Open AccessA University Math Help Centre as a Support Framework for Students, the Instructor, the Course, and the Department
Author(s) -
Petra Menz,
Veselin Jungić
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of university teaching and learning practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.258
H-Index - 8
ISSN - 1449-9789
DOI - 10.53761/1.12.1.7
Subject(s) - mathematics education , faculty development , medical education , scheduling (production processes) , flexible scheduling , psychology , pedagogy , engineering , professional development , operations management , medicine
Among many challenges a math department at a post-secondary institution will most likely be faced with the optimization problem of how best to offer out-of-lecture learning support to several thousand firstand second-year university students enrolled in large math service courses within given spatial, scheduling, financial, technological, and manpower resource constraints, and at the same time ease the administrative work of the instructor. This article describes how math workshops, essentially math help centres, are set up in the Department of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University so that they provide the administrative and learning support structure for the students, the instructor, the course, and the department. The roles and responsibilities of the workshop coordinator, instructors, teaching assistants, and students are outlined along with a discussion of the challenges and benefits of this support framework.