Every year, the Notre Dame Math Department holds a teaching seminar for the benefit of its graduate students. All students and faculty members are welcome to attend, but attendence is strongly encouraged for those students who have not previously taught, especially second-year students. Although attendence at this seminar is in not required for graduation, teaching assignments are contingent upon training, so it is highly recommended that second-year students attend the seminar and participate by giving a mock lecture at some point during the semester. A more detailed schedule is provided below. Please communicate any conflicts, concerns, or ideas to Alex Himonas, Tang Mouktonglong, Dan Bates, or Steven Broad.

This year, interested students may sign up for Math 83990: Mathematics Teaching Seminar, a one-credit front for this seminar. The point of making this seminar into a course is two-fold: (a) you can get some credit for your time and effort, and (b) this way, it will show up on your transcript, which may prove beneficial when applying for jobs. The seminar will generally be meeting on Tuesdays at 4:50 for about an hour. If this time is a problem for you, please let Alex Himonas know so that other arrangements may be made.

The various types of seminar meetings

Some days, there will be panels of grad students and/or faculty members addressing specific topics. Each panelist will be given about five minutes to speak (to be enforced by the moderator), thereby leaving plenty of time for discussion. Participants should feel free to ask questions during the discussion periods. It is recommended that the panelists communicate in advance so as to split up the material to be covered.

Other days, second-year grad students (and other students beyond the second year who have not yet done so) will give 20-minute lectures on material that one may find in a first year undergraduate course (e.g., calculus or finite math). On those days, the speaker(s) should treat the audience of their peers as an actual class of undergrads, and the audience members should behave as such. After each presentation, the members of the audience should provide feedback to the presenter, both orally during a 10-minute discussion period and in written form, on forms provided by the moderator(s). The forms will be given directly to the speaker following the seminar meeting.

Finally, there will be a couple special presentations by very talented educators from the faculty. These presentations will take the form of lectures addressing pedagogical topics chosen by the speaker. These seminar meetings may be of interest to graduate students beyond the second year and faculty members, not only the regular partcipants.

Feedback

This year, most of the proceedings of the seminar will be posted online. To view these, just click on the links in the schedule below. The proceedings consist of summaries of the discussions and/or lectures from each day (except for the presentations of the second year grad students) and remarks from the seminar participants. It is strongly recommended that seminar participants write to Dan Bates with any remarks about the material covered in any of the seminar meetings. These remarks will then be posted (anonymously, if you like) on the appropriate page. Students are also encouraged to contribute any other remarks about teaching that they may have, to be displayed under "General comments" below.