It's been awhile since that first picture was taken.
Two quarters
have passed and most of us have still stuck together.
That's very
unusual for a fig; so ususual that someone decided to write an article
about the best FIG that has ever existed at the UW in
the paper....
Reprinted from
University Week, May 9, 1996
Like Duracell, Collingwood kept on teaching, and
teaching...
Some people would say that David Collingwood
is working above and beyond the call of duty. Some people would say he's
crazy. What Collingwood himself says is that what he's doing is so
rewarding, it's worth all the effort. At least eight UW students would
agree, since they've had the benefit of Collingwood's nearly undivided
attention for the full academic year.
It all started last summer, when Collingwood, a professor of
mathematics, was asked if he would be interested in being a part of a
Freshman Interest Group connected to the UWired Program. Collingwood was
already slated to teach the fall quarter Math 120, a 160-Student
Precalculus class, and the FIG would be part of that class. After
attending some orientation meetings, he agreed to sign on.
In Math 120, students attend a lecture with the professor three
days a week then meet with a teaching assistant twice a week. The
students in the UWired FIG met an additional two times a week in the
collaboratory at Odegaard Undergraduate Library. There, the group learned
how to use information technology.
It happened that this particular FIG was unusually small - just 10
students, all science or engineering majors. Although it wasn't required,
Collingwood made the commitment to attend all the sessions in the
collaboratory. He was therefore meeting with these 10 students every day
of the week, twice in a small group setting.
"One of the goals of the Freshman Interest Group Program is to
create small learning communities, and that certainly happened in our
group," Collingwood says of the experience. "Because we were meeting in a
small group twice a week, and because we were exploring technology
together, there was a lot of one-to-one interaction. So we really
connected pretty well."
When it came time to register for Math 124, the first quarter of
calculus, the students began asking Collingwood if he would be teaching it
and he said no. As director of the graduate program in his department,
he's only required to teach one quarter per year. "And then I started
thinking about it and I realized I could teach them calculus," Collingwood
says. "I could just do it. I could just voluntarily teach these students
calculus, even though it's in addition to what I already have to do."
He had a few misgivings. What about the fairness issue?
Initially, Collingwood had worried about grading his FIG students in Math
120, but then, math grades are based on solving problems on tests.
Answers are clearly right or wrong, no subjectivity involved, so he
dismissed that issue. But what about the idea of teaching a class of 10
students calculus? Other students would take the class in the usual 160 -
student format. Wouldn't this be unfair to them?
"In the end I decided that since I was doing this voluntarily, for
no extra compensation, it wasn't unfair," Collingwood says. "But I
checked with my chair first, just to be sure. When he heard what I
intended to do, he was speechless for a few minutes. Then I showed him a
memo I'd written describing my experience withe fhte FIG to the assistant
dean of undergraduate education, and he told me we could turn the lights
off on campus and the glow from my memo would provide plenty of
illumination."
The memo said, in part, "Without question, my experience this
quarter has been one of the most rewarding, exciting and fulfilling of my
career."
That was in December. Collingwood probably would write something
even more glowing today, after teaching this same small group not only
Math 124, but Math 125 as well. And the feeling is mutual. One of the
students, Allyson Keith, is not a freshman but is new to the University.
"I've been through the college experience before," she says, "and it's
just so amazingly different having such a small group and working with a
real professor one on one most of the time. You can ask questions
whenever you want to."
"It's just a lot of personal attention," adds Nora Vasquez. "He
knows what our strengths and weaknesses are and can present the material
with a different twist to cater to our needs."
Angela Garcia says she had signed up for the FIG because she comes
from a small town and was worried about surviving in such a big
university. "I was really grateful for this experience because there are
only a few of us and we can get to really understand the material instead
of just trying to get through the class."
Though his 10 students have dwindled down to eight (two dropped in
winter quarter), those remaining enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of the
class. On a recent morning, the group was studying a concept known as
"solids of revolution," in which the volume of a solid is calculated by
visualizing revolving it on an axis. To illustrate the concept,
Collingwood had brought solids of various types: a washer, a football, a
rivet and a whole bag of bagels (which were eaten after class). Instead
of demonstrating to the class how each one's volume would be calculated,
he asked students to give their ideas on the matter first. Being able to
do that is, he believes, one of the biggest advantages to having a small
class.
"I'm trying to draw things out of them and let them say a lot of
things that are possibly wrong," Collingwood says. "That's something that
undergraduates don't have the opportunity to do in these gateway courses -
learn how to think and reason creatively, critically, actively. So I'm
trying to get them started on that road. And it's painful because nobody
wants to say something that's wrong."
These students, however, have learned to take the chance. In fact,
they say their bravery has carried over into other, larger classes, where
they're less afraid no to ask questions. "I don't even think about it
now," says Keith. "I just want to get my question answered."
Adds Vasquez, "What I think also, you get to know one profesor, it
makes it easier to go to other professors during their office hours."
By now, Collingwood has gotten to know these students very well,
but once again, he hasn't worried about favoritism because of the
impersonal nature of mathematics. And they're not all 4.0 students, he
says. In fact, the class approximates the normal curve, only on a smaller
scale. However, none of these students is failing. Collectively, they've
done quite well. When they were in the 160-student class last fall, their
mean scores topped the mean of the class by about 10 poiints.
"I think what happened is, they realilzed that I cared a lot about
their progress in my class and in the Univeristy," Collingwood says. "I
think they were really trying to work hard in my class to succeed."
Collingwood has worked hard too, but found the work rewarding.
"It's exciting to have a chance to teach a course tailored to a group of
students, that captures their interest," he says. "As a researcher I'm
sort of a passionate and creative person, and I've enjoyed funneling that
creativity and passion towards teaching calculus in the most exciting and
interesting way possible."
As spring quarter comes to a close, so will Collingwood's formal
association with these students. He won't be repeating the experiment
next year ("I'd have a coronary"), but he says he'd consider doing it
again sometime. "It's without question the best teaching experience I've
had, period - graduate or undergraduate."
Nancy Wick