Overview
Overall, I thought this was a really good semester. I was able to really improve somethings based on how things went in the previous two semesters I had taught this. The students seemed to respond to these changes, and I even had two students tell me this was the first math course they felt like they understood.
Course Materials
For this course I was the instructor which means I was in charge of most of the material. For this semester I did not make or use any different handout than I had used in Fall of 2022. Instead, what I focused most on was making major changes to the lecture notes to be able to better teach the material. One example of this is with chapter 4 I rearranged the material in the first section to allow students to practice problem between each new rule, so they didn't lose focus as easily. I also broke other sections down further to make them clearer.
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Another example of this is in chapter 6 where I broke down the steps for word problems to make them clearer and added steps for implicit differentiation.
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I also redid the exams to make them better align with the learning goals. Finally, another change to this course was the homework was set up to allow for extra credit if the students did the work early. I thought this was a great incentive to get students to do the work earlier which helps solidify the material. I think this is something I would want to implement in other courses in the future.