A Mathematica Hat Trick

The Teacher's Guide to Effectively Teach with Mathematica

Cliff Hastings

Director of Academic Initiatives
Wolfram Research, Inc.

My Background

... as a student

Former college athlete / current college coach (thus, the “hat trick” reference)

Mathematics / chemistry backgrounds
	1. was part of university’s first computer-integrated calculus sequence
	2. Calc 1, 2 and 3 were taught by doing problems from the book by hand and with Mathematica 
	3. "Go to the lab, solve #11-15 using Mathematica"
	4. had no instruction on how to use Mathematica so our class repetitively struggled (plus it was V2)
	5. we felt it didn't make sense to spend 2 hours using software for what takes 30 minutes by hand

Throughout rest of my courses, used Excel, Minitab, and Mathcad
	1. didn’t learn to use any of them well
	2. just to follow the assignments
	3. often spent more time trying to figure out the software vs.understanding the material

My Background

... at Wolfram

Started on the MathMobile in 1997
	1. visited ~250 campuses and ~25,000 people over the 2 years regarding Mathematica 
	2. gave some group presentations but predominantly 1-on-1 illustrations of Mathematica
	3. majority of people fit the "I've heard of it, but never used it - can you show me?"
	4. *remind me of my favorite story*

Moved to technical support, PR and then on to sales
	1. estimate ~100,000 conversations during that time
	2. lots of "what's great", "what's wrong", etc.

My Background

Building the Academic Initiatives Group

Now, I’ve had the opportunity to build a team of people focused on the educational market
	1. sales, marketing and education - building tools and programs for you and your students
	2. I've created a group of people which represent our users: 
		i. former teachers
		ii. technical people who used Mathematica in its early days as students
		iii. intelligent people who are new to technical computing as a whole
		iv. and then mix in backgrounds in math, engineering, chemistry, business, finance, statistics, etc.
	3. spent a fair amount of time testing techniques teaching bright internal people how to use Mathematica 
	4. watched them succeed on how, saw some struggle in certain groups on why and where to use it daily

Getting Mathematica back on the road

Drawing from experience

Upon the release of 6, we knew Manipulate, Demonstrations and the Built-in Data provided three huge attributes to education - but about 6 months in, we realized that very few people knew how to utilize these things (let alone knew much about them at all)

We drew on the experiences from the MathMobile to take the best (and leave the rest) to get the new message of Mathematica in front of the faculty.  Thus, the Mathematica on-campus technical talks began.

Getting Mathematica back on the road

2007

So, we started doing on-campus talks illustrating concepts of Mathematica
	We found three things almost universally true: 
		i. Faculty didn’t know anything about Manipulate and were elated when they saw it
		ii. Faculty's main statement post-talk was “wow, Mathematica is so much easier now”
		iii. Faculty were showing with Mathematica over creating hands-on experiences and activities

Getting Mathematica back on the road

2008: Making the tools to counter problems

Lack of knowledge about new features useful for teaching:
	i. created succinct videos to illustrate basic functionality in Mathematica pertinent to education
	
Create more awareness of how easy Mathematica is:
	i. tailored our talks to showcase the ease-of-use over the power
	ii. created educational marketing plan to communicate existence of the videos

Get more faculty to get students hands-on with Mathematica:
	i. changed presentation style to provide more hands-on presentations / trainings to faculty and students
	ii. get faculty and students to see ease of picking up Mathematica and getting excited about using it

Getting Mathematica back on the road

Proving the ease of students using Mathematica immediately

We started doing hands-on presentations (typically 90 minutes long) 
	- Focused initial efforts on 3 HBCUs that had Mathematica site licenses and very little usage:
		Coppin State and Bowie State in Maryland as well as South Carolina State University
	- Set up events for training of large groups of students to try Mathematica for the first time 
	
Faculty, who had never thought their students would “get it” were shocked to watch their students off and making their own explorations within 20 minutes
	- Students stopped paying attention to me talking about { }
	- They got it and were really, really excited about it.

Changing our teaching style

Maturing the delivery and the message as the audiences matured

When doing talks in 2008, there had been a level of maturity of understanding with colleges in terms of faculty understanding what Mathematica provided them. We started working in some different directions: 

	i. Faculty currently teaching with Mathematica
		1. specifically requested tools to help stop spending so much time teaching Mathematica
		2. wanted to teach the course using Mathematica (not Mathematica itself)
	ii. Faculty just starting their teaching with Mathematica
		1. concerned that students weren’t coming in from HS or CC with prior Mathematica experience
		2. felt like they would have to start at ground zero teaching the software
	iii. Faculty teaching lower level courses not using Mathematica
		1. saw benefits of Mathematica
		2. didn’t see vision of their students picking it up quickly with a command line interface

Integration of the message

Less about what *we* have and more about what teachers need

We rolled out programs and tools that were solutions to problems opposed to illustrations of concepts
	i. created the HOS Part 1 and 2 for faculty to provide students on how to use Mathematica 
		1. at the start of the Fall semester, we had 30,000 people watch HOS Part 1 in a month
	ii. created the HS/CC Seeding Program
		1. provision of $49 licenses for HS/CC teachers after they watch a series of videos 
		2. not just selling but *understanding* Mathematica for HS and CC and exposure to students
		3. HS/CC videos - had over 5,000 teachers watch first video in a month
	iii. Version 7 introduced the Classroom Assistant Palette
		1. we created an education plan to engage new HS/CC teachers and university faculty re: palette
		2. always requested access to Smart Boards when presenting at HS/CC

Creating the tools from your requests

IMUC 2008 - Faculty Discussion - what we heard from you: 

	i. you liked the HOS videos
		1. emphasis was made that students learn in different ways
		2. we needed to diversify learning tools (as well as create more)
  			a. made lots more videos
  			b. rolled out print version of the tutorials
  			c. have almost finished creation of M10 - A Student’s First Course in Mathematica

ii. you who were teaching with Mathematica were looking for collaboration with other faculty
		1. something to share ideas, courseware, etc.	
  			a. created courseware examples and template
  			b. Faculty Program just about complete

iii. sometimes faculty feel like an island on their own campus
	     looking for help in expanding Mathematica use to other colleagues and departments on campus
		1. Created S01 - online educational seminar to provide overview of Mathematica 
			a. for folks who may not have come to an on-campus talk
			b. for folks looking for a quick overview of Mathematica for chemistry, econ, statistics, etc.

What we have learned in 2009

i. Faculty who have integrated their teaching with Mathematica consistently note that their students 
	1. have a more solid understanding of the material they’re teaching
	2. have more interesting conversations
	3. ask questions about concepts of the curricula opposed to simply how to get answers

ii. More HS/CC teachers are using Mathematica than ever before. 
	1. in just 2009, we have expanded Mathematica to almost 1,000 new HS/CC via the seeding program.

iii. Teachers provide the complete integrated approach to Mathematica, students buy-in
	1. they want to save time and workload
	2. replace Word/Excel/PowerPoint, etc. with Mathematica

Pitfalls of teaching with Mathematica

i. Doing work in Mathematica that one can easily do by hand
	1. not a good idea to have students start their use of Mathematica with extremely trivial calculations
	2. first impressions are that the tool is way too hard for the tiny things it can do
  
ii. Using Mathematica with all the notebooks one created or downloaded from Version 3
	1. although revolutionary then, it doesn’t engage students into the tool Mathematica can be for them
	2. no interactive engagement with the students or easy point-and-click utilization

iii. The pigeon-hole effect
	1. pre-defining what Mathematica is because a teacher only uses it within the integration chapter

iv. Not having students touch it
	1. fear of the time that students need to start using Mathematica 
	2. removes the opportunity for visual / hands-on learners the change to find things out for themselves

The Hat Trick

the "WHY"

Get students and colleagues to “see the vision” - the “why” of Mathematica 
      1. Need to have, and be able to articulate, your own vision for why you use Mathematica in your courses
      2. We give you the faculty program, lots of resources and a post-sales contact to help you
      	i. you need others on campus passionate about what you’re doing and using Mathematica
		a. Gives you energy and passion
		b. Gives you students who better understand the tools
		c. Protects the longevity of the teaching materials you create
		d. Provides you more strength for funding conversations

The Hat Trick

the "HOW"

i. Let us take care of the “how” for the students or colleagues on getting started
      	1. Take that time out of your workload
   	2. Don’t re-create the wheel unless your wheel works for you
   	3. Provide the student support forum/online chat components for them to reach out to us

The Hat Trick

the "WHERE"

i. Be educated and clearly communicate the “where”
	1. make Mathematica or other tools easily accessible to the students and the process simple
		a. Wolfram|Alpha
		b. Player
		c. webMathematica 
		d. Mathematica

Your Homework

i. Use this as a launch point to talk to others here
	1. discussion with other educators on how they teach with Mathematica
	2. talk with commercial or Wolfram people on their experience with Mathematica as a student, etc.

ii. Take a look at some of the tools we have built for you to use and give us feedback
	1. see what's there and how it can be changed to be more useful for you and/or your students

iii. After the conference, we'll send you an email asking you for suggestions or new ideas of things that will be of assistance to you and your classroom.  It's a proven fact that our most useful resources come from your ideas and suggestions!