AMS Education Webinars

View already recorded content on our YouTube channel.

Education Webinars

OLSUME - Online Seminar in Undergraduate Education

Attend OLSUME - Online Seminar in Undergraduate Education events. OLSUME online seminars center on mathematics education at the undergraduate level. Talks cover curriculum, pedagogy, inclusiveness, professional development, blended and flipped classrooms, and other topics of interest. The AMS is pleased to be a sponsor of these events.

AMS Committee on Education Forum: Evolving Curriculum in High School and Early Undergraduate Mathematical Sciences Education

May 18, 2022, 3:00 - 5:00 pm EST

Access the recording here

The American Mathematical Society’s Committee on Education invites you to an online forum: “Evolving Curriculum in High School and Early Undergraduate Mathematical Sciences Education”. The discussion will be moderated by Henry Cohn from Microsoft Research, Yvonne Lai from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Kate Stevenson from CSU Northridge. The speakers are:

Gail Burrill - Michigan State University

Brian Conrad - Stanford University

Bill McCallum - Illustrative Mathematics

Ricardo Moena - University of Cincinnati

Ji Son - California State University Los Angeles 

Communities around the country are considering potential changes to mathematical sciences curriculum in 9-14 education. Many members of the mathematics community are called to weigh in on potential changes such as tracks and pathways, a greater emphasis on data and modeling, and infusion of more inclusive content. Without a clear picture of what is being proposed, many feel uncomfortable weighing in on policy changes and contributing to intense debates. This forum will help educate and prepare participants when engaging with relevant policies in their communities.

Members of the mathematical sciences community are encouraged to attend this forum and identify opportunities for consensus on improving curriculum. The forum aims to facilitate a constructive and thoughtful conversation, identify potential common ground, discuss pros and cons of high school curriculum, and compare potential high school curriculum changes to similar efforts at undergraduate institutions.

How Do I Build My Ed Tech Toolbox?

January 15, 2021, 12:00 - 1:00 pm EST

How can you use educational technology tools to create community and increase instructor and social presence? How should you go about designing activities and selecting tools that lead to increased engagement and interaction? During this hands-on, interactive workshop, participants to identified how and why they might use a specific tool; the support needed; assessing technological needs and potential barriers to success. Tools demonstrated included whiteboards, polling, discussion and annotation.

Educational technology tools can help to create community and increase teaching, social and cognitive presence. With so many choices it is easy to follow the next ‘shiny’ object being promoted, overloading yourself and your students. How should you go about intentionally designing activities, and selecting tools that lead to increased engagement and interaction? This workshop covered the process for tool selection, tips for use, and a demonstration of tools for collaboration, discussion, whiteboards, polls, and more.

Through this workshop participants:
  • Discussed criteria for selecting the appropriate tool for the pedagogical need
  • Created activities that lead to increased engagement and interaction
  • Identified critical items to consider in tool selection (FERPA, student privacy, accessibility, geographic access and IT support)

Presenter:  Patrice Torcivia Prusko, MBA, PhD, Associate Director, Learning Design, Technology and Media, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Patrice Torcivia PruskoDr. Prusko oversees the design, development and project management of online and technology enhanced courses. Her team thoughtfully incorporates Universal Design for Learning, learning theory, and instructional design practices to create courses that are inclusive and designed for a diverse student population. Her team uses innovative learning strategies in support of enhancing student learning experiences and access to HGSE courses. Previously she worked as an Instructional Designer at Cornell University in the Center for Teaching Innovation, and as a faculty member at State University of New York, Empire State College.

She has 15+ years progressive and multi-faceted experience with design and curriculum development, specializing in: developing innovative pedagogical approaches using multiple modalities including open educational resources and virtual meeting tools. She holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering (B.S.), and Business Management (MBA) from Union College, and Curriculum and Instruction (Ph.D.) from University at Albany. Dr. Prusko is passionate about increasing global access to STEM education for all women, and believes by increasing access to education for women we can enable more communities across the globe to thrive and flourish.

Moving Mathematics Online - Creating high quality online STEM content from existing sources

New Dates: January 19-20, 2021 · 12:00 - 3:00 pm EST.

This workshop discussed how to move your mathematical documents to the web, including how to convert your existing material for the web and how to render it in a browser. It also covered: techniques for authoring new content for the web, creating online presentations, how to convert documents containing formulas, how these formulas can be rendered, and how you can customize your documents to improve your student’s learning experience and in particular to make them accessible to help learners with special needs.  

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Workshop for Math Administrators: Administration in the Age of Covid: How Leadership Methods have Adapted to the New Learning Environment

Thursday, January 7, 2021 9:00am-11:00am MST

Facilitators

Faye Chou, UCSD | Jenna Sousa, ICERM | Nicole Maldonado, IAS | Kathleen Applegate, PU

This will be a 2-hour, interactive online workshop for mathematics department administrators, regardless of title, who oversee and/or manage some or all of the functions listed below (the target audience is departmental staff, not faculty):

  • Academic Programs and Activities
  • Admissions
  • Budgets and Grants
  • Diversity Efforts
  • Faculty/Scholar Recruitment, Hiring, and On-Boarding
  • Faculty/Scholar and Student Support
  • Marketing and Publicity
  • Staff Supervision
  • Title IX Referrals and Support
  • Visitor Resources

Attend this workshop to collaborate with other managers who have similar responsibilities. Share best practices and build connections with other math administrative leadership.

Moving Mathematics Forward: Twenty Years Since the Historic Graduation of Drs. Inniss, Scott, and Weems

Co-hosted by the AMS and the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM) NAM logo

Dec 21, 2020, 4:00-4:45PM EST

A significant milestone for the mathematical community took place on December 21, 2000, when Tasha R. Inniss, Sherry E. Scott, and Kimberly S. Weems received their PhDs from the University of Maryland College Park. Join us twenty years later for a celebratory conversation with Dr. Inniss, Dr. Scott, and Dr. Weems as they discuss their historic graduation with their mentor and former chair of the University of Maryland Mathematics Department, Dr. Raymond Johnson. 

Inniss, Scott, and Weems were the first cohort of three Black female mathematicians to earn PhDs from the University of Maryland and marked the continuation of a legacy of Black women in the field whose STEM achievements helped move mathematics toward more equitable graduate studies in mathematics. We look forward to celebrating their accomplishments and talking with them about their perspectives on equity in mathematics and challenges that are still faced by mathematicians of color in higher education.

View the recording.

Inniss, Weems, Scott, and JohnsonDr. Tasha R. Inniss is the Associate Provost for Research at Spelman College, a liberal arts, Historically Black College for women of African descent. In this role, she leads the Office of Research, Innovation, and Collaboration (ORIC). Dr. Inniss provides leadership and strategic direction for all activities related to individual or interdisciplinary research, creative pursuits, collaborative partnerships, and programmatic initiatives for undergraduate research. Prior to returning to Spelman, she was the inaugural Director of Education and Industry Outreach at INFORMS, the world’s largest professional society for professionals in the fields of operations research, management science, and analytics. Dr. Inniss also did a rotation at the National Science Foundation in the Directorate of Education and Human Resources where she served as the Acting Deputy Division Director of the Division of Human Resource Development and before that, as the co-lead of the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Program. Originally from New Orleans, Dr. Inniss graduated summa cum laude from Xavier University of Louisiana with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics. She earned a Master of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park. As an applied mathematician, her research interests are in the areas of operations research, applied statistics, and data science. Dr. Inniss is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Board on Higher Education and Workforce. She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, a national organization committed to service and social justice.

Dr. Sherry E. Scott received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from The Ohio State University. She has been a math professor at several institutions. Most recently, she was selected as a participant with the African Diaspora Joint Mathematics (ADJOINT) 2020 Workshop, and as a result, she has been working with the Mathematics of the Transmission Dynamics and Control of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus research group led by Dr. Abba Gumel. On December 9, 2020, she gave a talk on their recent work and the submission of a paper is pending. Her background is in harmonic analysis and wavelet theory, but applications have led her to both a probaBlack women grads at UMDbilistic and a dynamical systems point of view. Her past work involved two main application areas (1) general signal processes and (2) fluid flows. Recent interest/work involves the detection and measurement of the tortuosity – i.e. the bending and winding - of vessels as beneficial information for the diagnosis of many diseases - e.g. cancer. It is this work that might eventually intersect with or extend to the aforementioned COVID19 research. She is divorced with two teenage sons, ages 13 and 16.

Dr. Kimberly S. Weems is Associate Professor of Mathematics at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). She earned her BS in mathematics from Spelman College and her MA and PhD in applied mathematics with a statistics emphasis from the University of Maryland, College Park. She completed postdoctoral studies in the Statistics Department at North Carolina State University (NCSU), where she later joined the faculty and served for two years as Co-Director of Statistics Graduate Programs. Since moving to NCCU, Weems has been instrumental in enhancing the graduate statistics curriculum and has received an Excellence in Teaching Award. Her research interests include statistical models for count data. In addition, she co-directs the NCCU-NCSU Bridge-to-PhD program, an interdisciplinary, NSF-funded research traineeship that equips students with advanced mathematical and statistical methods for analyzing atomic-scale data.

Dr. Raymond L. Johnson is a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland. His BA is from the University of Texas at Austin and his PhD is from Rice University, where his thesis advisor was Dr. Jim Douglas. His research is in harmonic analysis and weighted inequalities. He began his career at Maryland in 1968, spent two years on leave at Howard University in the late 1970s, became a full professor at Maryland in 1980, and was chairman of the department from 1991-1996. While serving as Chair, he worked to help a group of talented African American students get doctorates from the department, for which he received the AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award in 2007, and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring in 2012. 

Advocating for Students of Color: There's More You Can Do

Organizers:

  • Pamela E. Harris, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Williams College
  • Aris Winger, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Georgia Gwinnett College
  • Michael Young, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Iowa State University

Advocating for Students of Color: There's More You Can Do is a virtual professional development experience for higher education faculty and administrators who are actively engaged in promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion within the mathematical sciences.

This four-part webinar is anchored in the belief that implementing small changes will compound to create drastic and large-scale transformation. By focusing on how to better advocate for students in your classroom, department(s), institution, and the mathematics community, the organizing team will guide participants to think critically about their practice and discuss concrete changes participants can implement. The goal is to share and commit to implementing changes in a way that is pragmatic, meaningful, and that cultivates cultures in which all students are seen, valued, and validated.

Part 1: Advocating for Students of Color in Your Classroom, September 25, 2020
Part 2: Advocating for Students of Color in Your Department, October 16, 2020
Part 3: Advocating for Students of Color in Your Institution, November 13, 2020
Part 4: Advocating for Students of Color in the Mathematics Community, December 11, 2020
  • Pamela E. HarrisDr. Pamela E. Harris is a Mexican-American associate professor of Mathematics at Williams College. Her research is in algebraic combinatorics and she is the author of over 40 peer-reviewed research articles in internationally recognized journals. An award winning mathematical educator, Dr. Harris received the MAA Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member, the Council on Undergraduate Research Mathematics and Computer Sciences Division Early Career Faculty Mentor Award.
  • Aris WingerDr. Aris Winger is an assistant professor of Mathematics at Georgia Gwinnett College. His recent areas of interest include finding Equity in the mathematics classroom and culturally relevant pedagogy. He is a graduate of Howard University (B.S. in math) and Carnegie Mellon University (M.S. and Ph.D in mathematical sciences).
  • Michael YoungDr. Michael Young is an associate professor of Mathematics at Iowa State University. His primary research area is Discrete Mathematics, particularly graph theory and combinatorics. Recently, he has had a focus on equity in the mathematics classroom. Most of this work has been through teacher professional development on creating inclusive mathematics learning spaces. He is responsible for establishing the Mathematicians of Color Alliance (MOCA). MOCA consists of the underrepresented graduate and undergraduate mathematics students and was created with the goals of recruiting, retention, and vertical mentoring. He is the co-creator of a new post-baccalaureate program at ISU designed to support underrepresented students as they prepare to enter PhD programs. He has served as an academic and personal mentor for many students from underrepresented groups both at ISU and nationally as they pursue their PhDs.
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These webinars were not recorded. 


Documenting the History of Black Mathematicians

Organizers: Edray Goins and Amy Oden. October 9, 2020 

In 1997, Scott Williams created the website Mathematicians of the African Diaspora. The MAD Pages a compilation of more than 1,000 pages featuring over 700 biographies, documents the lives of African American mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists. It has seen more than 20 million visitors since its creation. After Williams retired in 2008, a team of Black mathematicians formed to continue his legacy by updating the site. The new MAD Pages was unveiled on October 9, 2020. Documenting the History of Black Mathematicians introduced the features of this new site, and discussed the multifaceted efforts of individuals around the world to document the history of the Black Diaspora in the mathematical sciences.

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Dr. Nira Chamberlain is listed by the Science Council as “one of the UK’s top 100 scientists”. In 2020, he became President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA). He has more than 25 years of experience of writing mathematical models/simulation algorithms that solve complex industrial problems. One of Chamberlain’s notable talks is entitled The Black Heroes of Mathematics

Dr. Edray Herber Goins is Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College. Goins is the lead for the MAD Pages Update project. He has published over 20 journal articles in areas such as applied mathematics, graph theory, number theory, and representation theory; and on topics such as Diophantine equations, elliptic curves, and African Americans in mathematics. From 2015-2020, he served as president of the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM).

Dr. Talitha Washington is the inaugural Director of the Atlanta University Center Data Science Initiative, where she is a Professor of Mathematics. She is also affiliate faculty at Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Spelman College. Washington has written extensively about the first African American to receive a doctorate in mathematics, Elbert Frank Cox.

Mr. John Weaver is the founder and CEO of Varsity Software and web developer for the updated MAD Pages. Weaver is a graduate of Princeton University and the Wharton School, Weaver began the company in 2010. He is no stranger to the cyber-presence of African Americans in mathematics as he maintains the website for the Conference for African Americans in the Mathematical Sciences (CAARMS).

Dr. Scott Williams is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at SUNY Buffalo and the creator of the original MAD Pages in 1997. Williams is one of two founders of Black and Third World Mathematicians, the first mathematics society for African and African American mathematicians, which in 1971 became the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM). These days, Williams spends most of his time creating and reciting poetry. Dr. Williams has also published nearly 50 papers in General Topology, Set Theory and Dynamics. He has received the highest teaching award of The State University of New York. He has served on editorial boards of the Notices of the American Mathematics Society and The National Association of Mathematicians.


Preparing to Teach Online

In the Spring 2020 semester, most of us were thrust into online teaching without much time to adapt our courses and pedagogy. As we begin our intentional planning of online instruction for the fall semester, we are bringing you guidance from experts in online course design and delivery.

Teaching Math Online: Theory Into Practice, July 30, 2020 

Anyone teaching mathematics is in a pivotal and privileged position, training the next generation of mathematicians, natural and social scientists, humanists, and artists. In the mathematics community, we sometimes talk about pedagogical practices, but rarely talk about the theories underlying those practices. In this talk, I present some of the fundamentals of the science of teaching and learning, applying them to mathematics. I then demonstrate how I have translated these principles into a pedagogical design for my online Discrete Mathematics courses for this coming fall semester, including lecture components, assessments, student interaction, and more.

Chad M. Topaz, Williams College, Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics

Access the recordingview the slides, or see a syllabus.

Teaching Math Online: Examples from Differential Equations and Multivariable Calculus, July 23, 2020

I will share my approach to teaching these courses online, provide a tour of my online course structure, and demonstrate and discuss the tools I use to help my students master this challenging material online. Major course components I use include lecture videos recorded in my face-to-face classes, WeBWorK problem sets, freely available OER textbooks, graded written assignments, visualization tools, graded online class discussions, and student video presentations of example problems. Each of these course components played an important role in the success of my students, and I explain their benefits from my perspective and from what students have said about using them.

You can read more about the tools I use for Teaching Math Online

Paul Seeburger, Professor of Mathematics, Monroe Community College

Access the recordingview the slides, or see a sample syllabus.

Inspired Online Math Courses: Designing for Engaged Students, July 20, 2020

During this webinar, you will learn practical strategies you can immediately use when creating your online courses. Tonka Jokelova, Director of the Center for Learning Design, Innovation, and Online Instruction at SUNY Canton will present solutions to engaging course design that aims to inspire involved and interactive online learning experiences for your students. The topics of the webinar include student barriers to online learning, starting assumptions of social and interactive course design, how course modality decisions are made; and she might even compare teaching to grilling … an egg.

Presenter: Tonka Jokelova, Ph.D., Director, Center for Learning Design, Innovation, and Online Instruction, SUNY Canton

Access the recording or view the slides.

Accessibility Best Practices for Moving Mathematics Online, July 13, 2020

For many years there has been a push for moving teaching and research content online in a form that goes beyond just linking print versions of documents. The COVID pandemic has only accelerated this trend, forcing all faculty to focus on how to deliver courses online. However, hastily moving material online bears the risk that important accessibility considerations are neglected, threatening fair and inclusive education for all. This is especially true for mathematics and other STEM fields where complex structures such as equations and diagrams play an integral role. In this webinar we will advocate that in addition to moving content online quickly, instructors can use best practices developed for authors to ensure accessibility of math content from the start, thus avoiding additional and duplicate work.

Our presentation gives an overview of different requirements on presentation and content for students and readers with special needs and how assistive technology support can be provided. We particularly concentrate on what this means for math content and how it is made accessible on the web. We argue that the web is the ideal platform for hosting and curating modern content regardless of their original sources like LaTeX, Word, or plain text. And we demonstrate how accessibility can be practically a free byproduct of conversion from traditionally authored content. In conclusion we discuss ways of authoring, preparing, and teaching accessible web documents containing mathematics, highlighting some of the best practices.

Presented by Volker Sorge, University of Birmingham, UK & MathJax Consortium

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Baking Quality into Your Online Course: A Recipe for Practical Course Design, July 6, 2020

There are a handful of things we should all keep in mind when developing online materials, redesigning online courses, or making the switch to remote instruction – these range from understanding our audience, to choosing which “recipe” to use, and being aware of what ingredients we should put into our online course materials. In this presentation you will receive a general overview of the resources and strategies you can employ to create engaging and effective course materials. Special emphasis will be made on how making your goals simple and learner-focused can help you design a course that is easy to use, digestible, and suits your teaching style.

Jamie Heron, SUNY Online Program Manager, SUNY Center for Professional Development

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TPSEMath logo

Formative Assessment in Mathematics in Remote Settings, July 1, 2020

Formative assessment is a critical component of effective teaching and learning. It is the essential process of monitoring student learning to provide ongoing feedback to both instructors and students. For instructors, formative assessment provides feedback about learners' progress toward learning goals that can be used to support decisions about future instruction. Students receive feedback about the strengths and weaknesses in their skills and understanding, which enables them to focus their efforts accordingly.

In this webinar, panelists will provide examples of formative assessment and discuss strategies and ideas for implementing meaningful formative assessment in the context of remote learning and online instruction.

  • Panelists: Abbe Herzig, American Mathematical Society; Rena Levitt, Minerva Schools at KGI; Kate Stevenson, CSU Northridge; Francis Su, Harvey Mudd College; Michelle Younker, Owens Community College

Access the recording or view the slides.