Undergraduate Seminar: Good mathematical teaching at university level
Jan-Hendrik de Wiljes, Benedikt Weygandt
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Undergraduate seminar “Good Mathematical Teaching at University”
What actually happens when students reflect on university teaching and redesign it to promote learning?
It is always easy to criticize existing concepts—but that alone does not change anything! That's why we want to take the frequently demanded student participation literally and give you the opportunity to contribute your experiences, expertise, and perspective as learners to the further development of good university teaching.
Let's engage in a thought experiment—perhaps a crazy one?
- What would happen if students designed a math lecture that was meaningful and useful to them? Or even an entire module?
- What kind of tutorials do you think are useful? What activities (thinking, calculating, discussing...) should take place in the respective courses (lectures, exercises, central exercises...) and in what format (frontal, individual, group...)?
- And what about the teaching materials: What should exercises look like? Lecture notes? Exams?
Procedure
After a short general introduction, we will devote three weeks to each topic (designing lectures, (central) exercises, lecture notes, exercise sheets, exams), gather inspiration, and then work out our “good” approaches in pairs.
At the end of the semester, we want to discuss and try out the ideas, approaches, and concepts you have developed with university lecturers!
Requirements
It is essential that you already have some experience with university teaching! You should have attended at least 2‒3 introductory lectures in mathematics. The focus will not so much be on the content taught there, but rather on becoming familiar with mathematical work at the university. More important than the individual subject content is a basic understanding of mathematical thinking and working methods—and, in particular, an interest in contemporary teaching.
Note: It is not planned to write a bachelor's thesis based on this proseminar. If you would like to write a thesis on a topic related to your proseminar, we recommend one of the other courses offered.
close16 Class schedule
Regular appointments