Today I actually did some stuff!
First, I did a read through and edits of a paper Jen Flegg has been writing that is all about engineering students' perceptions of the usefulness of their maths units to both their later studies and to their careers (as well as some other matters too). It's quite interesting to see that many of them seem to trust that it is relevant, but don't actually see it themselves. Our conclusion, or probably more of a suggestion for improvement of the situation, is that this implies more collaboration is required between mathematicians and engineering academics in the design of these service mathematics units.
Jen is doing the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (you basically get a scholarship to do it if you are a new staff member at QUT) and each of the units I think allows/requires you to undertake an action research project like this. It's really great I think. So many positives: improving teaching, improving learning, increasing publications, opening up new research areas.
After lunch, Tim and Graeme and I had a beer-meeting (over a bottle of chimay). We had a chat about extending some of my hybrid CA-PDE models to the third dimension. Tim is providing some really useful input since he knows things about solving reaction diffusion equations in three dimensions quite quickly using fancy intel libraries or something or other. Sounds great. We also talked about some work on arteries and lipid deposits and such - this seems to be a problem Peter Johnston from Griffith is working on (Peter may also be known as "father of 2010 Maths Dean's scholar Stuart")...I'm not too clear on this yet, but it seems like at the early stages, blood flow can be ignored and we simply look at the movement of the lipids through the artery wall using a porous media style model.
We've been without internet here at home for 3 days now - it's like the dark ages. Oh, except for the fact that I can tether my android and use that (thank god).
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Day 22
Today we had the ALTC Science Discipline scholars visiting from UTasmania. These folk, Brian Yates and Sue Jones, are the leaders of the Science part of the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Project run by the ALTC.
The Australian Government has awarded the ALTC $2 million to facilitate and coordinate discipline communities’ definition of academic standards as the higher education sector prepares for a new regulatory environment and the creation of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.
(from http://www.altc.edu.au/standards)
They discussed their project and threshold learning outcomes with a small group of interested folk this morning and then again this afternoon, in more depth, with the design team of QUT's proposed Bachelor of Science degree. It was quite interesting to hear the learning outcomes that they have drafted together so far, that are intended to cover the pass-level outcomes for a graduate of a science degree from fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences, mathematics etc...quite broad, so somewhat generic but at the same time "sciency".
I also managed to finally do some work on the summaries from some curriculum renewal workshops that we held. These were workshops with academic staff from around the faculty where we discussed ideas like revitalising practical activities in our courses, streaming students at different learning stages or with different learning intentions (eg international experience vs research preparation, etc), and the concept of an inverted curriculum. These all form part of our plans to put in a swag of ALTC grant applications next year (or possibly one large consolidated one).
The Australian Government has awarded the ALTC $2 million to facilitate and coordinate discipline communities’ definition of academic standards as the higher education sector prepares for a new regulatory environment and the creation of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.
(from http://www.altc.edu.au/standards)
They discussed their project and threshold learning outcomes with a small group of interested folk this morning and then again this afternoon, in more depth, with the design team of QUT's proposed Bachelor of Science degree. It was quite interesting to hear the learning outcomes that they have drafted together so far, that are intended to cover the pass-level outcomes for a graduate of a science degree from fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences, mathematics etc...quite broad, so somewhat generic but at the same time "sciency".
I also managed to finally do some work on the summaries from some curriculum renewal workshops that we held. These were workshops with academic staff from around the faculty where we discussed ideas like revitalising practical activities in our courses, streaming students at different learning stages or with different learning intentions (eg international experience vs research preparation, etc), and the concept of an inverted curriculum. These all form part of our plans to put in a swag of ALTC grant applications next year (or possibly one large consolidated one).
Day 21 (Tuesday)
Chazzle and I went down to Folio Books on Albert to have a squizzy. They have some good books, but I'm a tight arse, so I'm not paying $30 for paperbacks when I can get them for $10-15 on bookdepository or amazon. Nonetheless interesting.
Then we went next door to Zarraffas, the actual purpose of the post lunch trip, to work on her Bayesian network for passenger wayfinding at the airport. This was really fun - I've never done something like that before. Basically, from my perspective, it was all about thinking what influences the quality of wayfinding at an airport...things like human system and airport system, what they are composed of (eg signs, iconography, pathways, spatial design, language, speaker systems for announcements etc). It was quite interesting putting it all together. More on this in Day 22.
I also looked at an invitation to contribute to a special issue of a newish journal called "Cancers". It's an issue on tumour immune system interactions (which I have done a little modelling of). It's not really the kind of journal that I can publish in - it's quite focussed on experimental work. But I have written to the guest editor asking if they might be interested in a short paper of a few pages, discussing the methods I use (hybrid cellular automata essentially) and how they can be employed as a pre-experimental stage to refine hypotheses etc and hopefully save some money on experiments. Haven't heard back yet...but hopefully they will be interested - it's always good to get the word out to the experimental community.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Day 18 (Saturday)
Nothing to report for Saturday really. Unless you count Scott's wedding. Twas good - held in West End...in fact, we realised that his house, his Buck's party pub crawl and his wedding venue were all within about 3 blocks of each other.
Warning - social commentary: It was sad to hear the official words that the celebrant speaks that include defining for us all that marriage is "between a man and a woman". Besides being just plain wrong, it was just so out of place at what was otherwise a great progressive sort of wedding. The Bertrand Russell reading by Angela's mum kind of balanced things back to rationality though, so that was good.Good luck Scotty and Angela! Don't forget you still have 9 papers left in the dozen before you get your Leffe and only a couple of months to go!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Day 17 (Friday)
I've been doing a fair bit of literature review work the last couple of days, mostly for some educational research papers I'm writing up. It's kind of interesting that completely by accident I decided to try out some collaborative small-group work stuff in my units this semester, when it is just about to become a focus (well sort of) within science and tech as well as the engineering faculty at QUT.
We are building this huge new science and technology precinct which is supposed to feature some so-called new age teaching and learning spaces (think new GP library, new S block levels, new O303a). Lot's of collaborative workspace, flexible room setups and (re)movable furniture. etc. When I saw the new level 4 S block lecture room with the glass walls, I wasn't impressed...in fact, I'm still not. It actually isn't any different so far as I can tell, besides the glass walls, from what it was when I was an undergrad 12 years ago. The furniture may even be identical.
But that's not the point... the point is I finally thought a little bit about what else I could do in their besides standing up and talking to people doing examples. The room in question has those large two-student flat desks that you can move around just like any old table. So I thought, bugger it, I'm going to get people to talk with each other and work on problems on purpose (rather than because that's what they decide to do). Another fortuitous (or not) thing was the closure of the students work room in O block. There wasn't really as easy an opportunity any more for students to just sit around and work on their maths with each other. In a sense, I tried to mimic that atmosphere, probably not very successfully, in my collaborative classroom activities.
Personally, I think we over lecture. 3 hours a week isn't really necessary. That doesn't mean I don't want to spend the 3 hrs teaching or in the classroom, but just that I don't think I need to be talking up the front all the time. I think in many cases, a 1 hour overview is more appropriate and then the remaining 3 hours could be spent in structured, small-group learning activities. What do I mean by structured? Well, not just a sheet of questions... more like worksheets that guide the students through constructing the ideas for themselves. You can't go too far off track because the guiding worksheet always brings you back to the path, but at the same time you would need to draw on your prior knowledge to figure out where to go and what to do.
This is also, in a sense, what I tried out with my collaborative activities. A couple of them were actually used as the introduction to a topic. THat is, I didn't teach the topic first, I got students to work on a structured, small-group worksheet. That probably seems weird and unfair...but it's actually quite good I think. It allows each student to build their own concepts and to arrive at a place in the progression of learning about something before I come in and sterilise their viewpoint with that of the so-called expert. I think it is even empowering to some people when they realise they can learn by themselves and that anything I provide is just reinforcement or guidance.
We are building this huge new science and technology precinct which is supposed to feature some so-called new age teaching and learning spaces (think new GP library, new S block levels, new O303a). Lot's of collaborative workspace, flexible room setups and (re)movable furniture. etc. When I saw the new level 4 S block lecture room with the glass walls, I wasn't impressed...in fact, I'm still not. It actually isn't any different so far as I can tell, besides the glass walls, from what it was when I was an undergrad 12 years ago. The furniture may even be identical.
But that's not the point... the point is I finally thought a little bit about what else I could do in their besides standing up and talking to people doing examples. The room in question has those large two-student flat desks that you can move around just like any old table. So I thought, bugger it, I'm going to get people to talk with each other and work on problems on purpose (rather than because that's what they decide to do). Another fortuitous (or not) thing was the closure of the students work room in O block. There wasn't really as easy an opportunity any more for students to just sit around and work on their maths with each other. In a sense, I tried to mimic that atmosphere, probably not very successfully, in my collaborative classroom activities.
Personally, I think we over lecture. 3 hours a week isn't really necessary. That doesn't mean I don't want to spend the 3 hrs teaching or in the classroom, but just that I don't think I need to be talking up the front all the time. I think in many cases, a 1 hour overview is more appropriate and then the remaining 3 hours could be spent in structured, small-group learning activities. What do I mean by structured? Well, not just a sheet of questions... more like worksheets that guide the students through constructing the ideas for themselves. You can't go too far off track because the guiding worksheet always brings you back to the path, but at the same time you would need to draw on your prior knowledge to figure out where to go and what to do.
This is also, in a sense, what I tried out with my collaborative activities. A couple of them were actually used as the introduction to a topic. THat is, I didn't teach the topic first, I got students to work on a structured, small-group worksheet. That probably seems weird and unfair...but it's actually quite good I think. It allows each student to build their own concepts and to arrive at a place in the progression of learning about something before I come in and sterilise their viewpoint with that of the so-called expert. I think it is even empowering to some people when they realise they can learn by themselves and that anything I provide is just reinforcement or guidance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)