Teaching & Learning Symposium in Mathematics

Teaching & Learning Symposium in Mathematics(गणित में अधिगम एवं अध्यापन परिसंवाद )

(1.) Symposium- Space for Voices

Podcast Pedagogy: The Power of Stories to Create Learning Connections:-

Podcasting takes listeners to a virtual ‘third place’, a shared imaginative listening space of narrative connection and allows for meaningful self-reflection and engagement. The popularity, variety and quality of podcasts has been increasing at an unprecedented rate. The Hart House Stories podcast team is a diverse group of students and staff that will explore how educators can use the storytelling medium of podcasts to foster holistic mathematics learning connections. We will discuss what skills and competencies students, educators and audiences can develop through digital storytelling and how might instructors consider podcasting as a method for mathematics learning? For example as means of reflection, assessment, engaging with under-presented narratives, democratizing research, building a deeper understanding of student experiences, use as a resource to spark conversations or as a new means of capturing lecture content. This discussion will also explore how creating/listening to podcasts fits into the rest of students’ undergraduate mathematics learning experience. Considering how podcasting connects with community engagement priorities, work integrated learning, work-study, and the reimagined undergraduate experience. This discussion will explore topics such as the intimacy of the hearing human voices in an age dominated by screens and isolation, and research findings from The Cultural Orientation Research Center that shows how retention rates from auditory learning are two times higher than reading and four times higher than attending a lecture. Finally, this will be an opportunity for educators interested in using podcasting as a pedagogy to consider “What innovative applications are still unexplored?”

(2.)Critical Pedagogies for Inclusive Spaces:-

Building inclusive mathematics learning spaces is not easy. Participatory teaching methods of mathematics do not always produce inclusion. Historical experiences of gender, sexuality, race, class and oppression structure students’ willingness and confidence to participate. Making the rhetoric of inclusion real in the classroom is subtle and often difficult. In this session we reflect on the dynamics and politics of inclusion in the classroom itself as a means to explore the wider complexities of critical inclusionary pedagogical practices. We provide examples from three fourth-year, seminar undergraduate classes from the Centre for Critical Development Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health and Society, at the university.

We explore critical pedagogical practices related to three mathematics learning outcomes: empowered citizenship, critical hope and active learning through social technology. Mathematics lecturer will discuss how experiential exercises on everyday experiences of citizenship and power can foster a deeper level of participation and inclusion in the classroom. Mathematics teacher will share insights from the scholarship and her teaching practice about the importance of authentic caring and critical hope in our classrooms. He will highlight the intersection between critical pedagogy and open educational practices, showing examples of how students make use of social technology to take part in active learning and share their lived experience.

Guiding Questions:

How do power relations manifest themselves in the classroom? (from syllabus construction and assigned readings to participation practices and evaluation methods and assigned readings)
How do silences in the classroom speak to empowerment/disempowerment in the classroom?
How can experiential exercises foster deeper forms of inclusion in the classroom?
What is authentic caring and how can students and educators be empowered to develop critical hope in the classroom and beyond?

(3.)Interactive Workshop: Learning in Libraries – Students and their Use of Learning Spaces

When you think of academic libraries, what do you imagine? Satyam institutions that house knowledge? Interactive hubs of activity? Libraries have been mythologized in a variety of ways from intimidating, a “third space”, a “home away from home”, and ideally an inclusive environment. How an individual sees the library can be revealed through how they engage with the space.

We often imagine students engaged in solitary practices in the library and while quiet space is still crucial, increasingly we witness students engaged in collaborative information creation and sharing. In this workshop, librarians from three different libraries at U of T will explore the question, how do students use the library? We will discuss the ways in which students are engaging with library learning spaces and how recent library updates have impacted student use. Participants will be invited to engage in a creative design activity to consider features of their ideal learning space.

Outcomes – By the end of the session, participants will:

Recognize how different disciplinary studies influence how students use the mathematics library
Consider the study habits of undergraduates versus graduate students
Design an ideal learning space and analyze how that might influence the learning of their students

(4.)Interactive Workshop: When the City is a Classroom: Collaborative Learning with Community-Based Organizations

When students of urban studies collaborate with on the ground community‐based organizations around real‐world projects, theories about city‐building and inequality come alive. Abstract knowledge and concepts become tangible for students. In this session, we will present two models for this type of university‐community collaboration and discuss how to design such courses.

The first course model draws inspiration from concept of “contact zones”, which is a social space where multiple experiences and cultures clash and blend, and in which individuals learn from one another’s situated knowledge. This model takes the classroom outside of the university into a community‐based organization space, in which  University students and members of the organization learn from one another and produce new knowledge together . The course: Youth, Arts, Engagement, and the City did this by holding class at Regent Park Focus, a not‐for‐profit organization that media literacy and production programming for youth living in the area.

The second course model draws from  research, which found that students who volunteer with community‐based organizations “gained perspective on stereotyping and tolerance”  and thus developed their critical thinking skills. The course: Introduction to Urban Studies, provided 40 out of 80 students short‐term volunteer opportunities with various community‐based organizations throughout the city.

Outline of the Session:
I. Case study presentations of Model 1 and Model 2 course collaborations
II. Building relationships with community‐based organizations for classroom collaborations
III. Designing effective assignments to enhance learning in collaborative environments
IV. Workshop activity: addressing ethical dilemmas and challenges in implementation through small group simulations

By the end of this session, participants will be able to envision future community-university classroom experiences for their own fields and have the analytical tools to reflect on and troubleshoot the ethical dilemmas that inevitably arise in such collaborations.

(5.) Lightning Talks: Enabling Connections

Utilizing Best Practices in Online Learning for Healthcare Professionals on Patient/Medication Safety

Purpose: Evidence has shown that utilizing best practices in online learning will enhance learner engagement, satisfaction, and knowledge acquisition. The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate the best practices in online learning, and how we applied these practices in the storyboarding of patient/medication safety online modules for healthcare professionals and students.

Outcomes: We will share themes identified from literature and through access to instructional design specialists and subject matter experts in online learning development as a result  Support Stream of the Instructional Technology Innovation Fund. We will discuss the overarching best practices in online mathematics training module development: (1) Make it Easy to Learn; (2) Engagement is Key; (3) Equal Learning Opportunity for Everyone; and (4) Content Matters. Within each best practice, actions that complement online learning theory, like avoiding learner overload, will be highlighted. These best practices are vital in ensuring the learner optimizes the learning potential and generates a positive attitude towards the mathematics learning experience. We will explain how to utilize and adopt them in the storyboarding of the various patient/medication safety online modules.

Facilitation: We hope our insights and illustrations of how patient/medication education can be delivered utilizing best practices in online learning may encourage others to consider applying these strategies in their curriculum delivery. With the increased uptake of e-learning platforms, this presentation will explain how to optimize mathematics learning with technological shifts in mathematics teaching.

(6.)In the later years of undergraduate study, we ask our students to read and evaluate primary literature within our fields. Shifting from textbooks – sources of packaged, contextualized knowledge – to vast amounts of peer-reviewed, yet otherwise unfiltered literature can be a tough transition for our students. Can they be taught to thoughtfully identify what findings are important and what will rarely be discussed again? How can we enhance our learners’ critical thinking skills that, while practiced in the classroom, will translate to critical evaluation of ideas outside of the classroom? The assignments detailed in this presentation will help support instructors in creating and implementing assessments of mathematics learning that tap into a range of student abilities, from describing ideas to critically evaluating them.

Several useful methods have been developed to guide students through reading scientific journal articles . This presentation will detail an innovative approach to helping students achieve a deeper understanding of primary literature, involving a series of sequential assignments based upon the levels of increasing cognitive complexity in  taxonomy . These assignments are designed to scaffold individual work outside of the classroom that will facilitate interactive engagement inside the classroom.

While this session will use scientific literature as a model, the framework discussed will translate into any field in which students struggle with interpreting and critiquing primary literature.