PUBLIC TALK: This works for us: practical strategies to address student engagement and skills

Each mathematics teaching context is unique, but whenever the conversation turns to undergraduate education, common themes emerge: minimum standards, engagement, service teaching, the role of small group teaching, and graduate capabilities. The talk title is borrowed from a magazine column called “this works for me”, because it would be most presumptuous to suggest that the strategies to be presented, which have been developed collectively by the mathematicians at La Trobe, are any kind of panacea. I will describe things that we have tried and succeeded with, good ideas that turned out to be not-so-good in practice, and some general principles that we have identified. No-one will be required to write on butcher’s paper during this presentation. The speaker is a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at La Trobe University, and Director of Teaching and Learning, School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences.