This is a list of courses or other items I’ve served on the instruction staff for.
Institution: University of California, San Diego
Role: Supplemental Instruction Leader
Course Description: Vector geometry, vector functions and their derivatives. Partial differentiation. Maxima and minima. Double integration.
My Thoughts: Course in progress right now/not started!
Institution: University of California, San Diego
Role: Supplemental Instruction Leader
Course Description: Integral calculus of one variable and its applications, with exponential, logarithmic, hyperbolic, and trigonometric functions. Methods of integration. Infinite series. Polar coordinates in the plane and complex exponentials.
My Thoughts: This course has a reputation as the hardest lower-division engineering/science mathematics course at UCSD. Serving on the instruction staff for this course for two quarters has shown me that this is mainly due to prior math courses not really encouraging as much thinking as this course does. It’s completely possible to work through math courses until this course completely by memorization, but this course does require a level of application to evaluate integrals that require different solution methods. Students trying to get by without developing application skills would likely have to spend extensive amounts of time solving enough questions to reduce problems down to a level of pattern-matching. As an instructor, it’s really rewarding to see students grow throughout the quarter in a course like this where you can see their problem-solving skills rapidly develop. On a side note, this is also the course that I first tried out Hagaromo Fulltouch Chalk on and it’s a really nice experience for sure :D.
Institution: University of California, San Diego
Role: Supplemental Instruction Leader
Course Description: Foundations of differential and integral calculus of one variable. Functions, graphs, continuity, limits, derivative, tangent line. Applications with algebraic, exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions. Introduction to the integral.
My Thoughts: For most students taking this course, this is their first time seeing calculus of any form and it may also be their first college-level math class, so the new ways of thinking as well it covers as well as the increase in expectations are definitely the biggest challenges. This course was also entirely online, and it’s much harder to encourage participation over this modality, though Zoom does have some nice features to help ease the transition, like polls and student annotations. It’s certainly not the same as teaching in-person, but it’s definitely doable with enough practice. Something else I’ve realized that I previously took for granted is that it’s important to make sure students to review notation, as this course introduces a lot of notation that might be new for students who are taking their first college-level math class.