(For updated locations, see the timetable; All locations are subject to change)
MAA Ancillary Workshops
Three ancillary workshops have been scheduled for Tuesday, January 3, the day before the Joint Meetings actually begins, cosponsored by the MAA and the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE). There is no workshop registration fee and advance registration is required through www.causeweb.org/workshop/. You will receive notification of acceptance. Please note that walk-ins cannot be accommodated.
Facilitating Student Projects in Elementary Statistics, Tuesday, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., presented by Brad Bailey, Sherry L. Hix, and Dianna Spence, North Georgia College & State University. Research suggests that having students complete statistics projects which entail identifying a research question, collecting and analyzing the necessary data and interpreting the results leads to deeper student understanding of statistics and fuller appreciation for the usefulness of statistics. Successful such student projects encompass a number of key tasks that students must carry out with guidance from their instructor. These tasks include defining appropriate variables, constructs, and research questions; locating authentic data; designing and implementing a sampling strategy; collecting the data; organizing and analyzing the data; and interpreting and presenting the results. Participants will have the opportunity to become more effective project facilitators by carrying out these key tasks in accelerated projects, using both t-tests and linear regression as contexts for the projects. In addition to providing participant hands-on experience with each of the project tasks, we will review methods for guiding students through these tasks. Finally, we will focus on details of facilitating the overall project, including project phases and organization, assessment methods, and best practices for implementation.
Participants should bring a laptop computer to the workshop, if possible. Participants will be on their own for lunch, suggestions for nearby options will be provided.
Teaching Modeling-Based Calculus, Tuesday, 9:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m., presented by Daniel Kaplan and Dan Flath, Macalester College, Randall Pruim, Calvin College, and Eric Marland, Appalachian State University. The MAA/CRAFTY reports recommended a strong emphasis on modeling in early university-level math courses, as well as much greater attention to statistics and computing. This workshop will show some techniques for teaching an introductory calculus course that is genuinely based on the process of modeling. By this, we mean using the concepts of calculus to help develop and interpret models of diverse phenomena in biology, economics, physics, etc. There will be a strong link made between calculus and statistical models. And, rather than using technology to carry out traditional symbolic calculus operations, we'll show how technology can be used to aid the modeling process. The workshop will include a general introduction to teaching modeling, several examples of classroom activities and homework projects that help develop modeling concepts and skills, and a broad introduction to the use of computing to support modeling. Participants should bring their laptops with the software they would like to use in their teaching. Recognizing that the choice of software is often determined by external factors including the preferences of colleagues and budgets, we will be ecumenical about software. In addition to providing a basic introduction to two free mathematical software systems--R and Sage--we'll try to support participants who would rather work with Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab. The workshop is an outreach activity of Project MOSAIC (NSF DUE-0920350) as well as CAUSE.
Participants should bring a laptop computer to the workshop, if possible. Lunch will be provided.
Identifying and Addressing Difficult Concepts for Students in the Introductory Statistics Course, Tuesday, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., presented by Marjorie Bond, Monmouth College . We know that students have difficulty with certain topics in statistics such as sampling distributions, and it can be difficult to determine the best approach to take to help our students work through these topics. In this workshop we take a selection of difficult concepts, zoom in on exactly what the problems are from the student's point of view, and examine where, when, and how to address them in our course. Along the way we will examine these difficult statistical concepts in detail, and look for common threads that may even lead us back to issues from Chapter 1. The workshop is particularly geared toward instructors at two-year colleges.
Participants should bring a laptop computer to the workshop, if possible. Participants will be on their own for lunch, suggestions for nearby options will be provided.