EVENTS

Bressoud
Chartier
Chinn
Clark, D., et al.
Clark, L.
Covington
Daniels/Armendariz
George
Hodge
Insall
Landry
Laursen/Douglas
Mahavier
McKee, et al.
Moore/Rossa
Nordstrom
Parker
Renesse/Hotchkiss
Renesse
Roe
Saturday AM
Selden, et al.
Shubin
Siegel
Socha, et al.
Sommers
Spresser
Yoshinobu, et al.

Matt Insall                                   
University of Missouri-Rolla

Use Your Windows Server, and Some Low Cost Electronic Course Delivery Systems to Enhance Your Discovery Method Class—A mini workshop

Missouri University of Science and Technology provides some computerized classrooms, and in the Fall of 2008, the speaker taught ``Foundations of Mathematics'' (Math 209 at Missouri S&T) in a computerized classroom.
Math 209 is a course in which students are introduced to some fundamental aspects of the axiomatic method, especially proof by contradiction, in the context of the pre-requisite material for a course in Advanced Calculus (our Math 309).    This course is typically taught as a (modified) Moore Method class.  Based upon this limited (and only thus far anecdotal) evidence, the careful use of computers in the classroom for this course seems to lead the students to ``buy in'' to the discovery method more quickly.  We will demonstrate the way that computers were used, and some ways this can be done in a rather inexpensive manner, for a campus that is already equipped with such educational technology.  For example, we use blackboard already on our campus for some course content delivery, electronic submissions of assignments, etc.  Recently, a very inexpensive open-source add-on (to blackboard) was provided to us, called ``Wimba''.  Wimba allows the students to make presentations electronically, even when they are at home with the flu!  Moreover, when the speaker was out of town for a conference, he held class, and attended virtually, from over 100 miles away, facilitating class discussion of arguments presented by the students, some of whom were physically present in the classroom, and some of whom were unable to attend physically for one reason or another.  In this demonstration, some or all attendees for this presentation will be able to participate in a ``Mock class'' patterned after this computerized classroom version of the Foundations of Mathematics class at Missouri S&T.