Math 148 Teaching Practicum Term: Spring 2025

Description of course: The idea of the course is to provide a teaching practicum experience for graduate students in mathematics. The main goal is to provide a substantial opportunity to think about and practice teaching. Becoming a good teacher is not only an end in itself, but it will also make you a better mathematician; though we will focus on college-level mathematics teaching, the skills learned will be useful in industry or other non-academic settings, where one is asked to take on the role of presenter, educator, facilitator, or team builder. By the end of the course, graduate students should gain:

1. experience developing and organizing a college-level mathematics course, from conception and planning to syllabus and lecture schedule to problems sets and exams;
2. experience teaching, including sharpening blackboard lecturing and slide presentation skills, and practicing different classroom engagement strategies;
3. teaching-related professional development, such as (course) website building, a teaching statement, and the knowledge of how to find and utilize resources for improving as teachers;
4. practice creating and maintaining an effective learning environment;
5. knowledge of Dartmouth-specific expectations and resources that are key to high-quality teaching in the 3rd through 5th years in the PhD program; and
6. knowledge about a new mathematics topic, and a fully constructed course for possible use in the future.

Course within a course: Participants will collectively design a complete mathematics course, at the advanced undergraduate/introductory graduate level, with syllabus, lecture notes, problem sets, and exams. Throughout the term, the course will be taught by the participants to the participants, with ample time for reflection. The experience will provide each participant with a sustained opportunity to practice, receive feedback on, and improve, their teaching and course content creation abilities.

Lectures: Each participant will be assigned 4 lectures (2 weeks, non-consecutive) to deliver in the course. Each lecture will be 60 minutes, followed by a post-lecture class discussion. It is expected that lecturers create notes in advance, to be turned in after each lecture. Lectures should be practiced beforehand for timing and board clarity. For each “lecturer participant,” one of the lectures is expected to be prepared using beamer slides, and the rest at the blackboard; one lecture is expected to contain some active learning strategies. All other "student participants" are expected to actively participate as students during the lectures (e.g., asking and answering questions) as well as in any active learning components. In particular, student participants must take notes during lectures, which will be used during the post-lecture discussion period as a basis of reflection on the content and delivery of the lecture.

Problem sets: Each week, the lecturer participant will be responsible for drafting and posting a problem set related to the content of that week's lectures, to be completed by the student participants and due the following week. The lecturer participant is then expected to grade the completed problem sets, and hand them back by the week after the deadline. Each week will include, as part of the post-lecture discussion, a discussion of the problem set and it's grading.

Exams: All participants will work collaboratively, during a portion of the post-lecture discussion periods and outside of class, to create a midterm and final exam for the course, to be taken, and reflected on, by all participants.

Assessment: Your final grade will be based on class participation, lectures (giving them and preparing lecture notes), and exams (preparing, taking, grading).