MAA Ancillary Workshops
These workshops have been scheduled for Tuesday, January 8, the day before the Joint Meetings actually begin, cosponsored by the MAA and the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE).
Space in each workshop is limited. Please note there are no registration fees but you must register in advance and that walk-ins will not be accommodated. All participants will receive notification of acceptance, or, whether the course is full. Participants are responsible for their own transportation, lodging, and parking expenses.
Functions, Parameters, and Fitting for Teaching Calculus, presented by Daniel Kaplan, Macalester College, Randall Pruim, Calvin College; Tuesday, 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. This one-day workshop is designed to help instructors move toward teaching introductory calculus in a modeling- and data-oriented way. The parameters of basic functions are often treated casually in introductory calculus, as if they were a nuisance or merely fodder for the chain rule. In the first half of the workshop, we'll show how to interpret them physically, how to relate them to data, and how to use them for model building. The second half emphasizes polynomial approximation, the relationship between Taylor series and model fitting, and model building using information about derivatives. A small, general purpose mathematical toolkit suffices to build and interpret compelling models in a very wide range of settings spanning economics, biology, physics, etc. We'll provide in-class activities, assignments, student project topics, and example exam questions. Both paper-and-pencil as well as computer-oriented approaches (using R, Sage, or Mathematica) will be featured, drawing on the materials developed through the NSF-supported Project MOSAIC, which aims to construct strong connections in teaching modeling, calculus, statistics, and computation. The workshop is an outreach activity of Project MOSAIC (NSF DUE-0920350) as well as CAUSE—the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics.
Participants are strongly encouraged to bring a laptop. If you don't currently use software for teaching calculus, we'll set you up with the free R system running through a web browser. Lunch will be provided. Space is limited and advance registration is required through http://www.causeweb.org/workshop/jmm13_mosaic/.
Identifying and Addressing Difficult Concepts for Students in the Introductory Statistics Course, presented by Marjorie Bond, Monmouth College; Tuesday, 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. We know that students have difficulty with certain topics in statistics, and it can be difficult to determine the best approach to take to help our students work through these topics. In this workshop, we take a selection of difficult concepts, zoom in on exactly what the problems are from the student's point of view, and examine where, when, and how to address them in our course. Along the way, we will examine these difficult statistical concepts in detail, and look for common threads that may even lead us back to issues from Chapter 1. The workshop will also discuss the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) objectives for a statistically educated citizen. The workshop is particularly geared toward instructors at two-year colleges. Instructors new to teaching statistics as well those who have been teaching for a while will find the workshop beneficial. Supported by NSF DUE #0942924 & 0942456. The workshop is an outreach activity of CAUSE—the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics.
Advance registration is required through http://www.causeweb.org/workshop/jmm13_concepts/. Space is limited. Workshop participants are encouraged to bring their own fully charged laptops for this workshop. Lunch will be provided.
Playing Games with a Purpose: A New Approach to Teaching and Learning Statistics, presented by Shonda Kuiper, Grinnell College, and Rod Sturdivant, U.S. Military Academy; Tuesday, 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. This one-day workshop is designed to help instructors and students bridge the gap between short, traditional homework questions towards the open-ended nature of a real-world problem. Web-based games and other materials will be demonstrated that introduce undergraduates to statistical methods from a variety of disciplines. The materials demonstrated in this workshop encourage students early in their undergraduate studies to experience the role of a research scientist and to understand how statistics help advance scientific knowledge. By making students grapple with intriguing real-world problems that demonstrate the intellectual content and broad applicability of statistics as a discipline, these materials encourage students to incorporate statistical thinking into any career. This workshop will provide materials that can be used as projects in an introductory statistics course, synthesize key elements learned throughout a second statistics course, form the basis of an individual research project, or used to help students and researchers in other disciplines better understand how statisticians approach the scientific process. These materials were developed through the NSF-supported grants (NSF DUE #0510392 and NSF DUE #1043814). The workshop is an outreach activity of CAUSE—the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics.
Participants should bring their own fully-charged laptops for this workshop. Space is limited. Advance registration is required through http://www.causeweb.org/workshop/jmm13_games/.