TEACHING WITH TECHNOLOGY PORTFOLIO

Hengguang Li
Department of Mathematics
The Pennsylvania State University

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Digital media
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Pedagogical
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Reflection on
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Hengguang's
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Out-of-class resources for my students
I started using technology back in 2003 when teaching College Algebra classes, and since then, I have used it in many contexts. There are, for instance, several ways of organizing the course material and of making it available for students outside of class. Here are some of the methods I have been using: Developing course web sites: Web pages for all my current and former courses are available in the Courses Tab. Here is the link to the most recent web site (in fact, this is the course I taught last semester): Math22 Spring 2007 I found keeping a course web page extremely useful, and this seems to be the most efficient way to organize all class information in one place known to all class participants. More details are provided below. Posting quizzes and solutions online saves a lot of time and paper work. I usually post the PDF file of the quiz a week after it is taken, and distribute its solution in class afterwards. In this way, students can review the solutions and their mistakes at home, while I save valuable class time by discussing only the problems that worry them the most. Examples of quizzes can also be found here. Posting class reminders and announcements helps class keep organized. In fact, not only does it keep students up-to-date with what is happening in the course, but it also helps to optimize instructor's time. I have been using Angel for my class to send messages to the students, which greatly simplified pacing and planning course activities. For example, in the week before the exams or quizzes, I would remind students the time, location and what would be on the test, in order to make them have plenty of time to get themselves prepared. Also, since I have the course information available on the web, students can even print out the study guide and review sheets online at home. I have kept the review sheets updated every semester, based on different classes and requirements. Posting gradelist online is very important in order to let the students know of their progress. Because of the University policy, I always remove the identities and order the list by the four digits that are random numbers that students provided in the first class. Here are some examples from previous years. Math 22 Fall 2006 gradelist Math 22 Spring 2006 gradelist Coupling course website with Angel proved to be extremely useful in lots of aspects. Angel provides many wonderful features for maintaining course information, collaborating with students as a group, assessing students through online quizzes and getting feedbacks from them through online surveys and quick polls. I have been pleasantly surprised with the abundance of tools the Angel team implemented and made available to teachers at Penn State. I have used a couple of web-based learning systems before, such as Quiz Wizard and self-developed chat rooms, but only Angel made it possible for me to use the whole set of features I liked, such as discussion board, online quizzing with formula support, performance assessment etc. These and other items will be discussed in more details in the Pedagogical Innovation section. The examples provided here do not exhaust the list of out-of-class information. Other online materials can be found in the Digital materials section of this portfolio.


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