### Archives For Angie Hodge

The past two years, Angie Hodge, Stan Yoshinobu, and I have organized an Inquiry-Based Learning Best Practices special session at MathFest. We’ve had a fantastic turn out in terms of speakers and attendees both years. This year we thought we would try something new and decided to organize a poster session instead. Here’s the abstract for the session:

New and experienced instructors implementing inquiry-based learning methods are invited to share their experiences, resources, and insights in this poster session. The posters in this session will focus on IBL best practices. We seek both novel ideas and effective approaches to IBL. Claims made should be supported by data (student responses, sample work, test scores, survey results, etc.). This session will be of interest to instructors new to IBL, as well as experienced practitioners looking for new ideas. Presenters should have their materials prepared in advance and will be provided with a self-standing, trifold tabletop poster approximately 48 in wide by 36 in high.

One of our goals of the poster session is to increase interaction between presenters and attendees. We hope that someone can wander around and gather a lot of information about implementing IBL in a short period of time. I’m not usually a fan of poster sessions, but I’m looking forward to this one. The poster session takes place on Thursday, August 7 at 3:30-5:00PM in the Hilton Portland, Plaza Level, Plaza Foyer. If you are attending MathFest, please stop by the poster session. Also, if you think you have something interesting to share, we encourage you to submit an abstract. The deadline for submission is Friday, June 13, 2014.

Questions regarding this session should be sent to the organizers:

Angie Hodge, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Dana Ernst, Northern Arizona University
Stan Yoshinobu, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

If you want to learn more about IBL, check my “What the Heck is IBL?” post over on the Math Ed Matters blog.

The Joint Mathematics Meetings took place last week in Baltimore, MD. The JMM is a joint venture between the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. Held each January, the JMM is the largest annual mathematics meeting in the world. Attendance in 2013 was an incredible 6600. I don’t know what the numbers were this year, but my impression was that attendance was down from last year.

As usual, the JMM was a whirlwind of talks, meetings, and socializing with my math family. My original plan was to keep my commitments to a minimum as I’ve been feeling stretched a bit thin lately. After turning down a few invitations to give talks, I agreed to speak as part of panel during a Project NExT session. The title of the panel was “Tried & True Practices for IBL & Active Learning”. Here, IBL is referring to inquiry-based learning. Last year I gave several talks and co-organized workshops about IBL, so I knew preparing for the panel wouldn’t be a huge burden.

The other speakers on the panel were Angie Hodge (University of Nebraska, Omaha) and Anna Davis (Ohio Dominican University). Each of us were given 15 minutes to discuss our approach to IBL and active learning and then we had about 20 minutes for questions. For my portion, I summarized my implementation of IBL in my proof-based courses followed by an overview of my IBL-lite version of calculus. Angie discussed in detail the way in which UNO is successfully adopting IBL in some of their calculus sections. Anna spent some time telling us about an exciting project called the One-Room Schoolhouse, which attempts to solve the following problem: Small colleges and universities often struggle to offer a variety of upper-level courses due to low enrollment. According to the ORS webpage, the ORS setting allows schools to offer low-enrollment courses every semester at no additional cost to the institution. ORS is made possible by flipping the classroom.

If you are interested in my slides, you can find them below.

I’m really glad that I took the time to speak on the panel. The audience asked some great questions and I had several fantastic follow-up conversations with people the rest of the week.

As a side note, one thing I was reminded of is that speaking early during the conference (which is when the panel occurred) is much better than speaking later. The past couple JMMs, I spoke on the last day or two, and in this case, my talk is always taking up bandwidth in the days leading up to it. It’s nice to just get it out of the way and then be able to concentrate on enjoying the conference.

One highlight of the conference was having a pair of my current undergraduate research students (Michael Hastings and Sarah Salmon) present a poster during the Undergraduate Student Poster Session. Michael and Sarah have been working on an original research project involving diagrammatic representations of Temperley-Lieb algebras. I’ve been extremely impressed with the progress that they have made and it was nice to be able to see them show off their current results. The title of their poster was “A factorization of Temperley–Lieb diagrams” (although this was printed incorrectly in the program). Here is their abstract:

The Temperley-Lieb Algebra, invented by Temperley and Lieb in 1971, is a finite dimensional associative algebra that arose in the context of statistical mechanics. Later in 1971, R. Penrose showed that this algebra can be realized in terms of certain diagrams. Then in 1987, V. Jones showed that the Temperley–Lieb Algebra occurs naturally as a quotient of the Hecke algebra arising from a Coxeter group of type $A$ (whose underlying group is the symmetric group). This realization of the Temperley-Lieb Algebra as a Hecke algebra quotient was generalized to the case of an arbitrary Coxeter group. In the cases when diagrammatic representations are known to exist, it turns out that every diagram can be written as a product of “simple diagrams.” These factorizations correspond precisely to factorizations in the underlying group. Given a diagrammatic representation and a reduced factorization of a group element, it is easy to construct the corresponding diagram. However, given a diagram, it is generally difficult to reconstruct the factorization of the corresponding group element. In cases that include Temperley–Lieb algebras of types $A$ and $B$, we have devised an efficient algorithm for obtaining a reduced factorization for a given diagram.

Perhaps I’m biased, but I think their poster looks pretty darn good, too.

All in all, I would say that I had a successful JMM. I had a lot more meetings than I’ve had in the past, so I missed out on several talks I really would have liked to attend. There’s always next year.

On page 36 of the December 2013/January 2014 issue of the MAA FOCUS there is a short article about Math Ed Matters, which is a monthly blog/column sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America and coauthored by Angie Hodge and myself. The article, written by Katharine Merow, highlights a few of our recent posts and describes some potential future posts (I should write these down, so we remember to write the advertised posts!). Katharine wanted to include a picture of Angie and me for the article, and as you can see in the picture to the left, she chose one of us that was taken after we had finished a trail run. I’m also wearing some ridiculous looking socks! The socks are actually compression socks designed for running, but they look silly nonetheless. I’ve been getting some flak for wearing such tall socks, but I think it’s funny.

I knew this article was going to appear, but I wasn’t sure when. It was brought to my attention by Robert Jacobson via one of his Google+ posts. Robert is responsible for the photo.

A couple of days ago, Peter Krautzberger sent me an email asking if I was interested in becoming an editor for Mathblogging.org. According to Mathblogging.org’s about page:

From research to recreational, from teaching to technology, from visual to virtual, hundreds of blogs and sites regularly write about mathematics in all its facets. For the longest time, there was no good way for readers to find the authors they enjoy and for authors to be found. We want to change that. We have collected over 700 blogs and other news sources in one place, and invite you to submit even more! Our goal is to be the best place to discover mathematical writing on the web.

Mathblogging.org is run by Samuel Coskey, Frederik von Heymann, and Peter. Felix Breuer also had a hand in the site’s creation. The current editors are Peter Honner, Fawn Nguyen, and Shecky Riemann.

Lately, I’ve been feeling stretched a bit thin, so I told Peter that I needed to think about it before deciding. I’ve been trying to be careful about the new projects I take on so that I don’t get in over my head. But…then I remembered the talk that Joe Gallian gave at the conclusion of my first Project NExT workshop in 2008. The theme of Joe’s talk (which he gives every year for Project NExT) is “just say yes.” His thesis is that by saying “yes” we open doors to new opportunities and by saying “no” we close ourselves off to what might have been. Okay, I’m sure Joe would admit that we shouldn’t say “yes” to everything, but I believe he would say that most of us say “no” too often.

I took Joe’s talk pretty seriously my first few years post PhD and I think it has worked out pretty darn well for me. There have been numerous times I thought that I should say “no” but followed Joe’s advice instead. Most of the time it has worked out for the best. A good example is when Ivars Peterson asked Angie Hodge and I to start blogging for the MAA. Actually, let me back up a notch. First, Nathan Carter suggested that I apply for the editor position at Math Horizons. I implemented Joe’s philosophy and talked Angie into applying with me as co-editors. Alas, we were not chosen and instead the committee selected the most awesome Dave Richeson. However, as a result of our application, Ivars approached Angie and I about starting up Math Ed Matters. Around this time, I was beginning a new position at Northern Arizona University and I was concerned that my tenure committee wouldn’t value this sort of work. I dragged my feet for a couple months, but eventually Joe’s voice in my head won out. Angie and I have only been blogging for a few months, but we certainly made the right decision. Lots of new opportunities have presented themselves as a result of the blog. I could go on and on about similar choices.

Okay, by now you’ve already guessed that I agreed to Peter’s offer. So, what does being an editor entail? I already keep up with quite a few math-related blogs, but now I just need to “star” the ones on mathblogging.org that I find the most interesting/enjoyable/useful/compelling and leave a brief comment about them. Doesn’t sound too bad. Of course, to be fair I should start reading a few more of the blogs that pass through.

Yesterday was my first day on the job and I already selected two recent blog posts for Editors’ Picks:

I’m looking forward to reading more excellent blog posts and seeing if Joe is right again.

Angie Hodge and I are excited to announce that Math Ed Matters went live earlier today. Math Ed Matters is a (roughly) monthly column sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America and authored by me and Angie. The column will explore topics and current events related to undergraduate mathematics education. Posts will aim to inspire, provoke deep thought, and provide ideas for the mathematics—and mathematics education—classroom. Our interest in and engagement with inquiry-based learning (IBL) will color the column’s content.

Our first post is isn’t terribly exciting; it’s just an introduction to who we are. Here’s a sample of what we hope to discuss in future posts:

• How did Angie and I meet and how did we end up collaborating on this blog?
• History and impact of Project NExT
• Inquiry-Based Learning: What, Why, and How?
• How and why did Angie and Dana start implementing an IBL approach?
• What’s the Buzz? (Calculus Bee)
• A recap of the 16th Annual Legacy of R.L. Moore Conference (June 13-15, 2013 in Austin, TX)
• A recap of MathFest 2013 (July 31-August 3, 2013 in Hartford, CT)
• Pivotal Moments: How did Dana and Angie get to where they are now?
• Utilizing open-source technologies and text-books

We’d love for you to follow along and join in the conversation. What other topics would you like for us to discuss?

Thanks to the MAA for giving us the opportunity to share our musings with you!