learning goals have been extracted from the Fresh Sheets and posted on the main course
website: http://www.math.ubc.ca/~maclean/math104_184_2010W.html for students. We will
be asking about student use of these in our midterm survey.
4. Attended many of Mark MacLean's classes to observe clicker questions and in-class activities
in action. Provided feedback to the instructor in person after the lecture times, as well as
follow-up emails from my written notes.
5. Attended instructor meetings where instructors can ask questions and provide input into the
common materials. These have led to some great pedagogical discussions of both a general
(student population, test design) and specific (examples used for a topic) nature.
6. Observed some of the instructors and both interviewed on overall course issues and provided
feedback on their instruction. After discussion with Mark MacLean, we think it would be
beneficial, particularly for new instructors, to observe others teaching the course and have
some sort of reflection/feedback.
7. Developed invention/discovery activity on the Product Rule and one about the relation between
demand and revenue (building towards a discussion of elasticity). Results from the activities
will appear in future reports. From the classroom time, I can report that almost every student
was working well, only some groups had five students (four was encouraged) and these mostly
had one student not participating most of the time. We will aim to improve this next time. The
classroom was video recorded by UBC Telestudios (though not the student groups, only
Mark’s activity; we have the pens for the individual group work as that seemed less invasive).
8. Provided assistance in preparation of the first Midterm exam. The instructors built the exams
in teams. Each exam included a page of True/False questions designed to test more conceptual
understanding. I have sampled responses from Mark MacLean’s two sections and we will
compare with Clicker participation/responses of those students and between the two sections.
9. Used LiveScribe recording pens in two of the in-class discovery activities. The first time, the
booklets and pens were not handed out quite quickly enough, since this requires a quick
reassurance that the recording will be filtered through the STLF; as a result, much of the initial
group discussion was lost. The second results were better, though I am still learning how to
interpret this type of data. We have not obtained clearance to publish or further use these
recordings as of yet, as we were mainly interested if they would be at all useful. Some groups
were more amenable to accepting and working with the books than others, and other groups
who were approached were not interested in participating (we did not really offer an incentive
to use the recording pen, only an assurance that the recordings were more for me and not Mark,
so they didn’t have to worry about what they said).
See the main course site: http://www.math.ubc.ca/~maclean/math104_184_2010W.html
and look for pencast links in the Latest News to see the output of this technology (the ones
linked are not the in-class student work, but worked examples prepared by the instructor for the
students).
10. The online homework system continues to be used. The instructor and I intend to look at
student response rates to analyse work patterns. Response rates and complaints for particularly
ambiguous/challenging questions have been identified (partly via the WeBWorK TA) and
addressed in instructor meetings/emails.
Current Project Status (material prepared by either STLF or other members of the MATH SEI)
Materials will be summarized and attached (as possible) next report. New items are being produced
each week during the term.
Plan for immediate future work
MATLAB Labs
1. Discuss analysis from previous terms with instructors; prepare reports.
2. Update Math 152 project website when report is ready.
3. Finalize plans for in-lab quiz for Lab 5 of MECH 221.
4. Review Math 256 course and computer lab learning goals with the instructor.
5. Correlate Math 152 lab marks with course marks for 2007W, the last year of the “old labs”,
and compare to the more recent years and the transformed labs.
MATH 104/184:
1. Check in with the remaining instructors for observation of their classroom techniques and to
solicit feedback on the course materials: what is working, and what else could they use?
2. Develop more discovery/invention activities for the coming weeks.
3. Try to collect some Clicker questions to place into a database format.
MECH 220 Incoming Quiz: Matlab Questions
Students in MECH 2 are placed into four sections, A to D, for lab purposes, though the entire cohort
(all four) have their classes together. The review quiz was given the day after group A had a review
session that included some basic Matlab review, and had 4 questions that were drawn from the prepost given in 2009W Math 152.
Q1: Simple loop involving scalar values
What are the values of x0 and x1 that will result from the following Matlab code?
x0 = 1;
x1 = 1;
for i = 1:3
xnew = x0 + x1;
x0 = x1;
x1 = xnew;
end
a)
x0=1, x1=1
b) x0=1, x1=2
c)
x0=2, x1=3
d) x0=2, x1=4
e)
x0=3, x1=4
f) x0=3, x1=5
Q2: Vector operations in MATLAB
The variables x and y are defined by the MATLAB commands
x = [1 0 2];
y = [3 2 1];
which of the following MATLAB commands will result in an error message?
a)
dot(x,y)
b) cross(x,y)
c) x.*y
d) x*y
e)
x*y'
f) x.*x
Q3: Loop involving a matrix and use of the colon (:).
Suppose the variable A is defined as a 3x3 matrix with nonzero entries. What is the transformation
performed on the matrix A by the following lines of MATLAB code?
for i = 1:3
A(:,i)=A(:,i)/A(1,i)
end
a)
each entry of A is divided by the entry in the first row and first column
b) the first column of A is divided by the entry in the first row and first column
c)
each row of A is divided by the first entry in that row
d) the first column of A is divided by the last entry of the first row
e)
each column of A is divided by the first entry in that column
Q4: Building a matrix using a loop.
What are the entries in the last row of A after executing the following Matlab code?
n=4;
A=zeros(n,n+1);
for i=1:n
A(i,i)=n*i;
end
a) 1 2 3 4
b) 0 0 0 4
c) 4 8 12 16
d) 0 0 0 16 0
e) 0 0 0 4 0
f) 0 0 0 0 0
Results:
Group
Overall
09Wm152 As
09Wm152 B-D
other As
other B-D
Q1
66%
73.08%
74.55%
100.00%
38.39%
Q2
49%
76.92%
49.09%
50.00%
20.73%
Q3
58%
76.92%
61.82%
50.00%
31.39%
Q4
52%
65.38%
56.36%
100.00%
24.21%
Total
56%
73.08%
60.45%
75.00%
28.68%
N
110
26
55
2
27
Analysis:
We divide the total cohort into four categories based on whether or not they are in Group A (which
had the review session the day before this quiz) and whether or not they took Math 152 in the 2009W
session (Jan – Apr 2010).
There are two primary items of interest.
1. The students who took Math 152 earlier in 2010 but did not have a review session still
performed fairly well on the quiz, especially Q1 which requires the least syntax recall.
2. Those who did not take Math 152 in 2009W and did not have the review session (only 2
such students did have the review) score quite a bit lower. In fact, comparing these to the
pretest quiz numbers for Math 152 in January 2010, we have:
Q1: 34%, Q2: 17%, Q3: 32%, Q4 (open-ended version): 2%
which are very similar (though Q4 is much higher in the multiple choice version offered on
the Mech 220 Review Quiz). This suggests a similar population in terms of MATLAB
ability as Math 152 has at the start of term.
One unknown is if streaming was used to determine the Groups A-D (like last year), in which case this
could skew the results for Group A. This should not, however, have a major impact on the above
analysis.