Reflections on teaching during the pandemic
By Jennifer Quinn, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at UW Tacoma
The COVID-19 viral disruption affects us all, particularly our most vulnerable citizens. It’s vital to find ways to connect our students and humanize this unprecedented and isolating experience.
These days I’m trying to worry less about the integrity of online examinations and the quality of online content — and think more about the people. I start by assuming students’ best intentions.
I’m also thinking about learning goals: Do we want to enable students to be critical thinkers? Problem solvers? To have flexible minds and be able to adapt? They will get all that through the experience we provide and more.
Will it really matter if my Calculus I class doesn’t get to L’Hopital’s rule, or the Calculus II class doesn’t get to partial fraction decomposition? I doubt it. For those that need it, there will be time later. For now, let’s congratulate ourselves and our students on getting through, and just breathe.
Visit Math in the Time of Corona to read more of Jennifer Quinn’s reflections on teaching during the pandemic.
Jennifer Quinn is a professor of mathematics in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at UW Tacoma. She has held many positions of national leadership in mathematics, including executive director for the Association for Women in Mathematics, co-editor of Math Horizons, a publication of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), chair of MAA’s Council on Publications, and currently MAA’s president-elect. As a combinatorial scholar, Quinn thinks that beautiful proofs are as much art as science. Simplicity, elegance, and transparency should be the driving principles, and she strives to bring this same ethic to her teaching, service, and professional work.