Introduction

Welcome, everyone, for another online professional development day! I'm looking forward to seeing all of you on Zoom, and hopefully, in person in the fall if our public health situation permits it. Today's PD activities fall roughly into three themes: sharing ideas about redesigning the on-campus offerings of College Algebra through Modeling, with small changes possibly passing on the high schools in two years; review of a new Field Day "poster challenge" without the poster on Food Deserts in Minnesota; and a mathematical activity in the area of agricultural education, from Dr. Becky Haddad at the University of Minnesota, on calculating the average daily weight gain when raising a calf for food. You can read more about Becky's faculty profile here.

From 9 am to 1 pm, please review the material below and post at least twice in the discussion boards.

From 1 pm to 3 pm, we'll be on Zoom together at this link.

Please review the videos below on these topics. If you find the videos to be a little long, you could get away with skipping the one about the Model Your World. Please prioritize Becky's agricultural math video, as this is the first time we have had a presenter from agricultural education. Then, please post twice in some combination of the discussion boards. It is great if you post multiple times! And everyone likes to get a response to their posting, so either initial thoughts or responses to others are helpful. I will be monitoring and interacting, too, from 9 am to 1 pm on August 10. The discussion boards that are available are:

Ask Questions About our Program: Optional, for questions or comments that don't fit in the other discussions
Discussion about Course Redesign and Model Your World
Discussion about Average Daily Gain Math Activity

PD Day Overview

This video gives an overview of topics for today, with the hope of returning to our normal pre-pandemic syllabus of five major models and three mini-models.

Course Redesign

Our on-campus College Algebra through Modeling class is going to remain a face-to-face class for the foreseeable future, if our public health situation permits. Nonetheless, there are various aspects of "pandemic teaching knowledge" that can contribute to a face-to-face class. Also, I feel that our on-campus class has gone through a lot of changes over the last six years, and it's due to be refreshed. So I hope to use the coming twelve months to redesign some elements of the class, like using the models and mini-models more deliberately, increasing the weight of models relative to tests, and using online tools to help students learn to work together on models more effectively. A shout out to Barry Busacker of Marshall County Central high school for inspiring some of my thinking on this redesign! One of the other sources that helped me sort out redesign ideas is this article on five purposes for doing mathematical modeling. It is not required reading, but it is linked here in case anyone is interested.

This video shares some thoughts for redesigning the course, with possible smallish changes passing on to schools in about two years. I would really like to hear your advice and reactions in the "Redesign" discussion board!

Model Your World

On campus this fall, we are trying out a slightly different Model Your World statement. We are going to use this as a small individual or group project that replaces the final exam--in exchange for making ALL the tests and quizzes slightly comprehensive. One option is similar to the current version. A second option is to identify and critique some use of mathematics in the world, in a way that uses learning from our class. The reasoning for this new option is that a math course should teach people how to be critical readers and users of public mathematics, and not just "solving problems." This second option might be a more authentic outcome for how people might use their learning in the future. This second option refers to a paper about Mathematics and Crises. This is not required reading, but linked for interest.

Here is our current draft of the new Model Your World assignment. You can continue using your current version if you want.

Field Day

We're hoping for in-person Field Days this year. You'll get a survey in the next couple weeks to help organize your days of participation. We have a new plan for the group session of Field Day, which is described in this video.

Average Daily Gain

I'm very pleased that Dr. Becky Haddad has prepared this agricultural mathematics activity for us! We all eat, and many of us eat meat, without knowing about the producers' use of mathematics that provides us with this sustenance. Becky made us a fabulous video that shares data, several activities, ideas for extensions, and also information on agricultural careers that would require knowledge of Average Daily Gain. She also gave us the powerpoint for the video, because it might be a faster way to get the data. We're planning to have Beck join our PD sessions this year to share more mathematics associated with agricultural education. Thank you, Becky!

One of the things I like about this example is that it gives us some really nice examples of rates. They can get students thinking in a way that might feel more abstract for some, if they don't have experience with average daily gain, or it might be easier and more concrete if they do. There is also a good potential for teaching about dimensional analysis through these examples. You could develop this into a model, use it as a mini-model (for example) to discover the process of dimensional analysis, or use these as examples to develop in-class practice problems for linear algebra.

Becky mentioned a Cost of Gain calculator, which I think you can find on this page.

This page allows you to download this spreadsheet.