“Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much.“ - Joshua Reynold
One lesson I have learned from photography is the importance of simplicity. In photography, one point of view in composing a photo is the process of elimination. You eliminate objects in your frame until you feel like you have a compelling image.
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| Leaning Oak, Central Coast CA (copyright Stan Yoshinobu) |
The next photo shows what the scene looks like. It was taken at a different time and day. An arrow is pointing to the tree in the first picture.
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| A view of the larger scene |
Wide angle views take in nearly everything in the scene. Wide angle lenses are "greedy" lenses and they include so many things. This is useful in some cases, but in many cases including everything makes the scene less compelling. There is just too much in the scene, no story, a documentation of what is there in a literal sense.
The process of elimination is in many ways the opposite of teaching. Especially in courses like Calculus, we have included so many problems, so many techniques, and every class has to cover so much.
Teaching is complex. Intricate concepts, big ideas, lots of students, assignments, deadlines, planning ahead, grading, random stuff that messes up your plans.
And then there is the pressure to innovate in your teaching. Trying new things, different things, adding technology, updating assessments.... Don’t get me wrong. This is all good and we need to innovate and continue to find ways to improve the human experience of education.
But there is a simple truth at the root of all this. It comes down to the students, their engagement with the ideas, and the instructor and the course structure supporting students. All the rest are mostly details, important details, but in the end those other things are either supports or requirements.
Does it matter that we use IBL/active learning and focus on the details and carefully execute our plans? Yes, of course!
So what is the point? We can go to far by adding too many layers or we have too many assignments and things for students to do.
I’ve talked to instructors who out of enthusiasm and excitement have flipped classes, WebWork homework, Perusall assignments, recitation assignments, hours of videos to watch each week, practice problems, writing assignments, group assignments, midterms, practice midterms, and more. This overwhelms students and creates a course requiring double the work. The question I get asked is why are my students not buying into my class? You're asking them to do more than they can handle and the experience is more painful than enjoyable and fulfilling.
There can be too much of a good thing, such as watching all your favorite movies in one sitting. At some point you aren’t enjoying it and neither are many of your students. In teaching, if you’re managing a wide range of course management tasks and students are running from one thing to another, then you may be including too many teaching element into your course.
"To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose." - Marie Kondo
What I try and do is mentally start with student engagement in class. I focus on what they need to learn in terms of content and dispositions. Then the math tasks (curriculum) are aimed at those things. The assignments and assessment layers are added aligning with the goals. From there you finish with the logistics, etc. and you have your course. That helps me see what to cut, what to exclude. Then I go back to my over-engineered course and take out the things that are not needed or at the very least revise them down.
This doesn't mean my classes are simple or bare bones. That's a risk, too - a course that merely shows the content and gives multiple choice tests. Simplicity is about finding the right balance between all the things you wish you could accomplish in your class and a real-world experience that is fulfilling for the instructor and students. It's focusing on making the best choices you can make for student learning and growth and letting go of trying to do everything. The coverage issue is a real thing. We all struggle with it, and what helps me stay centered is focusing squarely on students, the math, their interaction with the math, and their long-term intellectual growth.
In short, you gotta choose.
