shout out to my 1st years

[aryanhwy]

If Thursday was the day for reveling in my advanced seminar, today I want to put in a few good words for my 1st years. Friday afternoon from 1pm to 2pm when I have a tutorial with 13 people from my intro logic class is the highlight of my week

Comments

[hudebnik]

Cool. My best experiences as a teacher have been when the students started arguing with one another over the subject matter, and I could just sit back and monitor.

I think every time it's happened has been with a class size between 5 and 15. I've had smaller classes, which really were "tutorials", and larger classes, which tended to turn into "sage-on-the-stage" presentations; 5-15 seems to be the golden range. Naturally, the University is not happy running classes of that size: for smaller classes, they can get away with paying faculty less, and for larger classes, they have more tuition income to cover the faculty's cost.

[aryanhwy]

I agree, less than 20 is where the best teaching happens. My 3rd year course has 18, but due to timetabling snafu, I have them split into two groups (this is all wholly off the books; but the ones that can't make it on the assigned day and time, we found another two hour slot that fits everyone and we just meet in my office, so NO ONE CAN COMPLAIN ABOUT IT), so I have ~12 in one group and 6 in the other. My tutorial group for the intro class is one group out of 6 (each having 11-13 students), which means the lecture itself is ~70, but even though that's a pretty large group, I've been very satisfied with my attempts to make it not just "the sage on the stage". I'd say about 30 of them will regularly ask questions or answer questions I pose to them during lecture, and each week it's a different subset, so it's not the same 5-10 "know it alls" that are always speaking in lecture, which can sometimes happen

[kareina]

Your stories make me want to take a logic course. However, I want to take it from you, and I really can't afford the commute.

[aryanhwy]

Due to the number of requests I've gotten, next year I hope to do something that can be put online -- recording my lectures, or doing youtube videos, or the like. But the best part -- the tutorials -- can't really be replicated online.

Hmmm...what sort of philosophy/computer science/mathematics provisions does Luleå have? You might speak to them about the possibility of having me come over and do an intensive, one-week crash course. If you could give me ~8 hours a day for 5 days, that would be basically as much time as I get with my students over the course of eight months.

There is a possibility I could even get Erasmus funding from my uni to help offset costs.

[kareina]

I didn't know anything about if/what sort of philosophy/computer science/mathmetics courses we might have, and, given that we are a Univeristy of Technology, I didn't expect much from the first on that list. Much to my surprise, when I typed "philosophy" into the uni web page search box, the autofill wanted to know if I meant "Philosophy of Science" The full course title is Philosophy of Science and Research Methodology. However, it appears to be a distance course. They list three contact people for more information, two of whom have the word "philosophy" listed in their research area, but only one of whom has a listing of publications and research on their uni page. Does that list make him look like someone worth contacting with the question of do they want you to come do a course? Or should I look for computer science or maths people instead?

[kareina]

Of course, if we do this, we should time it either for a July so you can attend our Medieval Days at Hägnan event (which might be a tough time to get students), or a November, so you can attend Norrskensfesten.