HEA course for new maths lecturers

[2012-09-18 Tue]

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a course for new maths lecturers run by the Maths, Stats and Operations Research discipline of the Higher Education Academy (HEA/MSOR). I was pleased that it dispelled several myths for me, in particular the myth that these courses never cater for mathematicians' needs. All the talks were given by experienced mathematics lecturers or people who have spent a considerable amount of time undertaking educational research specific to university-level maths. With such good quality input, and with the high level of engagement discussion amongst the participants, I learned a lot. Here are a couple of ideas I took away (not necessarily maths-specific!). A useful piece of software I encountered was GeoGebra (for producing geometric diagrams, etc.). While it's true that the same results (and many more) could be obtained with Maple or Sage, it's also true that GeoGebra is free and intuitive, and it's extremely quick to produce diagrams of the sort it's good at (not as code-heavy as Maple). I'm told there's a 3d version and this would have been useful for producing these diagrams.

I can highly recommend this HEA course for new maths/stats lecturers.

Comments, corrections and contributions are very welcome; please drop me an email at j.d.evans at lancaster.ac.uk if you have something to share.

CC-BY-SA 4.0 Jonny Evans.