Hiring for Three Curriculum Developer Positions in Fall 2024

I am currently hiring student assistants to help me with a few different curriculum development projects for the fall related to linear algebra and/or multivariable calculus.

All positions are remote. pay $15/hour, and runs from Aug 26 to Nov 22.

Postings will also be submitted to the student center job board to appear soon.

I am hoping to receive all applications by Aug 2 so I can hire my team the following week.

Details of the positions and how to apply are in the postings below.

The job postings below are in a set of PDF files.

Hiring Mathematics Curriculum Developers for Multivariable Calculus

I am currently hiring student assistants to help me with a curriculum development project over the summer. The position is remote. pays $15/hour, and runs from May 20 to July 26. The posting has been submitted to the student center job board to appear later this week. Currently waiting for it to be posted. I’ll put the posting below as well.

The School of Math is working on making its undergraduate course content more accessible, affordable and engaging by developing open curriculum.

In this part-time position you will help develop multivariable calculus activities over the Summer 2024 and Fall 2024 semesters for roughly 5 hours per week at $15 per hour. We are hiring four assistants, some will be developing content in the Canvas platform, others will be developing content in the webwork platform.

Familiarity with HTML, LaTeX, programming in any language, and the content of multivariable calculus (MATH 2550 or 2551) is preferred. Experience using AI tools such as ChatGPT is not required but is preferred, as we are finding that AI is streamlining the curriculum development process.

You must have an eagerness to learn, be able to write code in webwork and/or canvas to create learning activities, and meet in brief weekly online meetings. We will offer training and guidance on how to author content.

For more information about webwork please see https://webwork.maa.org/.

Work will be done remotely with a School of Math faculty member and a small team of student assistants.

To apply, please create a single PDF file that contains: 1) a cover letter, 2) your resume, and 3) an example of a multivariable calculus problem that MATH 2550 or 2551 students may encounter, and its solution. The example and its solution should be typed using LaTeX. Please email the file to Greg Mayer, greg.mayer@gatech.edu, as an attachment.

We recommend that your resume highlight any experience you may have with programming, multivariable calculus, AI, and working on a team.

Please submit your application on or before May 3 2024, as we are aiming to hire our team of assistants in the week of May 6.

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 Math Refresher Bootcamp for incoming MS Analytics Students

For the last few weeks I was fortunate to have been able to lead a Math Refresher workshop at the Georgia Institute of Technology with Dr. Rebecca George for incoming Graduate students in the MS Analytics Program. The workshop was meant to give the incoming students a quick overview of some of the pre-requisite math content they need for their program.

This was the second year I was able to give the workshop. Student feedback we collected last year from the workshop was incorporated this year to improve the sessions. One of the largest changes we made was to spread the learning out over several weeks instead of trying to cram everything in one week. Some of the topics we cover are difficult to learn, especially if you haven’t seen them in a while.

In our workshop sessions we covered linear algebra, calculus (differential to multivariable), probability and statistics in several sessions spread out over four weeks. The curriculum we developed and sourced is on a Canvas website that is open to the public:

https://gatech.instructure.com/courses/245270

Linear Algebra Lecture Notes

Many of my linear algebra students read an excellent open textbook, Interactive Linear Algebra. But they will notice that it does not cover some of the topics that are covered in the linear algebra course that I often teach, MATH 1554. For example, ILA does not cover:

  • Partitioned Matrices
  • The LU Decomposition
  • Leontif Input-Output Models
  • Computer Graphics

I just finished drafting some lecture notes for those topics. I think they only cover the content that my 1554 students need to know. Let me know if you catch any typos or have any suggestions for improving the notes. They can be downloaded here: Math_1554_Lecture_Notes