Questions tagged [student-motivation]
For questions concerning the motivation of students and helping them to motivate for their study in general.
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Loaning students calculators during exams
Context: I am an associate professor at a small liberal arts institution in the US.
I find in my introductory business math course that students sometimes fail to buy a calculator for the course, ...
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How to justify teaching students to rationalize denominators?
I'm teaching an "intermediate algebra" college course ($\approx$ junior high school or beginning high school algebra) and we have a bunch of problems on rationalizing denominators. How do I motivate ...
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Parkour and Mathematical Practice?
Learning mathematics and learning parkour seem to have a lot in common. Both can be done on varying levels, but to progress in either one needs to overlearn and build basic skills so that these skills ...
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How is education in mathematics relevant to law?
Many students who take courses in mathematics go on to pursue "non-mathematical" careers. I'm wondering, in particular, about those who go on to study Law, and how mathematics is (or can be made) ...
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When is it appropriate to warn about the difficulty of a subject?
I've been a TA across every class in the calculus sequence, under the assignment of professors with different teaching styles and curricula. It's often clear to me ahead of time when a certain subject ...
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Explaining Sigma-Notation
I attempted to introduce the summation notation $\Sigma$ to my students. The notation was unfamiliar to the students beforehand. I worked through many examples with them, but for most of them, working ...
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How do I show students the Beauty of Mathematics?
I teach many high school students, and all of them complain about being unable to fully understand mathematical concepts. I try to show them the joy of learning and deepen their understanding through ...
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How to stay interested in less-tangible math
I've graduated high school and I am joining college soon. The problem with me is that I'm not finding less tangible math interesting at all.
Some people find abstract math to be very beautiful, and I'...
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What is gratifying in being a mathematics teacher?
I think the title says it all, but in case it does not:
Is being a math teacher gratifying?
If yes, what is gratifying in being a math teacher? (If not, why...)
Does the feeling lasts, or perhaps ...
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Elementary examples for non-reversible logical steps
While listening to recordings of Calculus $I$ lectures, I noticed that some students get confused between showing that "some object $x$ is a solution", and showing that "every (...
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List of realistic extremum problems
I am a student who would like to become a teacher, so I am currently following courses in education. One of the things I learned, is that students like authentic, realistic problems. However, much of ...
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Does induction really avoid proving an infinite number of claims?
I am teaching calculus $1$ this semester, and I saw the following motivation for using induction by another teacher:
Since we can't go over "manually proving" all claims $1,2,\ldots$ and ...
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How to get past the "mystique" of Maths
This question is primarily discussing maths education for adult learners, on courses teaching engineering mathematics at an undergraduate level. These students generally never set out specifically to ...
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Research on how mathematics skills transfer to other areas
Briefly: I am looking for research on the extent to which learning mathematics (let's say "college algebra" if we want to be specific) impacts problem solving skills, abstract reasoning, etc.
Less ...
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Examples of Innumeracy
I read Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos and would like to share more up-to-date and relevant examples of innumeracy to motivate my grade 8, 9 & 10 students. Are there any websites, blogs, books, ...
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What are some research-level opportunities in mathematics that do not focus on proofs?
The research level of mathematics (what is done by professors and upper-level graduate students) tends to be heavily portrayed as focused on writing proofs to the exclusion of most anything else math-...
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Teaching a student who refuses to learn
How to deal with a student who refuses to learn?
I've met a few of those over the years as a a private-class math teacher. They don't want to learn anything about the subject. Some of them are just ...
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What are examples of math-themed sci-fi appropriate for students?
What are examples of sci-fi books or short stories that have a mathematics theme? I'd like to have a pool of examples in mind that I could refer students to. The only example I've got in mind right ...
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Motivating Students Through "Random Teaching"
I am recently into a sort of teaching which I shall term "Random Teaching". It involves:
Asking student for a random word (not related to math remotely, say "cake")
Preforming a ...
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What kind of general advice for studying math we can offer undergraduate studens who do not major in math?
I have received request from a student, who is not in math major, asking me for advice on
How to keep motivated when studying math (calculus, linear algebra, etc.)
What does one need to do beyond ...
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How to solve the problem of Wolfram Alpha?
I teach to predominantly non-majors in college algebra, precalculus, and calculus.
How can one possibly incentivize or rationalize assigning practice problems outside of class when this software is ...
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Neat topics or problems to include in a probability class
I'd like to get suggestions for neat topics or problems to include in an undergraduate, upper division Introduction to Probability class. Many people have taught probability for many years and I'm ...
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What are some recent, interesting, accessible pieces of mathematics
Mathematics can come across as a sterile, dead subject - a catalogue of techniques long-ago decided, and forever relearned by each successive generation of students.
This is approximately true for ...
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Combative students in proofs classes
When teaching my first discrete math class recently, I found a subset of about 5 out of 35 of my primarily computer science students who I struggled to reach. If these students simply struggled with ...
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I'm worried that my struggles with calc 2 mean I won't be able to become a professor later
I have just turned 18 and am in calculus BC (calc 1 & calc 2). I most certainly grasp and understand the concepts of calc 1 however every once in a while a I seem to struggle with the calc 2 work. ...
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Teaching undergraduates who expect a high-school-like learning environment
tl;dr: Some students expect to be told "what's on the test", to memorize and then move on. What can be done to change how they learn while teaching them what to learn?
Context: Introductory, ...
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How can I encourage students to show up for exercise classes?
I am doing a maths PhD and naturally that involves leading exercise classes for undergraduate students. The idea is that the students just show up and work through the problem set and I'm there to ...
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Examples why university education is important for future high school teachers
At my university, the students in math are mixed up (1/3-1/2 are bachelor/master students, the rest are future high school teachers). A problem arising very often is the discussion dramatically ...
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Creating an Engaging Class Atmosphere
I would like to start out next year by creating a classroom community. This year I noticed a lot of burnout towards the second half of the year. Basically, I want to see what kinds of games/activities ...
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What books are like Knuth's Surreal Numbers?
I'm looking to find more examples of books which bridge the gap between "story" and "mathematics" using narrative and all those other wonderful features we might find in Harry Potter or some other ...
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Justifications for: Why learn mathematics?
I wonder how you teachers walk the line between justifying mathematics because of
its many—and sometimes surprising—applications, and justifying it as the study
of one of the great ...
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Make a matrix algebra course (1st university year) more "project-based"
Among other courses, I'm teaching a (basic) matrix algebra course for 1st year university students (they are studying Economics, and the cursus leads them to management, finance, or econometrics in ...
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Links between mathematical folklore and educational success
I would like to ask if, in the research field of mathematical education, some work has been done to investigate the relationship between 1) and 2):
mathematical education and student motivation
the ...
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Curving grades without creating competition among students [closed]
I've recently taken a new position within a math department at a large university. The department has an official policy that in most lower-level undergraduate classes (let's say anything in the ...
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How can I give feedback that is not demotivating?
Background: To cope with online education, I taught linear algebra using a variant of the flipped classroom. I recorded videos and put them up on YouTube and students presented the content in these ...
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How should I answer questions about the purpose of learning math?
What are some good answers to questions e.g. "why do we need to study square roots"?
Of course the answer depends highly on who is asking. For the scope of my question, I have a student in ...
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Struggling with Math Skills and When to Quit
Until this point I have felt inspired to study math and looked forward to my classes. But lately I've been having difficulty with my math skills, where I keep making errors over problems I had ...
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Can I motivate kids to do math by giving them candies? [closed]
I am talking about literally asking for kids' time/attention by offering them candies: not giving them tasks about summing real candies, etc.
I try to teach math from time to time to my relatives of ...
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Future in mathematics
My sibling is done with high school and has always scored A in Maths and am not in position to advise her on the future in line of her niche.
She's not yet in university and she's in her vacation but ...
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How can we help students who are very anxious about math?
In many parts of the world, the majority of the population is uncomfortable with math. In a few countries this is not the case. We would do well to change our education systems to promote a healthier ...
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What are some of the open problems that can be suitably introduced in a calculus course?
I feel it may be a good idea to introduce some related open problems in a calculus course. Surely I am not expecting my students to solve any one of them, though I cannot say it is absolutely ...
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Falling into the calculus trap
I am a student, in my last year of school(17 years old)
When I was about 13 years old I fell into the calculus trap by starting off learning trigonometry on my own, when I was supposed to factor ...
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"Feynman effect" in teaching mathematics
In his book "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman", Richard Feynman relates the following story. As he was supervising a group of calculators for Manhattan project, he at some point gave them a lecture on ...
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Multiple extra credit questions in a homework set
Extra credit questions sometimes motivate students to study more. Occasionally I find several valuable questions which are all good as extra credit question choices but I have to limit the number of ...
CommunityBot
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Everyday Example Problems for Solving Linear and Quadratic Equations
I am going to teach some grade 9 students about solving linear and quadratic equations. I am looking for a question from every day life (of a teenager) or a puzzle which is hard to solve without using ...
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How to engage low-level students?
I'm a recent graduate in my first year of teaching. I teach secondary students, and I have found that some low-level students are not listening in class. They seem to have given up and stopped trying. ...
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Introductory exercise for the addition of large natural numbers
I'm starting a repetition with my students in 5th grade after they learned in elementary school how to sum up larger natural numbers (also 5- to 6-digits) by writing down that calculation.
As ...
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A role for a non-symmetric equality relation in teaching mathematics? [closed]
First, I will simply observe that it seems to be standard practice, in elementary set theory, to define relations to be sets of ordered pairs. If we had the option of introducing a "symmetric ...
quid♦
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Motivation vs. Rigor
This is such a vague topic that I hesitate to post.
I constantly struggle between the time-tradeoff between
motivating a topic, and delving into the rigorous details necessary
to fully "grok" the ...
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How to work with polynomials in difficult classes?
I am currently teaching a very difficult class, with young people (16 years old) who are deeply unmotivated and restless. I should work with them with polynomials, but I'm having a troublesome time; ...
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