Symposium on Teaching Mathematics in Higher Education
In order to provide researches and educators with an opportunity to exchange ideas and communicate and discuss different issues around teaching and learning mathematics in higher education, I planed and organized the “Symposium on Teaching Mathematics in Higher Education” on June 1st, 2011.
The following themes were suggested for the 20-minute presentations:
· Challenges in Learning Mathematics
· Active Learning Strategies: In-class and Out-of-class
· Involving Undergraduate Students in Research
· Software Applications for Teaching and Learning Mathematics
· Significance of Symbols and Natural Language in Teaching and Learning Mathematics
· Instructors Collaboration in Teaching Mathematics
Seven proposals were accepted from a list of ten applications (see the Symposium brochure).
The event was quite successful, thanks to the organizing committee, including my TA and the CTL Program Assistant, for giving me all the help I needed to manage this event.
A number of 40 graduate students, researchers and educators attended the event form diverse Canadian Institutes.
My activities for organizing this event are briefly described below:
Meetings with the CTL Director, CMS Chair, CTL Assistant Director, Writing Centre Interim Coordinator, Math & Stats faculty members, and Director of Communications and Public Affairs, preparing the symposium information and registration documents, searching for the plenary speaker, inviting the plenary speaker, working with the CTL Tech Specialist & Instructional Technologies Coordinator to prepare the Symposium web site and online registration form, researching on materials to be distributed among participants, sending e-mails to all Ontario Universities with the help of the CTL Program Assistant to advertise the event, answering e-mails from prospective participants, preparing the job posting for hiring a TA for the Symposium, interviewing the TA applicants, holding a meeting with the CMS instructors for reviewing the session proposals, searching for related materials, searching for math images for creating the Symposium poster, obtaining the permissions from authors for using materials and images, creating a poster with the help of the hired TA, and coordinating and attending the day.
Sample materials for the Symposium are included in the following links (pages):