Wednesday 27 November 2013

Reflective writing (UKPSF V3)

I sent to a workshop on reflective writing today. One of the main points was that the reflection should not just be descriptive, but there should be analysis as well.

He had a suggestion for a book to read.

There is a drop in center for writing at the University

Tuesday 19 November 2013

Course text book (UKPSF K1 A2)

I was talking to a student in the computer lab. He was asking for a course text book. He wanted more examples. The last lecturer had not recommended anything, so I did not as well.
The detailed course notes are like the text book, but they are not goof for background.

I use a lot of text books for preparing the course, but many have too much material.
Also many of the books I use are old.

Thursday 7 November 2013

feedback and course work (UKPSF A2 A3)

Tomorrow is the deadline for the first course work for the stat353 course, which I am teaching. One issue I am having problems with is that many students are asking me to almost check their solutions.
The very good students ask very specific questions. I don't want to discourage them from the correct solution. It is difficult, because the course work is marked. So I don't want to tell people the answer, but it seems against the idea of giving feedback, if I provide no help at all.

The feedback can't just be when the course work is marked.

Green pens (UKPSF V1 K2)

While I was working through an example on the blackboard, a student called out that they couldn't see the green pen on the white board. I though green was the relaxing colour, still I have packed some black pens in my teaching bag.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

interactivity (UKPSF K1 A2)

I was teaching the students about reliability in STAT353 Engineering Statistics. I showed them that having components in parallel made the system more reliable from the rules. I made an off the cuff remark that about RAID disks, although being redundant, were not in my experience as reliable as they claimed.

One of students asked during the lecture what level of RAID disk was used. he then told me that the reliability would depend on the RAID level. Which is true of course.

I should and plan to work this example into next year's lectures, because it is clearly something that
the students are interested in.

Problem solving by algorithms (UKPSF K1 K2 K3 )

In the past I have worked solutions on the white board for the students. Then I hope that the students will be able to do slightly different problems. The aim used to be that the students would understand the general strategy for solving the problems. However, it is not clear that the weaker students are able to do this.
So in a lecture I tried to explain the general method for solving problems involving discrete probability distributions.

I got an email from a student who claimed this approach helped them do problems.

I was influenced by the book "How to Solve it" by Polya.