senior seminar: Preparation for life after college, The

Primus: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, Dec 2001 by Hathawayl, Dale K, Atkinson, David

While the mathematics posters have never fared well in the voting part of the overall competition, the participation has proved to be useful to the students. If their poster is on their project topic it requires the student to have completed their preliminary investigation of the topic at least several weeks before their presentation. In general, it forces them to prepare a visual, and sometimes interactive, presentation of mathematics. Mathematics Education students, in particular, benefit from the experience.

The posters are graded on the following characteristics: appearance, organization, creativity, and quality of mathematics. Appearance includes attractiveness, use of color, and neatness. Does the poster make one want to stop and look at it? An organized poster has a clear title, student name, and information, as well as a definite sequence through the information on the poster. Creativity has to do with presentation and layout. Some of the more creative mathematics posters have included a poster on Pascal's Pyramid that included a hanging three-dimensional model of the structure and a poster on magic squares that had as part of it a 3 x 3 grid with numbers held on by velcro so that viewers of the poster could move them around to try and find the magic square. Finally, the quality of mathematics has to do with the level of the mathematics presented in the poster. Is it significant, original, and complete? After the poster is graded the scores in the four categories are then combined into an overall score.

4. Project

The last and largest part of the grade (50%) comes from each student's project. They are required to do an in-depth study of a topic and present it to the class near the end of the semester. The students are presented with a list of potential topics at the beginning of the semester, but are encouraged to find something of interest to them. They must have the topic approved by the faculty by the sixth week of the semester. The last 3-4 class periods are reserved for student presentations. Each student is given half of a class period (two students per class), approximately 25 minutes, to present their project to the class. They are also required to submit a 5-7 page paper on their project at the time of their presentation.

Spreading the presentations out over several classes does result in different deadlines for each student. Some students are required to do their oral presentation and turn in their report 2-3 weeks before other students. This has not caused a problem, in fact some of the students prefer to go early so as to free up time during the last week or so of the semester for their other courses. They are still required to attend the other student presentations, but their graded work is finished. Students that wish to go early may choose to do so, after which the order of presentations is randomly determined.

It is our hope that by the time our students graduate they will be lifetime learners and that they will be able to learn mathematics at an appropriate level on their own. The faculty are available for help, but we hope that one thing our students will take away from their college experience is the ability to learn on their own, to go beyond what they have learned in the classroom. This project gives them an opportunity to do just that. From an assessment perspective, this class provides a means for students to present mathematics both orally and written.