Blog

Presentation for Dunwoody High School Student Groups on Undergraduate Research

Earlier this month myself and two GT Undergrads gave an online talk on undergraduate research for the Dunwoody High School Science Honor Society, and their Mu Alpha Theta (Math Honors) Society. Many thanks to them for giving us this opportunity!

The three of us shared stories on how we got into research as undergraduate students, advice on how to get into research as an undergraduate, and general tips for success in college.

Our talk, “Pathways to Research: Navigating Your Path to Academic and Research Success” had about 70 attendees. And we were delighted to have been asked many questions by high school students interested in undergraduate research!

If there are any other high school student groups interested in having me for a similar presentation let me know, and I’ll see what I can do.

A recording of our presentation is below.

Awarded an Inclusive Excellence Faculty Fellowship

The Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences wrote a nice article about a project I am working on with others in the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech last week. The article is about a fellowship award that myself and a few others in the College were awarded earlier this year. Our project is an interdisciplinary approach to create a set of open courses to support student success for students taking courses in mathematics and psychology.  We are currently working the courses now and hope to have them available in Spring 2024. Very thankful for the fellowship award!

Helping Students Develop Their Learning and Study Strategies Through Reflection

Students often ask me how to prepare for upcoming exams and how to get the most out of their courses. indeed, the learning strategies that students might want to use can vary from course to course. The strategies they found to be useful in their high school courses may need to adapt and modified as they transition to college.

In this post I wanted to share a few ideas of how I help students develop their study strategies in undergraduate level math courses.

While I think there is general advice that I think instructors can and do offer to students taking their course, the strategies that works best for each individual will be unique to them.

Moreover, the process of identifying areas where their learning strategies can be refined is also a skill that will serve them in the classes that I teach, and in more advanced courses.

I often incorporate a survey in canvas that has three goals.

  • Further their ability to reflect on their own learning strategies.
  • Improve their learning strategies.
  • Help students become more successful in my courses.

The surveys ask students to do the following.

  1. State their own learning goals.
  2. Explain why their learning goals are important to them.
  3. Ask students to describe how they are going to reach the learning goals they have.

Each time the survey is run there are themes that emerge from the responses. I share some of the ideas that students wrote to help students get ideas for how they can make the most of their experiences in this class.

Below are a few examples of what students wrote and grouped into themes that typically emerge from the data.

  • Solve Many Problems
    • Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice … I think that’s it. I never really realized, but it’s literally practice that’s got most of us where we are: whether we practised simple addition of 2 digit numbers in the 2nd Grade, or practised History past papers in the 8th Grade.
    • I will complete all the extra problems in the book and practice as much as possible to better my critical thinking skills.
  • Schedule Your Time
    • I have a planner with when due dates are, which allows me to turn in items earlier, and not being forced to turn in right before due dates. This way I have more freedom of when I work on things and turn them in.
    • I started creating a to-do list every morning before I start the day so that I know all the tasks that I want/need to complete that day
  • Pace Yourself
    • I will make sure to set aside 1-2 hours a day to review and practice material for the class.
    • I studied multiple days in advance
  • Be Open to Changing Your Study Strategies as Needed
    • I plan to look up the most effective note-taking strategies, as well as abbreviate more in my notes, which allows for more space.
    • I also am working on getting better with organizing, both when it comes to my notes, and using an agenda to document everything that needs to be done. This will help me keep up with the course.
  • This Course Can Seem Difficult at Times: Keep Pushing Forward and Use Your Mistakes as a Guide.    
    • I am going to reassess my situation every week and try and identify weak points that I can work on at help sessions. After this module test, I feel I can reevaluate how much content I truly understand.
    • I’m sure that I will take higher level math courses in college, so the learning/study habits that I develop in this course will carry on into the future. and it’s important to learn from all the mistakes that I make.
    • To maintain a growth mindset, I will not get upset about the questions I miss but rather work to understand why I missed them and how I can improve in the future.
  • Develop Community: Ask Questions, Answer Questions
    • Use what I learn from the class as well as actively seek discussion from my peers to better understand the subject.
    • I would utilize Piazza no matter how stupid the question sounds to me, and I would attend office hours to ask the TAs questions I have.
  • Take Care of Yourself
    • The first thing that I want to do (and am currently working on now), is developing a better study schedule so that I can actually sleep. I have noticed how severely my mental and physical health have declined within the last two years because of how often I end up overworking myself due to not having an efficient schedule.
    • I like getting work done at a pace a little faster than the regular pace so I can leave room for myself to breathe.
    • I will not miss opportunities to spend time with my friends/go to games (if we can because of Covid) due to school work because I will not need to do things at the last minute. This will allow for more schedule flexibility and spontaneous activities.

When I run this survey and post responses I often find that there are many other wonderful themes and ideas! They are too many to post here, but a longer version of what I post is on a public website devoted to the teaching of MATH 1554 at Georgia Tech, here: https://gatech.instructure.com/courses/114544/pages/recommended-study-strategies

The High School Student Team I Coached for the SCUDEM VII Challenge Presented their Work at an Online Conference

Last weekend I attended a few talks at the SIMODE Expo online conference, one of which was a talk by the three students who I coached last fall for a mathematical modeling challenge. Congratulations again to Royce Arockiasamy, Henry Bui, and Adi Krish – their outstanding teamwork in the SCUDEM modeling challenge last fall led them to be offered with a chance to present their work at the SIMODE Expo last weekend.

Their talk was titled SCUDEM Outstanding Award Team: Humans Don’t Deserve the World — Modeling the Introduction of Humans to a Predator-Prey System. They summarized their work, how they prepared for the challenge, some of the feedback they received from judges, and some of what they learned and appreciated from having a chance to participate in the challenge.

The conference organizers posted a recording of their session on YouTube.

For a summary of what they presented, here is their conference abstract:

In the Fall of 2022, our team competed in SCUDEM VII hosted by SIMIODE, where we received the highest distinction – Outstanding Award. Our goal was to study humans’ effects on predator-prey populations when they populate an area. In this talk, we would like to go over how we prepared for and solved Problem C, present our equations and their derivations, explain our models, go over some of the feedback from the judges, and talk about how the SCUDEM challenge benefited us as students. See the Outstanding Team Video video posted on SIMIODE’s YouTube Channel.

The GT School of Math kindly helped pay for their registration.

Congratulations to Three GT Dual Enrolled High School Students who Won an Outstanding Award in an Annual International Mathematical Modeling Challenge

Congratulations to three GT students who worked together as a team last fall to participate in an annual mathematical modeling challenge: SIMIODE VII and obtained an Outstanding Award for their work. I was their coach, which meant that I helped them register and prepare for the challenge, but wasn’t allowed to help them during the official challenge period.

The Outstanding Award is the highest possible honor for this mathematical modeling challenge.

The three students were enrolled in a Dual Enrollment program and are taking undergraduate math courses at Georgia Tech.

The GT School of Math kindly supported their participation by paying for their registration.

What is SIMIODE?

SIMIODE is an international student team challenge in which teams of students select one of three mathematical modeling problems. Each team is tasked with producing a mathematical model and summarizing their model in a video that is no longer than ten minutes.

The three mathematical problems that students can select are in the general area of (A); Chemistry/Life Sciences; (B) Physics/Engineering; and (C) Social Sciences/Humanities.

This year the challenge problems were titled:

  • Problem A: Introducing Stress
  • Problem B: The Mechanics of Suction Feeding
  • Problem C: People Ruin Everything

Students prepare a ten-minute video and post it as “unlisted” in YouTube for judges to score and render constructive comments.

This year the challenge problems were released on 23 October 2022 and team videos were due and posted on 14 November 2022 while judging was completed by 11 December 2022.

Complete information on SCUDEM VII 2022 can be found here.

SIMIODE VII Statistics

366 students participated, forming 142 three student (or less) teams, with 56 coaches. In some cases coaches worked with multiple teams. Several teams did not have coaches. 109 teams submitted a final ten-minute video for judging.

296 volunteer faculty and industry personnel served as judges. The judges rendered 870 team scores and constructive comments. This gave each team, on average, 8 judge scores and comments for a great deal of feedback through which students will grow with respect to their modeling abilities.

Overall, 27 of the 109 submissions obtained an outstanding award.

Team Submission

The SIMIODE YouTube channel has a channel with (most of) the presentations that obtained an outstanding award. The presentation that my students put together is below.

Congratulations to Royce, Adi, and Henry for their excellent work!