Bill Moss
Department of Mathematical Sciences

This spring, I completed three years of SCALE-UP teaching. The name SCALE-UP is probably not accurate in my case; it should be called student-centered, reduced-lecture teaching. The number of students I have taught in this mode has varied from 36 to 54 depending on the room, while the traditional SCALE-UP class usually is directed at 100 or more students.

For the last three years, I have taken a group of students through sophomore calculus III and differential equations in fall and spring semesters. In six semesters, I have only had the use of round tables once, in the new general engineering classroom, Holtzendorff 200. I will continue to teach those courses in this room for the 2005-2006 academic year.

The Department of Mathematical Sciences is building a SCALE-UP classroom this summer so I will be able to use round tables in advanced engineering mathematics fall 2005. My experiences agree with the SCALE-UP research in that seven foot round tables, seating three teams of three, seem optimum. I expect that Clemson will build SCALE-UP classrooms slowly as the demand increases. My classes are always over-subscribed; students like this mode of instruction.

The general engineering classroom has dual projectors that project onto opposite walls of a long room. There is no instructor board, but instead are small whiteboards for student use. I use a Sympodium (tablet on an arm) instead of writing on a board. The round tables provide power and wired Ethernet. Laptops are used in class every day. Here is what I do in my classes that meet four times per week for 50 minutes.

• Five minute review of class announcements in Blackboard (every day)
• Fifteen-twenty minute mini-lecture which is partly motivational. Why are we studying this topic? How does it connect to what we learned in previous courses; how does it connect to various junior/senior year engineering courses? I occasionally will review a procedure that students must learn, but I generally leave it to students to master the instructional objectives and to ask me or their classmates when they need help. I will often look at a harder problem by hand or using Maple. (Average twice a week).
• Twenty-thirty minute team activity, usually in the form of a quiz or a problem to be solved. The format is pretty open. I walk around the room and listen and jump in when students are stuck or going off on the wrong track. If I see the whole class going off on the wrong track, I tell everyone to STOP and go to the Sympodium or Maple to clear things up. (Average twice a week).
• Twenty-thirty minute Journal-Maple tutorial question and answer session. I walk around the room and help students with problems they are working in their written journals and with problems they are having in working through the Maple tutorials. If I see several students having the same problem, I will generally use the Sympodium or Maple to show the class collectively what they are doing wrong. (Every day).