![]() For almost all the students in the class, this will be the last math course they ever take. They come, some of them, with an attitude or at least a negative mindset.ģ. They just want to get that dreaded math requirement out of the way. Many of the students who select such a course do not like math, and some of them are math-phobic. Such graduation requirements are extremely common and with good reason.Ģ. ![]() A non-STEM-majors course is usually offered to provide students with an option to fulfill a one-course mathematics requirement for graduating, which avoids a traditional STEM-oriented math course such as calculus or linear algebra. Judging by what I have learned from others who give such courses, including my four co-panelists in Denver, these are pretty common starting points for designing and giving such courses.ġ. In the meantime – and this is going to be one of the shorter Devlin’s Angle posts - let me just list here the main philosophical assumptions that have driven all my different attempts to teach non-STEM-majors courses. We all learn from the experiences of others, even if what we learn is how we do not want to do something!) Although my hope is it will be viewed on a “take it or modify it or reject it basis,” which is how I am approaching it. (As an MAA outlet, Devlin’s Angle is not the right venue for what will inevitably be a “show-and-tell” series, put out on a “take it or leave it” basis. Starting this month, I am going to start posting articles about those non-majors courses on my personal blog. Taking part in the JMM session, and being asked by the organizers to provide attendants with any materials I had, I realized that in all those years, I had put virtually nothing into the public record about the nature of the courses I’d given, the philosophies behind them, and my experiences in giving them. ![]() That was definitely not the case in the 1970s and 80s, when I was one of the relatively few university instructors who actively sought to give non-majors courses and enjoyed doing so, both in the UK in the early part of my career, and then later in the US. The session was well attended, and it was clear that there is considerable interest in giving such courses. By Keith Devlin the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Denver, CO last month, I participated as a panelist and group discussion leader in an MAA Project NExT session on mathematics courses for non-math majors. ![]()
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