Mathematics Education

Seminars

Group overview

The Mathematics Education group at its core consists of Education Leadership Stream faculty members, but includes others who are passionate about postsecondary teaching and have contributed in significant ways to the department's teaching mission. For example, the group has been instrumental in producing open educational resources (see links below) and has received much recognition for this work. Group activities include the Mathematics Education Research seminar, Lunch series on Teaching and Learning, curriculum development, and activities related to outreach and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

For prospective students

Graduate students who are passionate about teaching are encouraged to take MATH 599 and participate in our seminars and lunch series.

For prospective POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

This section contains brief descriptions of potential projects for Teaching Project Postdoctoral Fellows.

Collaborative Elements in Honours Math
The goal of this project is to introduce collaborative assessments into one or more Honours Math courses, in part to help build a supportive community of practice for underrepresented students.

Improving Invidualized Assessment Feedback
A number of UBC courses use assessment feedback software designed by UBC mathematicians. The goal of this project is to improve the software to give more granular feedback, and to design an experiment to evaluate the impact of the software.

Jupyter Book for Applied Linear Algebra, Applied Probability and Stochastic Processes
Jupyter Book is "an an open source project for building beautiful, publication-quality books and documents from computational material”. The goal of this project is to adapt course notes, design new computational learning material with Python and create a Jupyter book for courses in Applied Linear Algebra, Applied Probability and/or Stochastic Processes.

Machine Learning To Aid Student Success
This project aims to find ways to use large amounts of collected student data to inform teaching and programming. For example, data from the standard first-year survey could be used to track student "prerequisite dimensions" and direct in-term support; assessments could be analyzed for predictive power for student success; and longitudinal information about course selection could be used to steer students toward productive course paths.

Mathematics of Information Course Design
The goal of this project is to redesign an Applied Linear Algebra course with projects on modern applications such as compressed sensing, deep learning, medical imaging and operations research.

MATLAB assessments in Mathematical Computing for Linear Algebra and Differential Equations
The goal of this project is to update and create formative and summative MATLAB assessments in large first- and second-year courses.

Special Topics in Multivariable Calculus
The goal of this project is to add a bank of special topic modules, including lecture notes and interactive homework, to a large multivariable calculus course for Engineering students. Potential topics include: optimization methods using Hessian or steepest descent, radial basis functions, and higher dimensional integration using Monte Carlo methods.

Textbook-Integrated Slides and Videos in Calculus
UBC calculus courses use an open textbook written by UBC mathematicians. The goal of this project is to create slides and short topic videos that integrate with the textbook.